The Buffalo Bills are soft and afraid of the cold.

On the eve of Buffalo's excursion north to Toronto to play the Miami Dolphins, many questions remain about the toughness of the 2008 Bills.

A year ago Buffalo was still in the playoff hunt and a team standing in the way was the Cleveland Browns. In weather conditions that could be described as blizzardlike, Cleveland was the more physical team with Jamal Lewis acting like a battering ram. Trent Edwards seemed "off" that week but the conditions were bad and it was really Trent's first game in conditions that bad.

Skip ahead to this year in the Monday Night football game against the Browns. Edwards had one of his worst performances ever with 3 INTs in the first quarter. Edwards looked like a deer in headlights, like someone transported into the middle of D-Day, he looked competely confused, unhinged. But even worse although he was wearing long sleeves he looked..... cold. Jim Kelly, Bills hall of fame quarterback who was renowned for his toughness, attended the game and after the Bills disappointed missing a field goal wide right the camera showed an anguished Jim Kelly and fans leaving in droves.

The team then rallied in much warmer Kansas City and many fans including myself felt that the Trent Edwards of old had returned to form although he had struggled against all of the AFC east even before the Browns debacle.

Last Sunday against the 49er's marked as Bills owner Ralph Wilson in a moment of wit called it, "the worst performance I've seen from us in 49 years" Once again did Edwards look like a popsicle playing only mediocre and injuring his groin requiring J.P. Losman to come into the game. The whole offense with the exception of Lynch did not play with any tenacity or toughness despite this game being crucial for Buffalo's playoff hopes.

Another bitter truth is that the Bills have in fact not beaten a single team with a winning record this season, and only beat 1 in 2007 on a last second field goal as that team mourned the loss of their teammate

One must ask why are the Bills struggling not only in the cold but when the game is on the line, or against opponents with winning records.

I feel that it is a reflection of the coach Dick Jauron, and the weak mindset he has instilled this team with. Although he is a players coach and is well thought of in the locker room, he has made the team lax, and does not pressure them to play above and beyond their abilities and the team has responded by underachieving. But in some ways you can't blame them. It's like given a child a choice of doing chores. Most likely they won't do them if they have a choice, but when forced they will. Playing losing teams they might play for pride (although this wasn't the case their last two home games) but when faced with a winning team they do not rise to the other team's level but are content to stay just the way they are.

To be fair Jauron has successfully made this team go from bad to mediocre but he is not able to make them take the next step and that's because maybe the team doesn't want to take that next step. But Jauron has done nothing to tell me that he can take this team to the next level. Forget that he couldn't motivate a dog to eat steak, and is about as charismatic as a skeleton, the most embarrassing aspect of Jauron is his unwillingness to practice outside in the cold. That's probably a large part of why Buffalo flounders is in the cold because although they live in it they don't practice in it and therefore are unused to it. I'm sorry but if you play in BUFFALO and you can't handle the cold then that is a very serious problem. To be a coach and be ignorant to the advantages the cold can give your team is unacceptable. The Bills of the 90s used to be FEARED when it became December in Buffalo. Against teams like the Dolphins the Bills were nightmares.

Kelly himself has criticized the decision to play in Toronto with the roof closed negating the advantage Buffalo has. Right after he said that, On Buffalo's 98.5 morning radio show Josh Reed complained that nobody likes to play in the cold. Marcus Stroud said, "It's going to benefit everybody, I guarantee you won't find any guys in our locker room that are complaining about going to play in a dome, so it'll work both ways."

And of course Dick Jauron, "The game is a big enough game in which wherever it was, I would hope that the elements wouldn't have been a factor one way or the other," he said.

HOW CAN YOU HOPE THAT THE ELEMENTS WOULD NOT HAVE A FACTOR?! YOUR JOB IS TO MAKE THIS TEAM WIN AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF PLAYING IN BUFFALO!!!

The fact that the some players have this mind set is disgusting. The fact that these players immediately defend what a career loser as a head coach has to say than a Hall of Famer who went to 4 straight super bowls says it all.