History of the Bills: 1999-2003

….at the beginning of training camp! Being Bills fans, though, every year we can put the past behind us and look hopefully towards the coming season.

This period was tough, including the sad and undoubtedly overdue goodbyes to Thurman, Bruce and Andre (it’s a cruel business, but it does pay well until the party’s over!) and that so-called Music City miracle (are there any Bills fans who agree that is wasn’t a forward lateral?).

A few other impressions:

Great ex-Buffalo running backs have probably gotten into more trouble than any other team in league history. I always loved watching Travis Henry run. It seems like he never got knocked backwards when he was hit. I didn’t understand when they got rid of him, but I imagine that management may have been able to see trouble coming.

I was sorry when Wade Phillips got fired. I was even sorrier when we saw what his successor was able to do.

I think Rob Johnson played OK in that Tennessee playoff game. I don’t know if Flutie could have done better. That was one tough defense to play against. I thought Johnson ran for his life very effectively. Still don’t understand the decision to start him, though.

There were a lot of great individual game and season performances on which to reflect back during this segment of team history, but after 10 years I’m getting tired of silver linings. My head can’t come up with a 2009 prediction of any better than…oh…say… 7 – 9, but my heart says, GO BILLS!

After we acquired bledsoe, I came down the stairs every Sunday that year with the same ritual. Asking my roomates if I was dreaming. Was bledsoe really our quarterback? I think the guy took to much heat. Horribke o line. He’s a tank, slow but with a cannon. You have to have a stellar o line to win with someone like him. Can we please just make the playoffs this year. Please?

Thanks for doing these, they’re good reads even if sometimes a bad trip down memory lane.

But you can’t write about the 2003 Bills season without mentioning the Moulds injury in OT vs. the Bengals. It was such a crucial (yet overlooked) incident in the history of the franchise.

It was a turning point for Moulds’ career, first and foremost. He was never the same explosive player after. It was a turning point for that season as well- with a healthy, dynamic Moulds I think they would have been a real playoff contender, and better than the ’04 team turned out to be. It spelled doom for Bledsoe as a Bill (he really had nobody to throw to the rest of the season), probably cost Gregg Williams his job, and sent Josh Reed into a 3 year tailspin of the dropsies because of all the added pressure on him.

No time watching the Bills of recent history, in my opinion, was as miserable as that ‘03 team after Moulds got hurt…just pathetic losses where the defense played great but you still didn’t think they had a chance to win. Josh Reed and Bobby Shaw were both #3 receivers but ended up acting as the #1 and #2 guys because effectively, Moulds was useless. He bounced back a bit in the next two years, but before that injury he was one of the top 5 receivers in the game. After it, he probably was never again in the top 25.