Bills giving their fans thrills

If misery actually does love company, there will be a sold-out stadium’s worth of friends on Sunday.

The Cardinals have won one playoff game since coming to Arizona. The Bills’ last playoff win was 1995.

Then again, the Bills played in four consecutive Super Bowls, even if they lost them all.

Buffalo has one winning season this decade (9-7 in 2004), but the Bills are coming to University of Phoenix Stadium on Sunday with a 4-0 record.

It’s the Bills, Tennessee and the New York Giants left among the league’s loss-less.

Few football pundits outside of locker rooms saw this coming in August, especially with New England in the same AFC East Division.

Emphasis on outside of locker rooms.

“It’s a new year every year,” Cardinals cornerback Roderick Hood said. “They’ve got a lot of talent. Nothing surprises me any more when you’re talking about the NFL.”

Believe it or not, the Bills said the same thing, even if this sudden optimism has been absent for most of the decade.

“Every coach in the league believes they can win every game,” Bills coach Dick Jauron said. “If you don’t, you’re probably in the wrong business, because you got to believe. If you don’t, I don’t see how your guys can.

“Did I think we’d start 4-0? I guess I’d say, 'Yeah.’ Otherwise I wouldn’t feel really good about myself.”

Quarterback Trent Edwards and a flair for being fashionably late are behind this boon.

In their season opener against Seattle, the Bills scored 14 points in 25 seconds to close out the third quarter and won big.

At Jacksonville, Edwards completed his first 10 passes of the game, and the Bills sealed the road win on a 45-yard field goal by Rian Lindell with 29 seconds left.

The next week, Lindell’s 38-yard field goal as time expired capped a 17-point fourth quarter to erase a 17-6 deficit against Oakland, as Edwards drove the Bills down the field twice in the final six minutes.

Last week, the Bills trailed 14-13 entering the fourth quarter against woeful St. Louis, but an interception return for a score and an Edwards’ touchdown pass to Lee Evans spearheaded an 18-point fourth quarter.

“He’s making great decisions, throwing the ball, like, crazy good,” Hood said of Edwards. “I think his (QB rating) is like 130, 140, 150. It’s crazy. He’s playing at a very high level.”

The Bills — and Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt — are aware that Oakland and St. Louis have since fired their head coaches, but one team’s meltdown doesn’t explain another’s success.

“They’ve come back and made the plays in the fourth,” Whisenhunt said. “That, to me, is the sign of a good football team that’s improving.

“Where we’ve been in situations — most noticeably against Washington — where we had a chance to make plays in the fourth quarter, we haven’t done that. That’s the difference between us being 3-1, or like Buffalo, where they’ve made those plays.”

Jauron was asked if this year’s Bills parallel his 2001 Chicago Bears who surprised the league by going 13-3, and also featured a series of big-time comeback wins. Jauron said he hadn’t thought about that comparison, but brushed off making any parallels four games into a campaign.

Since that Bears team got whipped by Philadelphia to open the playoffs, that could be a good thing for a football-starved city on Lake Erie.

Then again, Buffalo has spent a decade yearning for January football.

“We’re early here,” Jauron said. “I have a lot of faith in these guys, but it’s just so early in the year, this is the first one-quarter of a season.”

Important Bill
Quarterback Trent Edwards is a big reason why the Bills are 4-0 and have outscored opponents 66-30 in the second half of games this season.
Edwards after halftime: 42 of 56 (75 percent), 4 TDs, 1 INT, 120.8 rating
Edwards in 4th quarter: 27 of 35 (77.1 percent), 3 TDs, 0 INT, 136.6 rating