Headline: Josh Allen sets NFL mark with 3 TD passes and 3 TD runs, but Matthew Stafford’s Rams hold off Buffalo Bills 44-42

Canada has no NFL teams to its name. But different parts of the country have a fervent rooting interest in a team. Often it’s because of the local American markets that have been piped in by cable TV companies. The Lower Mainland of B.C. is fertile Seattle Seahawks territory. Alberta is partial to the Denver Broncos (owned for a long time by an Albertan). Manitoba and Saskatchewan get Detroit stations on their cable but are equally invested in the Minnesota Vikings.

In the East, Quebec and the Maritimes have plenty of New York Giants (older) and New England Patriots (Tom Brady) fandom. In southern Ontario, where the locals grew up on a diet of Buffalo TV icons Irv Weinstein and Tom Joles, there is little question that the Buffalo Bills are top of mind. As many as 20 percent of the crowd on game day comes south across the Peace Bridge. TSN and Sportsnet closely cover the Bills closely.

Not so long ago Rogers thought playing Bills games in Toronto might be a thing. For reasons ranging from ticket prices to the Bills ineptitude the gamble flopped. So they gave up the plan just as the franchise’s fortunes were to take a great leap forward in the name of quarterback Josh Allen, a raw talent from Wyoming, of all places. Opinions on whether his athletic ability and size (6-foot-5, 240 pounds) would translate in the NFL were many.

After all, while his QB rivals played in the Rose Bowl or the Orange Bowl, Allen had starred in the Great Idaho Potato Bowl. Using a pick obtained from Tampa, the Bills got him seventh in the loaded 2018 draft behind more heralded prospects Baker Mayfield and Sam Darnold. He was considered the riskiest pick in the top seven. While none of the players taken before Allen have flopped, Mayfield and Arnold have wandered in the wilderness before finding success. Saquon Barkley has finally reached superstardom with a second team.

But not one of that septet has had quite the career arc of Allen. In just two years he took them to their first postseason since 1995. The next season he led them to the AFC Championship game where he lost to his future kryptonite, Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. During his Buffalo tenure, he has led the team to a total of six playoff appearances, five consecutive division titles, and five postseason victories. Only a Super Bowl trip has eluded him.

But statistics don’t capture Allen’s dual-threat impact on the NFL. He’s not been alone. In our in 2022 column NFL Run/ Pass Maestros: Can’t Catch This, we wrote about the move to more mobile, improvisational QBs . Players such as Allen, Mahomes and Lamar Jackson of Baltimore, the two-time NFL MVP.  Stick-in-the-pockets like Jared Goff, Kirk Cousins and Matthews Stafford are still viable threats, but it’s clear that to stay one step ahead of defensive coordinators a QB needs the option of rolling out, isolating a defender and making him choose between the run or pass.

Where it was rare for QBs to gain more than a few years running it’s now common to see six or seven QBs in the Top 50 rushers in the NFL. Currently six QBs are in the Top 50 rushers in the league. But where the competition have been race cars, Allen has been a snow plow, going through, not around, defenders.

His feats of strength would impress George Costanza’s father. Week after week he makes single-handed plays that deliver the Bills victory. His weekly highlight reel of mad dashes and bazooka-liken throws had led the Bills to six straight wins before’s Sunday’s loss. Two weeks ago it was a hook-and-ladder TD lateral in the snow from teammate Amari Cooper in which he received credit for a TD pass and a TD reception on the same play. On Sunday in Los Angeles, he added 82 yards rushing to a mighty 342 yards passing.

This has led his fans to cover their eyes as he smashes into opponents or the turf. Bills fans know that their success is untranslatable without Allen, who’s now considered the favourite for MVP with four games left. Career backup Mitch Trubisky sits behind Allen, which is like Pete Buttigieg backing up Elon Musk.

Allen has been the beneficiary of the NFL taking the target off QBs as the 2020s dawned. “In act of mercy or perhaps to juice offence, the NFL took pity on the athletic QBs. ‘It feels like the NFL is in a moment when a defender can get called for roughing the passer or unnecessary roughness simply by breathing hard on the QB,” writes Joe Mahoney of SB Nation. “It’s a reason why the career longevity for running QBs like Lamar Jackson, Kyler Murray, Jalen Hurts, Justin Fields, Josh Allen, and Taysom Hill should be much longer the career lengths of some of the previous elite dual-threat QBs’”.

This was all written before Sunday’s epic personal offence total in a losing effort against the Rams— just the third defeat all season for the Bills. At one point they trailed by 17 before rallying to lose by just two.

Perhaps the only thing holding back Allen from a title now is the game strategy of HC Sean McDermott and the coaches of the Bills— as their fans know only too well since the last-second disaster against KC in the 2022 AFC final when McDermott couldn’t kill off 13 seconds at the end of the game. Allowing the Chiefs to come back for a win and a trip to the Super Bowl.

Sunday he and his OC Joe Brady wasted a time-out at the conclusion of a monumental comeback that prevented the Bills getting a shot at a game-winning field goal. It was not the first time the seventh-year head coach had muffed game-ending strategy this season. Losses to Houston and Baltimore also featured faulty game management. Otherwise the Bills might be undefeated in 2024.

But we won’t know for a month, at least, whether that’s enough of a drag on Superman’s cape to prevent a Super Bowl appearance. For now, Bills fans in Canada and the U.S. can only marvel at what’s happened to the farm boy from rural California who is both irresistible object and unstoppable force in the same body.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Don’t you wish VEEP was still on? So many new plot lines. Have you heard the one about the U.S. president who told the Canadian PM that his country was soon going to be the 51st state in the Union? But that the PM (who’d insulted him for a decade) could still remain on as governor? And the P.M. laughed? And, as a joke, the president wouldn’t let the PM stay at his swanky resort that night?

Or how about the one about the famous actor who staged a coup against a sitting president—in collaboration with Barack Obama? Yeah, and how the guy they were screwing got them back by endorsing his useless VP to replace him? And now the actor is furious with Obama for taking a powder now that the election was a disaster?

Oh wait… there’s also the one about the 45th president who was impeached for asking questions about how Ukraine was laundering hundreds of millions  in natural gas profits using the previous VP’s crack-addicted son? Yeah, and how that VPOTUS, now POTUS, just pardoned his son for the clandestine activities everyone in the Blob claimed were false when 45 was impeached?

And last but not least, have you heard the one about that female VPOTUS who was thrown into the breach of a presidential campaign against a former POTUS? How, in subbing for her boss the president, she burned through a billion dollars while getting the electoral golden sombrero— losing the White House, the Senate and the House? And how the bottomless well of  DEM donors is so pissed at her that they’re talking about never donating again?

Which one would you make into a Veep episode first? Decisions, decisions.

It takes a lot to impress veteran followers of politics in Canada, the U.S. and Russia. One of these Hey Martha stories in a year would be enough to fill a copybook with story ideas. But these four— plus a lot more just holding fire at the moment— all happening simultaneously? It’s an embarrassment of riches. Okay, just an embarrassment.

For the liberal left in Canada and the U.S. Donald Trump’s bare-knuckled diplomacy is to blame for all this. His rude, unyielding attacks on limousine Canadian liberals, the safe-space feminists and the radicals on the Left are to blame for a coarsening of society. It’s why they blamed him for “inciting” the Jan. 6 riots even though he specifically urged his followers to be peaceful.

It’s also why they so casually shrugged off the two assassination attempts on Trump during the campaign. The idea that any of the turmoil (see: summer of 2020 George Floyd riots) they encouraged themselves resulted in societal breakdown is simply preposterous. If they had any doubts the scribes and town criers of their media assured them it was all Trump, all the time. Not them.

But they also knew they’d reached a crisis with the re-nomination of Joe Biden. Increasingly addled and erratic Biden was threatening to blow the election. His polling stunk. So Obama convinced his noted thespian pal George Clooney to publicly call for Biden’’s withdrawal. If he balked they were to cut off the donations (then aimed at a billion). Cooney penned a traitor’s editorial. It worked, as Biden bitterly conceded when pushed out of the job.

But he left a little candy on the pillow in the form of Kamala Harris. Sadly this was a bitter treat. If possible she performed worse than Biden. When the dust settled on the electoral rout, Obama had left town, leaving Clooney as the fall guy in the coup. The friendly media softened the blow of his bad reviews by ignoring the nasty “coup” word. (It was also easier to hide when 60 percent of their viewing audiences disappeared post Nov. 5.)

Biden still wasn’t done with his revenge on Team Obama/ Clooney. For months he’d vowed that his respect for the law was so great he would not rescue his whoring son if he was in danger of jail. No pardon. Then, on his way out the WH door Biden dropped his bomb on those who’d fired him. No pardon become a big pardon. Not for just gun charges, but for anything he’d done dating back to starting work in Ukraine in 2014.

His admirers were left to explain how their fawning compliments to Biden’s judgement were now blowing upon their faces. As DEMs Senate leader Chuck Schumer said when asked about the about-face, “I’ve got nothing for you on that file.” Some tried to praise his fatherly instincts, defending his son. The came stories that his son had blackmailed him over the Thanksgiving Day holiday saying he was working on a book about the family shakedown business.

Which led swiftly to a pardon. And more embarrassing moments for the sycophants of Team Biden. Trump moved on quickly, declaring that he would slap 25 percent tariffs on Canada if Justin Trudeau didn’t abandon his Boy Scout badges and finally put his house in order. One noted CDN businessman suggested Trump look past Trudeau to PM-in-waiting Pierre Poilievere. “He’ll be getting whacked soon,” said Kevin O’Leary.

Which opened the door for Canada’s 25-percent-approval-PM to scuttle quickly to Trump’s Mar A Lago resort in Florida to forestall disaster. After pleasantries were done, Trump then dropped his little jibe about Canada going the U.S. if it was too expensive to solve balance-of-trade issues. For Trump it was a wakeup call to his neighbours.  AI produced images of Trump standing beside a Canadian flag while surveying Mount Assiniboine (or the Matterhorn).

For gormless Canadians who’ve gotten their U.S. news from Rachel Maddow and the CBC for over a generation it was all too much. @jeancharest “If I were President Trump, I’d think twice before invading Canada. The last time the U.S. tried something like that— back in the War of 1812 —it didn’t exactly end well. Canada even burned down the White House.” (Editor’s note: Canada was not a country in 1812. The British burned Washington.)

“We Canadians of all political stripes are very angry at this” tweeted a Toronto writer . B.C.’s minister of state for trade, Rick Glumac, tried comedy. “I guess, I got one message for president-elect Donald Trump – this is Canada, so take off, eh?” More sober commentators pointed out that admitting 40 million Canadian liberals would ensure a permanent DEM rule in the U.S. While Trump’s “light-hearted” suggestion  died back it’s clear Trump knows what he wants and how to get it this time in the WH.

Which reminds us, did you ever hear there one about the president who was considered washed-up?

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.