The Buffalo Bills, fresh off their impressive win over the Seahawks last Sunday, are trying to take another NFC West team with a hyper-mobile quarterback down this Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals and Kyler Murray. It’s a severe challenge, though the Bills’ brilliant defensive game plan against Seattle — multiple blitzes and coverages were the order of the day — could easily be superimposed against Arizona.
Bills defensive lineman Ed Oliver doesn’t need to be reminded of how great Murray can be. The team’s first-round pick in 2019, who grew up in Texas and went to Houston, had to face Murray back in high school when Oliver attended Westfield and Murray went to Allen.
Oliver was asked about that past matchup in the week leading up to this game, and as Jason Wolf of the Buffalo News wrote,
Oliver “vehemently” declined to talk this week about Westfield’s 48-13 loss to Allen in a battle of unbeatens on Dec. 7, 2013, in icy Round Rock, telling a team spokesperson “we got embarrassed” and that he didn’t “want to relive” the last time he played against Kyler Murray.
Oliver’s mom, Dana Baker, had no trouble talking about it when Wolf reached her via phone.
“Yeah, I can imagine he doesn’t,” Baker said about her son’s reluctance. “’Cause they got WHOOPED! Baaaaaaaad. Real bad.”
Ouch.
“We had big dreams,” Oliver’s brother Marcus, who played with Ed in both high school and college recalled. “We wanted to make it to state and we knew the road that it took to get there, and we were willing to fight every single week to prove that we were the best in the state. Our car rides to the school, just talking about it every day, just made it more fulfilling that you have your brother next to you and you know this is the only year that you have a chance to do it.
“And then you meet the guy who holds every record in Texas, basically.”
Murray never lost a game at Allen — he was 42-0 — and also racked up three state championships, two Mr. Texas Football awards, and the 2014 Gatorade Football Player of the Year. Westfield was a worthy opponent, but Allen had 18 Division I players out of 22 starters, and sent eight players to the NFL.
Even right after the loss, Mama Baker let her sons have it.
“Ice runs in my veins, and I was like, ‘Sooooo, what was the point of us even coming here, if y’all wasn’t going to try?’’ Baker said. “I remember Marcus being really upset because that was his last game. But Ed was kind of like, ‘Mom!’
“He wasn’t as upset as his brother. He just kind of looked at me like, ‘Mean old lady.’”
Perhaps Oliver will get his revenge on Sunday, and perhaps his mom will let him know that he did, if that’s the case.