ARLINGTON, Va. – The NFL trade deadline is today – just enough time for the Buffalo Bills to make a Halloween deal for Frankenstein’s monster. He can play middle stein-backer.
The creature is already suited up in a Bills uniform on my street in Northern Virginia. He stands menacingly on the front lawn of a neighbor who grew up in Williamsville. Don Cole goes all out for Halloween every year, with two dozen bigger-than-life-size – make that death-size – decorations.
Ghouls. Dragons. Grim Reapers. An animatronic gorilla clangs cymbals, and a talking skeleton rides horseback.
A "handmade toy and the century-old photos – dollhouse and White House – are poignant reminders of my mother in childhood," Brady writes.
This year, bless him, Cole added something new to his monstrous menagerie: Frankenstein’s creature. Cole had never before advertised his Bills’ allegiance on his front lawn, but figured it was about time.
“Obviously the decorations happen every year, and this year I was researching online and I saw one of those,” Cole says of the green-skinned monster in a Bills uniform. “I just thought it looked really good. I had to have it.”
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He ordered his Frankie from Fanatics.com but doesn’t remember how much he paid. (The site lists it at $199.99, but it can be had for $149.99 with a coupon code.)
“Obviously, Buffalo never leaves you,” Cole says.
He is a graduate of Williamsville South who earned a degree in accounting at the University at Buffalo and then got his MBA there, too. He worked in Buffalo for Deloitte & Touche for several years, then earned a law degree at the University of Virginia. That’s what brought him eventually to Arlington, home to Cole and his wife, Christy, and their three children.
Ryan, 19, is a sophomore majoring in journalism at Northwestern University. Andrew, 15, is a sophomore in high school. Caroline, 11, is in sixth grade.
Andrew, like his father, is a fanatic Bills fan. He’s got Josh Allen and Matt Milano jerseys. When he was younger he liked to switch from one to the other as the Bills went from offense to defense.
He plays football at Yorktown High School for the Patriots, whose helmet logo is the one that the Boston/New England Patriots used from 1960 through 1992 – a minuteman in a tricornered hat hiking a football.
“Yeah, ironic, isn’t it?” Cole says.
Yorktown football does have a link to the Bills, though: Coach Bruce Hanson was recruited to play at William & Mary in the 1960s by none other than Marv Levy.
Cole’s Bills fandom begins with the Chuck Knox-led teams of the late 1970s and early ’80s – “I wasn’t alive for their (AFL) championship teams of the 1960s,” he points out – and he happily attended the 51-3 AFC title win against the Oakland Raiders, which got the Bills to their first Super Bowl, following the 1990 season.
Last season Cole took his boys to the Bills’ 32-29 win against the Miami Dolphins at Highmark Stadium a week before Christmas. Snow began falling in the fourth quarter. He can remember some Halloweens in his youth when he had to wear snow boots with his costume; that’s never a hazard for his kids in Virginia.
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“This summer I took my daughter to Pittsburgh to see Taylor Swift,” he says. “I was wearing my Bills gear and I got a dozen ‘Go Bills’ in enemy territory.”
Cole and some of his pals from Buffalo share a constant stream of group texts during Bills and Sabres games. He is clearly a big fan of Buffalo sports teams. But what about “Frankenstein,” Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel about a mad scientist who creates a creature from corpses he pieces together?
“Not really,” Cole says. “But if we can piece Matt Milano back together, maybe we can get him back out there.”
The novel tells us that the monster is 8 feet tall. Just imagine trying to block that guy.
OK, we know what you’re thinking: Frankenstein’s monster is too lumbering to play football. But that’s only the way Boris Karloff played him in those 1930s horror flicks. Peter Boyle played him as a nimble song-and-dance man in 1974’s “Young Frankenstein,” tripping the light fantastic to the tune of “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”
So make that trade today, Bills. Frankenstein’s monster has got to be worth a late-round draft choice or two, especially on Halloween.
Can’t you just see Frankie at middle stein-backer?
Puttin’ on the blitz.