by Adam Lazarus
But while Kelly read his options and prepared to release the ball, left tackle Will Wolford engaged the Giants’ Leonard Marshall, whom he successfully rebuked at the line of scrimmage. On Wolford’s right, guard Jim Ritcher also did his job, stymieing a blitzing Carl Banks. Ritcher so overpowered Banks that he hurled him toward Will Wolford. Banks crashed into Wolford, who stumbled backward and fell onto the left leg of Jim Kelly.
“I just turned around and it seemed like there were people laying everywhere,” Kent Hull remembered. “It was pretty scary.”
Absorbing the blow from his three-hundred-pound tackle caused Kelly to tumble to the turf where he writhed in pain. Carefully, the Bills training staff escorted their three-million-dollar-per-year quarterback to the sidelines. Soon he was loaded onto a utility cart and taken for X-rays.
Injury to a quarterback equipped with the leadership qualities and athletic abilities possessed by Jim Kelly would severely hamstring any team. But Kelly was more than just the team’s passer. In the newly installed—and now thriving—K-Gun offense, he called all the plays. And after nearly four full seasons as the team’s starter, Kelly operated the offense with a few personalized tweaks not in the playbook: specific terminology for audibles, “dummy” calls, and hand signals to his skill players.
“Jim’s like the NBA player who wants the ball at the end of the game,” Marchibroda noted. “He’s our Michael Jordan, our Magic Johnson. And that, first and foremost, is why the no-huddle has been so successful for us.”
Veteran Frank Reich filled Kelly’s place as the K-Gun’s conductor/quarterback. The University of Maryland product had been an efficient backup the year before, winning three starts with Kelly sidelined due to injury. But without the league’s top-rated passer, every Buffalo offensive series during the second and most of the third quarter went fruitless: punts—not points—
concluded each drive.
With the K-Gun now surprisingly silenced, the Bills were vulnerable. And although New York’s offense was not nearly as potent at the Bills, quarterback Phil Simms had produced a pair of early, lengthy scoring drives. Still, after cutting the lead to 14-10 in the second period, the Giants offense also faltered and under familiar circumstances.
Less than three minutes had rolled off the second-quarter game clock when Simms, unable to find an open receiver, tucked the ball under his shoulder and hurried upfield. One of the least mobile quarterbacks in the league, the eleven-year veteran was easily brought down at the line of scrimmage by Bills Leon Seals and Cornelius Bennett.
“That’s when I hurt [my right foot],” he told reporters. “Then it started hurting more and more and at halftime they taped it up.”
The play had occurred on third down so Parcells sent out the punt team. Because the Bills pieced together a short drive to close out the first half, Simms did not miss a snap. At the half, inside the locker room, trainers applied tape to stabilize the foot. On the Giants’ next possession, Simms returned to the huddle, and after five consecutive handoffs, the Giants coaching staff deemed him healthy enough to throw. Simms completed his first attempt since the injury, an off-balanced toss to Dave Meggett that gained nine yards. He landed awkwardly on the slick, rain-soaked AstroTurf and fell to the ground, clutching his leg.
“I was turning to throw to my right. It felt like someone had shot me. I heard it click, or whatever,” Simms said. “When I walked off the field, I thought it was OK. It was numb, but I thought once the numbness wore off, it would be all right. But once the numbness went away, there was a lot of pain.”
As Simms hobbled off the Meadowlands field, Jeff Hostetler jogged past him and into the Giants’ huddle. The thirty-year-old—who told his wife just a few weeks earlier that 1990 would be his last of seven increasingly frustrating NFL seasons—had been given one more opportunity. And it came under less-than-ideal circumstances.
“It was a tough situation to come into and not one of the most favorable ones, especially with the weather. I don’t remember [ever] being as cold as I was before the second half.”
Under Hostetler, the Giants scored three points to cut into Buffalo’s lead. Matching his second-string quarterback counterpart on the following series, Frank Reich pushed the Bills near the Giants’ goal line, and on the first play of the fourth quarter, Scott Norwood’s twenty-nine-yard field goal made the score 17-13.
With an entire quarter remaining, New York would see several more opportunities to make up the small deficit: They failed each time.
Early in the final period, Hostetler drove the Giants to the thirteen-yard line, where a holding penalty, followed by a shotgun snap over the quarterback’s head—“My hand was wet and numb,” center Bart Oates admitted—sabotaged the drive. The next series also looked promising. Hostetler hooked up with Stephen Baker to produce an apparent first down at the Buffalo twenty-two. An offensive pass interference penalty during the play negated the gain. The Giants punted two plays later.
“We were moving the ball,” Hostetler said. “Then we’d get in scoring range and do something stupid.”
With seventy seconds remaining, the defense forced a Buffalo punt, giving New York one final opportunity to take the lead. Hostetler completed three consecutive passes to reach the Bills’ twenty-six-yard line, then spiked the ball, stopping the clock. With no time-outs and a few seconds remaining, the Giants’ options were limited.
“We were running seam patters, and the (Bills) were just sitting back there waiting for them,” Hostetler said. “In that case, it was best to just try to get it into the end zone.”
Second and third down shots toward the goal line came up incomplete and on fourth and ten, Hostetler’s pass to rookie Troy Kyles fell to the ground—final score: Bills 17, Giants 13.
“If you told me before the game,” Parcells told reporters, “that we were going to have the ball 38 minutes, we would have half the penalties the other team had, we would not miss any extra points or field goals, we would run the ball for 157 yards, we would complete over 55 percent of our passes, we would hold them to 65 yards rushing and we would give up one sack for no yards lost, I would say we would win the game.”
Penalties and several miscues—including two dropped interceptions near the Buffalo goal line by Lawrence Taylor—caused woes for Parcells’ team the entire day. Most troublesome, however, was the New York running game’s inability to gain critical yardage when called upon. Rodney Hampton gashed the Bills for 105 yards on twenty-one rushes, but the Giants were left with third and short or fourth and short on nine separate occasions. They could not gain the first down on six of those tries.
“Not making those first downs was a kick in the face, because we’ve been so successful with it in the past,” said Ottis Anderson, who, despite his early touchdown, finished the game with five carries for zero net yards.
“We’ve been pathetic. We haven’t done anything in the last four, five weeks on short-yardage,” offensive coordinator Ron Erhardt said after the loss. “Third down has been a killer. Every time it seems like a different thing, a guy missing a block or a penalty or whatever. We could change our offense and start doing other things, but you like to be able to run from your strength.”
Despite comparable offensive woes (after Kelly’s injury, the offense managed only four first downs), that Saturday was sweet for Buffalo. Victory had preserved the Bills’ one-game edge in the race for both the division title and home-field advantage in the AFC playoffs. The win also improved their record to 3-0 in December, the critical final month of the regular season in which the team had poor records during recent seasons. (The previous three years, Buffalo finished 1-3 in December.)
Also, any panic over Kelly’s injury was slightly muted by the win. The defense’s performance convinced both themselves, and the rest of the National Football League, that the K-Gun comprised only one-half of their attack.
“After Jim was hurt we were determined not to let the game slip away,” Darryl Talley said. “I think that was the best hal
f of defense we played this year. Guys making plays—coming up with big plays at the times we needed them.”
Reich did not have Kelly-like passing stats (eight completions in fifteen attempts for ninety-seven yards), and his teammates acknowledged a significant talent and experience disparity. But his forty-three-yard connection to Don Beebe was the play that set up Norwood’s key fourth-quarter field goal. (Had it not been for Norwood’s three-pointer, the Giants could have attempted a go-ahead field goal during their two possessions near the Bills’ goal line.)
“I don’t think Kelly’s loss will hurt the team,” said James Lofton.
Even the outlook for Kelly was promising. Team doctor Richard Weiss declared the prognosis excellent and expected a return by the postseason.
Phil Simms’ right foot caused much more stress for his team. Giants orthopedic surgeon Dr. Russell Warren said the injury “looks significant” and Simms left East Rutherford that day on crutches. By Tuesday, doctors put him in a cast for four weeks, and the team placed him on injured reserve, meaning he was ineligible until the NFC Championship Game.
Giants coaches and players expressed sadness over losing their leader, the man who had started all but five of the team’s previous ninety games. But confidence in Simms’ replacement, Jeff Hostetler, circulated throughout the locker room.
“A lot of people outside of our locker room didn’t realize that everyone was rooting for Jeff Hostetler,” Carl Banks said years later. “He stood in special teams huddles; he ran scout team in practice. The guy did everything. He was everyman’s man.”
Head coach Bill Parcells also publicly endorsed his de-facto starter.
“Anytime you lose your starting quarterback, it’s a big loss. But it’s part of the game, and you can’t dwell on it. I think Jeff can fill in very ably and I think he will.”
Hostetler naturally remained skeptical. He had heard all that before.
[1]The Bills were not the only team in the mid-1980s that ran a no-huddle offense. The Cincinnati Bengals operated without a huddle just a year before, in 1988. The Bills attack was much different. In their offense, minimizing time in between plays was just as important as not using a huddle. As James Lofton said in 2010, “No one had ever run it at that fast of a pace. It was our objective to try and run a play every 22–24 seconds. . . . I don’t think that Jim [Kelly] ever got enough credit for being the field general that he was. I look at what Peyton Manning is doing now—Jim Kelly was doing that in 1990.”
[2]Marchibroda had flirted with the no-huddle as a standard offensive strategy two years before he joined the Bills staff. After Philadelphia Eagles head coach Marion Campbell was fired prior to the last week of the 1985 season, Marchibroda—the team’s offensive coordinator—installed a no-huddle offense for the season finale against Minnesota. According to Mark Kelso, who was a member of that 1985 Philadelphia team, “That’s where [the Bills no-huddle offense] originated.” The Eagles won 37-35, scoring more points that day than the franchise had in any game since 1981.
3
Scuds, Patriot Missiles, and the K-Gun
For nearly a quarter of a century, the city of Buffalo had waited for this moment: a chance to see its beloved Bills compete, at home, for a championship. Twenty-four years, two weeks, and six days had passed since the Bills faced Kansas City for the American Football League championship, a title Buffalo claimed each of the previous two seasons. And, as if to set a trend that would last for the rest of the century, the Bills lost that title game when the Chiefs marched into War Memorial Stadium, lovingly referred to as “the “Rock Pile,” and massacred Buffalo 31-7. Four turnovers combined with a porous run defense did in Joe Collier’s squad. And two weeks later, the Chiefs, not the Buffalo Bills, appeared in the first-ever AFL-NFL title showdown, the game soon to be dubbed the Super Bowl.
Over the next three decades, Bills fans—wrapped up so passionately in their team’s fortunes each frigid Buffalo winter—would not be deprived of thrills. Throughout the 1970s, Orenthal James “O. J.” Simpson donned the Buffalo colors and dazzled pro football fans with his electric moves and lightning fast feet. And in the early 1980s, ultra-successful head coach Chuck Knox—previously a miracle worker with the Los Angeles Rams—teased Buffalo with back-to-back playoff appearances, only to make little noise in the postseason.
Through all those years, however, the Bills never earned a trip to the Super Bowl, the game they had just missed reaching on New Year’s Day 1967.
“We haven’t been that close since,” Gary Pufpaff, a Buffalo-area teacher, football coach, and wistful Bills fan said in January 1991. “There has been a buildup from that day, and the Super Bowl is the piece de resistance.”
Within two years of hiring Marv Levy, Buffalo was competing for that title. They lost the 1988 AFC Championship Game, on the road against the Cincinnati Bengals, and suffered a frustrating wild-card loss the following year. But Buffalo’s Januaries were now filled with more than just snow. Talk of the Bills playing in a Super Bowl swirled through the air in western New York. And by Christmas 1990, the Bills and their fans did more than simply dream of playing in the Super Bowl. They expected it.
The Bills’ 17-13 regular-season victory over the Giants in December 1990 had been merely a prelude to the most critical game of the season: a rematch against Miami with the division title awarded to the winner. A third consecutive AFC East crown was not nearly as important to the Bills as the other prize on the line in the season’s second game against the Dolphins. Home-field advantage came with the conference’s top seed in the playoffs.
Chilly temperatures and nearby Lake Erie–effect winds and snow made Rich Stadium intimidating to any opponent who came to Buffalo in winter. So did the Bills’ record of twenty-two wins in the previous twenty-four home games.
Defeating Miami would secure the added bonus of a first-round playoff bye. An MRI of Jim Kelly’s ailing left leg revealed a partial tear to both the medial collateral ligament and knee cartilage. Doctors deemed him able to “practice in three weeks and play in four.” The bye in the opening round meant that Kelly would be able to return in time for the start to Buffalo’s postseason. Until then, Frank Reich quarterbacked the team.
Before a record crowd (80,235) at Rich Stadium, the Bills squashed Miami 24-14, as Reich played “a near-perfect game,” according to Dolphins head coach Don Shula. He completed fifteen of twenty-one attempts and tossed a pair of touchdowns. But Thurman Thomas’ performance was the main reason why Bills fans triumphantly stormed the field and tore down the goalposts. The recently named pro-bowl starter ran for 154 yards on thirty attempts. And despite muscle spasms in his lower back in the fourth quarter, he carried the ball on seven consecutive plays, the last one a thirteen-yard touchdown that pushed the Buffalo lead to 24-7.
“[He] ran as hard as I’ve ever seen him run,” center Kent Hull said. “When that happens, I think the offensive line plays a little harder. There’s a guy who weighs 190 pounds taking on the big guys. When we see that we’ve got to go get after somebody.”
A meaningless regular-season finale against Washington coupled with their bye during the opening wild-card round gave the Bills three weeks to rest and prepare for whoever their opponent would be in the second round of the playoffs. Coincidentally, that team turned out to be the Miami Dolphins.
“If we get complacent and think we’re going to beat them because we beat them before, or they’re not going to want to play because of the cold weather, we won’t win,” guard Jim Ritcher said. “It’s as simple as that. Miami’s too good a team to be complacent about. The fact we beat them in the last game is going to give them a lot of incentive to play harder.”
The season’s third showdown went much like the second: a ten-point victory by Buffalo during a cold winter day at Rich Stadium. Apart from a hefty brace on his left knee, Jim Kelly showed no signs of the recent injury. Kelly completed a twenty-yarder to Thomas on the game’s opening snap, ran two more quick plays, then hit Andre Reed for a fo
rty-yard touchdown. Less than two minutes into the game, Buffalo led 7-0.
In freezing temperatures, the offense was practically flawless, racking up nearly five hundred total yards and eight scores (five touchdowns, three field goals). Miami’s offense was equally stellar, however, recording twenty-four first downs (the same number as the Bills) and only sixty-three total yards fewer than Kelly, Thomas, and the K-Gun.
Early in the final period, Marino’s passing cut the Buffalo lead to 30-27. Thomas then scored his second rushing touchdown to create a ten-point cushion. On the ensuing kickoff, Miami fumbled the football, which kicker Scott Norwood recovered. Thirty-eight seconds later, Kelly hit Reed for a touchdown, effectively sealing the win.
“We simply came out and executed,” Thomas said. “We felt as a team that a lot of people thought we were going to come out flat. We wanted to show everyone that even with the week layoff, we were still going to come out and do the things we’ve been doing all season.”
This time, following the crucial win over Miami, Bills fans didn’t even think about storming the field. To avoid another incident, the Bills’ front office chose not to sell beer and brought in hundreds of police officers and security guards. Upon the game’s end, mounted officers and a pack of twenty-four Doberman pinschers, rottweilers, and German shepherds surrounded the playing surface. There was good reason to keep fans from toppling the goalposts: eight days later, Rich Stadium would be the site of the AFC Championship Game.
“Nobody was going to storm the field today,” said Orchard Park resident Tom Wolff. “But if we win next week and the Bills are going to their first Super Bowl ever . . . that could be different.”
Bills fans, like Town of Tonawanda resident Doug Pagano, were rightfully ecstatic following their team’s triumph: “I’ve been watching the Bills since I was a kid and for me, this year’s team is burying a lot of bad ghosts from losing teams in the past.”
