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Stanford’s James Lofton and Northwestern’s Steve Tasker were the two Bills players appointed to translate specific portions of Levy’s speeches.

“That kinda came out during Super Bowl week about how cool it was the way Marv ran his team meetings, listening to a great speaker speak rather than just a football coach laying out the day’s events. We used to keep a list,” Tasker said. “We used to keep a list. . . . Marv would throw these words out there and guys would look sideways and you write it down. I think one of them was ‘inculcate.’ There was maybe five of them on my list.

“It was a real treat to listen to him speak. The guy is a great speaker. He’s very sharp, very well organized, and it was fun to sit there every morning and listen to him give us about five or ten minutes of the day in wisdom and put us all in perspective mentally.”

On the night before the AFC Championship Game (and again throughout Super Bowl week), Levy told his team about the British Eighth Army and the war cry—“One More River to Cross”—they sang while marching into World War II battles. Levy then sang it for his players.

“He’s a better coach than he is a singer,” long-snapper Adam Lingner said.

Although that anecdote gave Buffalo an idea to rally around during the postseason, Levy’s most brilliant piece of coaching that season did not come in the form of inspirational speeches. Even implementing the no-huddle offense approach full-time—an extremely unorthodox yet wonderfully prosperous change—was not the genius move that put the Bills in position to win the franchise’s first world championship. There was no such masterstroke. But without the acumen and adaptability that Marv Levy displayed between the 1989 and 1990 NFL seasons, Buffalo would not have been in Tampa Stadium competing for the Super Bowl XXV title.

In early January 1990, it became clear to everyone who followed the National Football League that the Buffalo Bills needed change—especially owner Ralph Wilson, who phoned Levy and asked him to board a plane for Detroit.

“I wondered if, perhaps, he was so miffed that he might speak those words so many of us in my line of work hear with such demoralizing frequency at that time of year, ‘Coach, you’re fired.’”

After the 12-4 Cinderella year in 1988 that saw the Bills reach their first-ever AFC Championship Game, the Bills expected more the following September. The season opened with a 27-24 road victory over the hated Miami Dolphins. On the final play of the game, Kelly—operating in the no-huddle—capped the Bills eleven-point fourth-quarter comeback, by scoring a two-yard rushing touchdown.

“I know exactly how good Jim Kelly is,” the quarterback said about himself, after leading the Bills to a pair of long scoring drives in the game’s final four minutes. “I know I’m up there with the elite. I’m not bragging. I just know how good I am.”

But they were beaten 28-14 the following week against Denver in the Bills’ first home Monday night game in five years. During the nationally televised game, cameras caught Jim Kelly chastising a wide receiver on the sidelines, and an angry exchange between Cornelius Bennett and Bruce Smith only ended when an assistant coach broke it up.

Alone, those minor tiffs among players would not have made headlines. Every team—good or bad—goes through those squabbles; they usually are fortunate enough for them not to occur on national television. It was an incident that occurred off the field, and away from the “heat of battle,” that earned the team its undesirable nickname, the “Bickering Bills.”

“The ‘Bickering Bills,’ that came about because everybody in that locker room is so competitive. If we were playing tiddlywinks, everybody would be up on the floor,” Darryl Talley said. “We were holding each other accountable for everything we did. And if we didn’t hold each other accountable and fight with each other because we were so competitive and wanting to win, then we wouldn’t have been the resilient team