Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [107]
On that day in early January, the K-Gun was born. Four touchdowns and 405 yards passing from Kelly, along with the Thurman Thomas’ playoff-record-tying thirteen catches for 150 yards kept the Bills in stride with Cleveland.
But Matt Bahr’s forty-seven-yard field goal in the fourth quarter gave the Browns a ten-point edge midway through the fourth quarter. Kelly then drove seventy-seven yards in less than three minutes, cutting the Browns’ lead to 34-30. The Bills defense forced a three-and-out to put Kelly and the offense back on the field.
From his own twenty-six, Kelly continued to pick apart the Cleveland defense. A string of completions—including a clutch fourth-down hookup with Don Beebe—had Buffalo inside the Browns’ twenty. With sixteen seconds remaining, Kelly spotted Ronnie Harmon wide open in the left corner of the end zone. And, although he already caught four passes during that final period, the ball bounced off of Harmon’s fingertips. One play later, Kelly’s pass for Thomas was intercepted by Clay Matthews, and the game was over.
In the postgame press conference, Thomas hinted that Harmon’s drop was the result of Kelly’s hesitation—“Ronnie came back to the huddle and told Jim ‘If you looked a little sooner, I could have scored a touchdown’”—then overtly said as much about the season-ending interception.
“I was open for a split second,” he said about the final play. “Jim held the ball too long.”
Both Harmon and Kelly refused to speak to the media after the loss.
Marv Levy may have served in World War II, began his coaching career long before any of his Buffalo Bills players were born, and installed the Wing T offense when the Kansas City Chiefs hired him in 1978, but he did not fear change.
“If you don’t change with the times,” he once said, “the times are gonna change you . . . for another coach.”
Levy and General Manager Bill Polian reconstructed the Bills’ roster during the 1990 off-season. Although Levy believed there were no “troublemakers” on the 1989 roster, Ronnie Harmon was not protected from Plan B free agency. Parting with two team leaders who spent a combined twenty-five years with the Bills was much more shocking. Offensive tackle Joe Devlin was coaxed into retirement, and nose tackle Fred Smerlas was allowed to leave via free agency.
“Joe Devlin and Freddy were the oldest guys in the locker room. And at that time in the league, age was a big factor in whether you were a leader or not. If you were there for a long time, if you were an older guy, you got certain perks and privileges. I think times were changing,” Steve Tasker said.
“To Marv’s credit he released both those guys, even though they both could still play. What that did was force Jim and Bruce—the great players on our team—to be the leaders. They were now the voice of team meetings and players-only meetings. It was Jim and Bruce who spoke; not Fred and Joe. And it really worked well in a group setting because the best players were the ones calling the shots and that’s really the way it had to be.”
In addition to their star quarterback and star defensive end, each of Buffalo’s superstars was charged with a new leadership role upon the start of 1990’s training camp. Levy assembled a nine-man players’ committee (Kelly, Smith, Thurman Thomas, Kent Hull, James Lofton, Pete Metzelaars, Cornelius Bennett, Mark Kelso, and Darryl Talley) to help mitigate any locker room conflicts before they produced more headlines.
Levy didn’t shelter his players, either: “I told the team coming into training camp to be prepared for all those magazine articles about ‘the Bickering Bills,’ that the term had a nice ring to it. I told them they had to overlook that kind of thing and concentrate on football.”
“I think they were a divided team, an immature group that needed to grow up and needed to understand about working together,” said Vic Carucci,