Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [117]
The newly crowned sports icon soaked up the spotlight for months.
“Counting my $15,000 from the Super Bowl, that one kick has been worth $30,000 to me,” O’Brien said in July 1971. “I made more money in two months than a lot of people make in a year. I want to make it now, so I can do the things I want to do later on. Society will get it back. I like playing football because it beats working, you know?”
On the field, the future turned out to be far more productive for O’Brien. Accounting for ninety-five points on field goals and extra points, he helped the reigning world champions reach the AFC Championship Game in 1971. The next season, O’Brien began to crack the lineup as a Colts wide receiver.
During an October Sunday afternoon at Shea Stadium, he caught five passes for ninety-one yards, and kicked two field goals and a pair of extra points. The second extra point came after he nabbed a thirteen-yard touchdown pass that gave Baltimore a 20-17 fourth-quarter lead over the Jets. He finished the 1972 season with eleven receptions, 263 yards, and a pair of touchdowns.
O’Brien retired after the 1973 season and eventually became a successful real estate and construction developer in California. Still, over the years, the image of the rookie kicker bounding through the air would be forever burned into sports history and into the minds of America’s sports fans.
“People don’t ask me how many touchdowns I had in college or how many whatevers in pro,” O’Brien said forty years later. “It’s basically, Super Bowl V and the game-winning kick. That’s defined my whole career.”
“I remember Jim coming in [to the huddle] and saying, ‘Alright boys, we gotta get to the thirty, at least.’ And I remember thinking, ‘God, I hope we get to the twenty-five,’” said Bills left tackle Will Wolford. “I had very little doubt that we weren’t going to go right down the field, because our offense, it hadn’t really been stopped in a while in that game. We had a lot of confidence.”
Equipped with four receivers and the option of Thurman Thomas running a short route into the flats, Jim Kelly surveyed his options on first and ten. Against just three rushers, five Bills linemen surprisingly could not protect him. At the three-yard line, nose tackle Erik Howard almost brought down Kelly, who avoided Howard, found room to run, and by freezing linebacker Carl Banks with a ball-fake, gained eight yards. Pepper Johnson pulled him down from behind, and the clock continued to run. The clock soon stopped for the two-minute warning.
While ABC’s television audience watched the gripping finish to Bud Bowl III—an homage to the Stanford-California “band on the field” play from 1982 featuring animated beer bottles in helmets—which gave Bud Light the win, Kelly, Marv Levy, and Ted Marchibroda contemplated the next play. Despite the long discussion about a second-down strategy, the play produced roughly the same results as their first-down performance. Kelly could not find anyone open, a trio of Giants defenders neared him, and he was forced to vacate the pocket. Erik Howard brought Kelly down, limiting him to one yard.
That brought up third down and less than one at the Buffalo nineteen. The frantic pace of the no-huddle allowed Kelly to try and sneak in a run. Given that the Bills had been zero for seven on third-down conversions—and each of those failed attempts came on passing plays—it was a welcomed change.
Kelly placed the ball in Thomas’ stomach. The all-pro headed for the right side—his blockers had all crashed down that direction—but Pepper Johnson squeezed through a small hole and would have slammed right into him. Thomas’ great instincts and tremendous change-of-direction abilities allowed him to shuffle to his left, where an enormous hole opened up before him.
Tackle Will Wolford’s cut block held up Gary Reasons just enough for Thomas to run by the Giants linebacker. As the clock dipped below one hundred seconds, Thomas was sprinting