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Lofton was right. Great players and great teams still resided in the so-called inferior AFC. Denver’s John Elway and Houston’s Warren Moon operated prolific passing attacks, as did Boomer Esiason of the Cincinnati Bengals, who came very close to an upset win over San Francisco in Super Bowl XXIII. And the Miami Dolphins, coached by Don Shula, had put together a simple-yet-proven formula for success: Dan Marino plus a stout defense yielded wins.

But no team in the AFC was better than the Buffalo Bills.

Marv Levy’s November 1986 victory over Pittsburgh—the product of “45 stout hearts and the north wind”—was the first of many. And as much as Levy’s craftiness keyed the Bills’ turnaround, good fortune was also a factor.

There had been nowhere to go but up when Levy took over the Bills in the middle of 1986. Talented, young defenders, Darryl Talley and Bruce Smith, along with rookie offensive linemen Will Wolford and Kent Hull gave the Bills a solid foundation up front. With second-year wide receiver Andre Reed and former all-pro running back from Notre Dame Greg Bell, the Bills did not lack skill players. And the inevitable demise of the United States Football League during the summer of 1986 gave Levy and the Bills what they needed most: a quarterback, a star, and a leader.

As he predicted, Jim Kelly had no regrets over choosing the USFL over the Buffalo Bills in June 1983. A multimillionaire at age twenty-three, Kelly enjoyed every bit of his new celebrity, driving a cherry-red Corvette Stingray to bars, restaurants, and publicity events all across town. He quickly validated his large salary and larger brashness. The expansion Gamblers, coached by Jack Pardee, won the Central Division in the spring of 1984. Kelly was unquestionably the league’s finest passer, throwing for 5,219 yards and forty-four touchdowns during the eighteen-game regular season. He won the league MVP that season and was equally superb in 1985.

Despite the exciting brand of scoring-heavy football, USFL franchises could not draw enough spectators to stay financially sound. In February 1986, Kelly’s Gamblers merged with the New Jersey Generals. Moving to the tristate area meant that the familiar comparisons only continued.

“For a new league, Kelly is the kind of guy you want,” Jerry Argovitz restated. “He’s like Namath—working class, talented, antiestablishment.”

A reputation as a “playboy” furthered the parallels. Much like Namath, who once famously sported shades and a fur coat on the sidelines, Kelly almost always wore sunglasses, except underneath his helmet. And the first official act as a member of his new team was to fly to New York City and interview sixty finalists for the Generals cheerleading squad.

Before he ever threw a pass for owner Donald Trump’s team, the league suspended operations and granted its players the right to negotiate contracts with the NFL for the 1986 season. By August, Kelly and the Bills—who still owned his exclusive draft rights—agreed to terms, thirty-nine months after his selection in the 1983 draft.

Bills fans didn’t care that he previously chose Houston over Buffalo. Nor were they bothered by his less-than-optimistic outlook—“they need more than a quarterback in Buffalo”—for the previously 2-14 team. The day he arrived in town, hordes of Bills fans cheered and chanted his name as his limousine pulled up to the Hilton Hotel for an introductory press conference. Four thousand season tickets were sold the week his signing was announced. Even New York Governor Mario Cuomo phoned during the press conference to welcome him to town.

According to his former head coach Howard Schnellenberger, Kelly had already been a “messiah” to the University of Miami’s program. His impact on the short-lived Houston Gamblers franchise was similar. Buffalo expected nothing less.

“I can remember the very first game, we played the Jets, in 1986, the home opener, and people had been talking about getting twenty thousand, thirty thousand people in the stands, and, shoot, we had eighty thousand. They wasn’t there to look at me,” remembered