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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