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Even the outlook for Kelly was promising. Team doctor Richard Weiss declared the prognosis excellent and expected a return by the postseason.

Phil Simms’ right foot caused much more stress for his team. Giants orthopedic surgeon Dr. Russell Warren said the injury “looks significant” and Simms left East Rutherford that day on crutches. By Tuesday, doctors put him in a cast for four weeks, and the team placed him on injured reserve, meaning he was ineligible until the NFC Championship Game.

Giants coaches and players expressed sadness over losing their leader, the man who had started all but five of the team’s previous ninety games. But confidence in Simms’ replacement, Jeff Hostetler, circulated throughout the locker room.

“A lot of people outside of our locker room didn’t realize that everyone was rooting for Jeff Hostetler,” Carl Banks said years later. “He stood in special teams huddles; he ran scout team in practice. The guy did everything. He was everyman’s man.”

Head coach Bill Parcells also publicly endorsed his de-facto starter.

“Anytime you lose your starting quarterback, it’s a big loss. But it’s part of the game, and you can’t dwell on it. I think Jeff can fill in very ably and I think he will.”

Hostetler naturally remained skeptical. He had heard all that before.

[1]The Bills were not the only team in the mid-1980s that ran a no-huddle offense. The Cincinnati Bengals operated without a huddle just a year before, in 1988. The Bills attack was much different. In their offense, minimizing time in between plays was just as important as not using a huddle. As James Lofton said in 2010, “No one had ever run it at that fast of a pace. It was our objective to try and run a play every 22–24 seconds. . . . I don’t think that Jim [Kelly] ever got enough credit for being the field general that he was. I look at what Peyton Manning is doing now—Jim Kelly was doing that in 1990.”

[2]Marchibroda had flirted with the no-huddle as a standard offensive strategy two years before he joined the Bills staff. After Philadelphia Eagles head coach Marion Campbell was fired prior to the last week of the 1985 season, Marchibroda—the team’s offensive coordinator—installed a no-huddle offense for the season finale against Minnesota. According to Mark Kelso, who was a member of that 1985 Philadelphia team, “That’s where [the Bills no-huddle offense] originated.” The Eagles won 37-35, scoring more points that day than the franchise had in any game since 1981.

3

Scuds, Patriot Missiles, and the K-Gun

For nearly a quarter of a century, the city of Buffalo had waited for this moment: a chance to see its beloved Bills compete, at home, for a championship. Twenty-four years, two weeks, and six days had passed since the Bills faced Kansas City for the American Football League championship, a title Buffalo claimed each of the previous two seasons. And, as if to set a trend that would last for the rest of the century, the Bills lost that title game when the Chiefs marched into War Memorial Stadium, lovingly referred to as “the “Rock Pile,” and massacred Buffalo 31-7. Four turnovers combined with a porous run defense did in Joe Collier’s squad. And two weeks later, the Chiefs, not the Buffalo Bills, appeared in the first-ever AFL-NFL title showdown, the game soon to be dubbed the Super Bowl.

Over the next three decades, Bills fans—wrapped up so passionately in their team’s fortunes each frigid Buffalo winter—would not be deprived of thrills. Throughout the 1970s, Orenthal James “O. J.” Simpson donned the Buffalo colors and dazzled pro football fans with his electric moves and lightning fast feet. And in the early 1980s, ultra-successful head coach Chuck Knox—previously a miracle worker with the Los Angeles Rams—teased Buffalo with back-to-back playoff appearances, only to make little noise in the postseason.

Through all those years, however, the Bills never earned a trip to the Super Bowl, the game they had just missed reaching on New Year’s Day 1967.

“We haven’t been that close since,” Gary Pufpaff, a Buffalo-area teacher,