Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [40]
Just after 1 p.m. EST, the Bills sprinted out of the tunnel and onto the Rich Stadium turf. The crowd of 80,324 erupted as the starting offense lineup was announced over the public address system. And for all those who felt conflicted about cheering, arguing, and pleading over a trivial sporting event in times of war, the game was not a contest for long.
On his sore knee, Jim Kelly jogged onto the field, through blustering forty-mile-per-hour winds. Running the no-huddle, Kelly breezed into the Los Angeles red zone. In less than two minutes, Buffalo gained fifty-five yards on five plays. The bewildered Raiders defense needed a time-out.
“I really think they weren’t prepared for it,” Thomas said about K-Gun. “We’ve been running it for a long time now, and you would think the (Raiders) coaches would know that’s what got us this far and would prepare for it. But it seemed they didn’t prepare for it until we got down there deep in their territory when they called the timeout.”
The time-out did not cool off Buffalo’s torrid start. Within four plays, a catch-and-run by James Lofton gave the Bills a seven-point advantage.
The Bills appeared incapable of making a mistake. At the start of Lofton’s touchdown play, Kelly dropped the shotgun snap—which was nearly recovered by a Raiders defensive lineman—picked up the ball, whirled around, and rolled to his right, where he spotted an open Lofton at the Raiders’ seven-yard line.
“First I thought I’d just fall on the ball,” Kelly said afterwards, “but then I decided that the line had given me such good protection I’d try to do something. I found James free on a break and tossed him the ball.”
Ahead 7-0, Bills kicker Scott Norwood toed the ball downfield to Raiders return man Jaime Holland. Holland raced upfield, escaped the grasp of a Bills defender, then was clobbered and pinned to the ground by Carlton Bailey at the nineteen-yard line.
“I was going to do whatever it took—sacrifice my body, knocking myself out—to put the extra edge in there for my pops,” said Bailey.
Surprisingly, the Raiders—a run-oriented team—countered with back-to-back passes and on just two plays charged into Buffalo territory. The Bills defense settled in and did not allow another first down on the drive and forced the Raiders to attempt a forty-one-yard field goal.
“This is going to be a great game, Dick,” color analyst Bill Walsh told the audience and his partner, Dick Enberg, during NBC Sports’ television broadcast. “These teams are really playing well, but they’re opening up everything, throwing that ball.”
Walsh may have chiseled Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, and a handful of other raw players into Hall of Famers during his tenure as architect of the 1980s San Francisco 49ers dynasty, but he was dead wrong that afternoon. Once Jaeger’s field goal sailed through the upright, that was the extent of Los Angeles’ scoring.
The K-Gun needed just five plays on the ensuing drive to put another touchdown on the scoreboard. The Bills defense then matched Kelly’s score with one of their own. Linebacker Darryl Talley stepped in front of a
Schroeder pass and charged into the end zone for a twenty-seven-yard touchdown return. Still in the first quarter, Buffalo led 21-3.
“I don’t think they knew what hit ’em from the opening bell. We knew that if we won that game, we’re going to the Super Bowl,” Talley recalled years later. “And I was just somewhere different that day, I guess. Cornelius [Bennett] came up to me on the sideline and he says ‘I’ve seen you play before, but I ain’t never seen you do the things you’re doing today on the field. What’s going on, I ain’t never seen you play like this.’
“‘This is a chance to go to the Super Bowl. Don’t you understand what’s on the line here. . . . I’ve got my one chance to go and I’ve got to do everything I can think of to get there.’”
Talley did do everything: he finished with four tackles, two interceptions, and spent the rest of the afternoon charging up the Bills’ sideline.
“I was on everybody, yelling at everybody, shouting ‘Come on! Let’s go! Let’s