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But the fourth time that the Giants ran the play, Bills linebacker Cornelius Bennett was ready. Inside the Buffalo red zone, late in the second period, Hostetler faked a handoff left, rolled right, and fired a pass for Cross. Bennett recognized another bootleg was coming to his side—did not bite on the fake—and lunged at Hostetler. Although he couldn’t get to the quarterback, he sprung into the air and swatted down the pass.

“He kept trying that bootleg against me early, and I told him, ‘Look, you’re not going to get outside against me,’” said Bennett. “I said, ‘Don’t try that to my side. I’m gonna knock that pass down or I’m going to stick you.’”

The Giants waited for a critical moment—third down and four from the Buffalo twelve—to accommodate Bennett’s suggestion.

New York’s offense had already eaten up sixty-three yards and more than eight minutes of game clock on this opening drive of the third period. And unlike the third downs they had faced earlier in the drive, they were now well within Matt Bahr’s range. But forcing a field goal attempt out of the Giants offense—after such a productive and emotionally charged possession—would have sapped some of New York’s high . . . and boosted the Buffalo defense.

As future Hall of Famer Steve Young—a man who would retire with three Super Bowl rings—would later say: “I always had this philosophy that every time you kicked a field goal, you were just that much closer to losing. . . . Field goals to me, especially in the second half, it’s like kissing your sister: it’s not gonna help you too much.”

In the huddle, Hostetler called a bootleg to the left. He faked a handoff to Anderson and rolled away from Cornelius Bennett, right at Bruce Smith. Smith read the bootleg, sprung into the air to knock down the pass, as Bennett had late in the second period. Hostetler spied Howard Cross wide open on the Buffalo eight-yard line. All he had to do was get him the ball: not an easy task with athletic six-foot, four-inch Smith standing in front of him.

The former star shooting guard for Conemaugh Township, Hostetler fed his big man in the low post, softly floating the ball over Smith’s fingertips into Cross’ hands. The tight end lowered his shoulder into a defensive back before being dragged out-of-bounds at the three-yard line.

A dive up the middle pushed the Giants closer to the goal line. On second and goal from the one, Anderson carried the ball off tackle, ripped out of an arm tackle from Kirby Jackson, and chugged into the end zone.

The eighty-seven-yard touchdown march was as historic as it was thrilling. The fourteen plays run and the nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds used each set new Super Bowl records. Bahr’s extra point gave the Giants a 17-12 advantage.

The five-point deficit did not worry Buffalo. They trailed by less than a touchdown with more than twenty minutes of game time remaining. Still, New York’s methodical offense had cost the Bills more than the lead. A thirty-seven-minute-long halftime sandwiched in between two excruciatingly slow Giants’ touchdown drives meant that (aside from a kneel-down to conclude the first half) Buffalo did not run an offensive play in an hour.

Such an unusually long layoff severely hurt Jim Kelly and the offense. Their offense relied on a particular pace and rhythm. Furthermore, part of the

no-huddle’s success was the result of wearing down the opponent: the Giants defense had now been granted an hour to rest and strategize.

“Bill Belichick is a genius, but I’m gonna tell you something. If we had had another quarter, we would have killed them,” Buffalo center Kent Hull said years later. “They still didn’t stop us; we just didn’t have the time. Their offense was as good as their defense. That’s what they were looking to do. They said ‘our offense has got to keep them off the field.’ And they did it.”

Buffalo’s first possession of the second half didn’t go nearly how they planned. Rushes by Thurman Thomas and Kelly