Bills Nearly Working for Peanuts

Dec. 8, 1991, a date that will live in-- nahhh --was a day of more concern to the American Football Conference than to America, a day more hysterical than historical. It was a day the Raiders would like to have back. It was a day they will do their best to forget.

“No use crying over spilt milk, and this definitely is milk spilled,” Raider defensive end Greg Townsend said after Sunday’s 30-27 overtime giveaway to the Buffalo Bills at the Coliseum. “I’m just going to wipe it up and get me another glass.”

This one was a mess, all right.

It was also about as much fun as football players should be allowed to have, unless your side is on the losing end. There must have been a half-dozen times Sunday when the Raiders had the Bills in the bag, and at least a half-dozen other occasions when half the population of Upstate New York wouldn’t have minded seeing somebody kick kicker Scott Norwood right in the uprights.

Here he was, a Buffalo Bill in the Wild West, unable to hit a thing. Norwood’s lucky nobody sent him to Boot Hill.

Somehow, however, the wild Bill finally got one across the crossbar. Nine field goals in a row Norwood had made going into this game, but Sunday he looked like Charlie Brown trying to kick one off a hold by Lucy.

“It was a strange game,” Buffalo Coach Marv Levy said.

Strange?

“Yeah. It was a little different,” Levy said.

There have been days more infamous in the backgrounds of both of these teams--two of them in January alone.

On one of these occasions, the Bills qualified for their first Super Bowl by giving the Raiders a beating neither side will ever forget, 51-3. On a Sunday shortly thereafter, the Bills lost that Super Bowl because their kicker missed the kick of a lifetime.

This game was every bit as wacky. Had it been a Super Bowl, people would be talking about it for years.

One thing is sure after Sunday. Nobody will ever refer to Scott Norwood as Mr. Automatic.

The pity is, the Raiders were so good for so long. For quite a while, Buffalo’s wonderful offense had trouble even getting a second first down. Jim Kelly was quiet, Thurman Thomas was quieter and two sticky-fingered receivers, James Lofton and Andre Reed, got their fingers on very few footballs.

Everything was going the Raiders’ way. They rammed through the middle of the Buffalo defense as though they were playing Indianapolis, and there were moments when it appeared the final score might once again turn out to be 51 to something.

At least until the fourth quarter, when the Raiders attempted to run down the clock and merely succeeded in running into themselves.

“We didn’t kill ‘em when we had the chance,” defensive back Eddie Anderson said.

No, they futzed around, got a little complacent, took a little too much for granted, then had to pull out all the stops again toward the end of the game, which is when quarterback Jay Schroeder got careless.

“We had the game won,” wide receiver Tim Brown said. “All we had to do was make some first downs. But we couldn’t even do that. We felt like we were killing them and suddenly we got a little conservative. I think we felt like we could run the ball down their throats all day. Well, we couldn’t. We got stuck in a rut and couldn’t get ourselves out of it.”

“I wish that I could say we did a hell of a job for four quarters and that’s all that matters, but that’s a bunch of crap,” tackle Bob Golic said. It was theirs, it was beautiful and then it was gone.

Said Townsend: “It was like losing a loved one.”

Anybody looking for some sort of advance angle or peg for this game understandably turned back the clock to January’s bad day at Buffalo, when the Raiders lost the opportunity of a lifetime a week after having lost the player of a lifetime, Bo Jackson.

Whether or not there legitimately exists any bad blood between the Raiders and Bills remains unclear, but we did note that there were more blows exchanged Sunday than there were in several recent heavyweight fights.

Aside from such activity, the Raiders were banging away furiously, particularly a couple of newer Raiders. Running back Nick Bell plowed up turf like a tractor, and defensive end Nolan Harrison lowered enough booms to make tolerable the absence of Howie Long.

In the end, though, you will lose if you give anybody--even Scott Norwood--enough chances, which is exactly what the Raiders did.

They could kick themselves.