PRO FOOTBALL / BOB OATES : Bills’ Best Might Be on Bench

The Super Bowl XXVII story line comes down to these questions:

1. Will the businesslike young Dallas Cowboys be immune to the first-time pressures of this game?

2. Can the Buffalo Bills find a way to avoid everlasting notoriety as the first team to lose three consecutive Super Bowls?

3. Can the Bills find a way to start their best passer, Frank Reich?

The answers to Nos. 1 and 2 will remain elusive until game day, Jan. 31 at the Rose Bowl.

But a clue to the third came from Buffalo on Monday when Coach Marv Levy said: “We went through all that last week. Our quarterback is Jim Kelly.”

Even so, reports persist that some in the Buffalo organization and some Bills players clearly prefer Reich.

It’s a tricky situation.

When the Bills won their first two playoff games this winter, Reich, who has been with the team since long before its Super Bowl days, threw six touchdown passes with a display of accuracy that Buffalo fans have seldom seen.

Then at Miami on Sunday, Kelly returned as the starter after an injury and threw a touchdown pass--and two interceptions--as the Bills won with their defense and special teams.

In Buffalo, fans fear the Bills can’t beat Dallas with that kind of passing. But how do you remove a king after all these years and after all he’s done for his subjects?

The Bills may be about to go down in flames with their best passer on the bench.

In big-time football, that hasn’t often happened.

Emmitt the great: If the NFC’s best teams couldn’t slow Cowboy running back Emmitt Smith, there would seem to be hardly any chance that Buffalo can.

Smith might be on the verge this month of a unique achievement: The league’s leading ground gainer could have a very big Super Bowl.

And that would be a first.

Over the years in a passing league, teams that run enough to develop the year’s top yardage producer have had trouble advancing in playoff games and have never been in a Super Bowl.

With Smith, the Cowboys are definitely something new, as the 49ers learned Sunday.

Meeting him for the first time this season, they discovered that he is a man of many assets.

As a physical specimen, he has the extremely strong legs of a born athlete who has spent a lifetime toughening up in weight rooms. Smith’s legs are so powerful that he can continue driving, even when hit by several opponents from several sides.

More significantly, Smith has the perfect instincts of a natural ballcarrier.

You can see him coming. You can draw a bead on him. But you can’t tackle him squarely.

In the closest of quarters, he still keeps opponents from delivering the big hit. He is always going where they aren’t.

Finally, he loves to play clutch football. Big games are Smith’s games.

Cowboys ready: One marked difference between the Super Bowl teams this year is that Dallas has been tempered in the league’s stronger conference.

And in the strongest division.

The NFC East is the only division that put three teams in the playoffs this winter.

And as champion of the NFC East, Dallas has played five games in recent months against the two others, the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins.

Buffalo, by contrast, saw a lot of the New York Jets, New England Patriots, Indianapolis Colts and assorted other AFC teams.

Buffalo’s comeback game against the Houston Oilers this month was good experience.

Nothing Dallas does to Buffalo can be as terrifying as the Oilers’ 30-minute, five-touchdown, run-and-shoot assault.

But Houston, although it is home to some of the NFL’s best players, isn’t comparable with Philadelphia as a physically intimidating force.

It is likely that Jimmy Johnson, the coach who in three years took the Cowboys from 1-15 to the Super Bowl, could have done much the same thing as an AFC coach. Even at New England.

But were Johnson in the AFC instead of the NFC, his players probably wouldn’t have matured so rapidly.

If the Cowboys win the Super Bowl, give Philadelphia and Washington assists.

Quote Department:

--Phil Hansen, Buffalo defensive end, on his interception to help beat Dan Marino: “In big games, you’ve got to have big plays.”

--Thurman Thomas, Buffalo running back, on what it will take to win the Super Bowl: “A line that can run-block very, very well (and) pass-block very, very well.”

--Miami linebacker Bryan Cox on the Bills’ chance to beat Dallas: “I don’t think they’ll win, (and) I still don’t like half their guys.”