Fresh Angle: Brooks a Bill Who Has Yet to Be Buffaloed

ATLANTA — They congregate at these things every year like some lost battalion from WWII, veterans of The Big One.

They are the same faces, only older.

They tell the same stories, only sadder.

Jim Kelly’s here, back for a fourth consecutive year.

So’s Thurman Thomas. Show us again where you hid your helmet.

Andre Reed, Bruce Smith, Don Beebe, Darryl Talley, Steve Tasker, Cornelius Bennett. The gang’s all here. Pete Metzelaars, Kent Hull, Kenneth Davis, Keith McKeller, Mark Kelso, Nate Odomes. Four for four in Super Bowl media days, which, by now, has produced a media daze.

What is left to ask these Buffalo Bills, so unchanged after Super Bowl defeat, after Super Bowl defeat, after Super Bowl defeat?

“So, what has this season meant to the city of Buffalo?”

“Sorry, but you asked me that in ’91.”

So many turnovers for this football team--nine of them in Super XXVII--so little turnover on this football team. Compare the depth chart of Buffalo’s first Super Bowl representative to this one. Same quarterback. Same tailback. Same backup tailback. Same go-to wide receiver. Same center. Same right guard. Same right tackle. Same nose tackle. Same right defensive end. Same outside linebackers. Same right cornerback. Same free safety.

If the Bills haven’t entirely killed off the Super Bowl yet, they’ve pretty much beaten Super Bowl week to a bloody pulp.

Desperate for a fresh angle, a writer patrols the floor of the Georgia Dome Tuesday morning, studying the name plates above the podiums stationed along the sideline. Is there a new face in the house? Just one, unscarred, with eyes that haven’t cringed at the sight of Scott Norwood wide right, or Mark Rypien throwing wild in the Metrodome, or Dallas 52, Buffalo 17?

BROOKS the sign says. Bill Brooks, according to the roster sheet that was handed out at the door.

But he’s wearing jersey No. 80. James Lofton’s old number. And he’s lanky, just like Lofton was. From a distance, you’d have to swear it was the one and only, old James, old news, so you prepare to move on.

“I’m not James Lofton,” the man wearing No. 80 assures you with a smile.

“No, I can’t long jump 26 feet. Not even close.”

He’s wearing Lofton’s number, but he insists “Lofton’s numbers speak for themselves. He’s (going) in the Hall of Fame.”

And another thing: “James likes the long ball. Me, I try to do what I can do.”

Bill Brooks is a different kind of Bill. His Super Bowl record is perfect, which is because his Super Bowl slate is clean. He watched last January’s game from the vantage point of his living room in Indianapolis, which gave him a huge advantage over his current teammates.

At halftime, Brooks turned the game off.

Now, Brooks is “like a kid in a candy store” because he’s a Super Bowl rookie. “I’ve got goose bumps. The guys are happy for me, they’ve been congratulating me. For them, this is kind of old hat, but this is a big step for me. This is one of the things you dream about when you come into the NFL.”

A fine line separates dream from nightmare, as the guys can also tell Brooks. But if the Bills are to serve this Sunday as another round of cannon fodder for Dallas, as appears likely, Brooks will swear that it beats where he came from--Indianapolis, home of the perennially rebuilding Colts.

Brooks spent seven years with the Colts, far too long for his own good. He caught enough passes--411--to rank second on the club’s all-time reception list behind Raymond Berry, but his playoff totals are far behind.

Brooks has one career playoff reception, in 1987, in a first-round loss to Cleveland, the last time the Colts reached the postseason.

“I thank God for free agency,” says Brooks, who jumped to Buffalo as soon as the escape hatch was opened.

“It was totally different in Indianapolis. This time last year, I was working out in a gym back home. We never played in January.”

And when they played in September, October, November and December, they usually lost.

“We had some tough years,” Brooks said, “going 3-13, 1-15.” Brooks wasted some of his most productive seasons on those teams. He’d been waiting for his quarterback, Jeff George, to grow into the position--bound to happen any day, right?--and before Brooks knew it, he was 29 and sitting on the bench, backing up Reggie Langhorne.

“I don’t say ‘never ever,’ ” Brooks says. “I don’t like saying those words. But, at the time, I really started to wonder if I’d ever be in a Super Bowl.”

The Bills are back, largely due to Brooks. Filling Lofton’s jersey and slot as No. 3 receiver, Brooks caught 60 balls in the regular season, more than Reed or Beebe. His two touchdown catches against the Raiders bought Buffalo another appearance in the AFC final, and from there, it was a quick stampede over Kansas City and Joe Montana en route to Atlanta.

“This is amazing,” Brooks said as he looked down from his podium as he fielded an hour’s worth of questions, some of them posed in broken English by journalists from Europe, Mexico and central Texas.

One foreign correspondent asked Brooks if the Cowboys were taking this game more seriously because they wore their uniform pants to media day while the Bills were casually attired in blue sweat pants.

Brooks patiently explained that “wearing pants doesn’t mean you’re more relaxed or less relaxed. This is what they told me to wear.”

Another interviewer asked Brooks if he liked horror movies.

“Not particularly,” he replied. “ ‘The Exorcist’ scared me the most. I can’t watch it anymore. Every time it comes on now, I turn it off.”

Brooks no longer has the same option with the Super Bowl, now that he’s a part of the supporting cast. All he can do Sunday is try to work on the ending.