COMMENTARY : Maybe the Bills Really Belong in That January Game

The Jets aren’t good enough to make a yard when they need it against the Indianapolis Colts.

The Colts handed them the ball on five turnovers last Sunday and the Jets still couldn’t win. At the very end, with the game lost, people like Donald Evans and Ronnie Lott decided to get tough with the referees.

They should have tried that with the Colts. Marshall Faulk ran through Lott and the Jets for a big fourth-quarter touchdown as if the Jets were traffic cones. It was a predictable and embarrassing performance, against a team the Jets like to think is out of their weight class. You wonder what kind of chance they have today when once again asked to step up in class against the Buffalo Bills.

Here is where we are: The Jets try to push officials around. The Bills push Joe Montana around.

The Jets surprised the Bills in the first game of the season. The Jets and Bills entered last Sunday’s games with the same 4-3 record. The Jets went against the Colts and came out losers. The Bills beat Montana, 44-10. Bruce Smith looked like the best player in the league. Jim Kelly threw the ball around for four touchdowns, so the Bills only needed 77 rushing yards and one touchdown from Thurman Thomas. The Bills ruined the Chiefs the same way they did in the AFC Championship Game last January.

On the last Sunday of October, whatever the records of all the other teams, the Bills looked like the class of the sport. I have been saying all year the Bills are finally ready to win the Super Bowl. If they do, they will make January of 1995 feel for their fans the way October of 1955 felt for the fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers. It will be one of the great sports stories of them all.

“We’ve been cursed the way the New York Rangers were cursed,” Thurman Thomas was saying on Tuesday. “But we’re going to throw off our curse the way the Rangers finally did.”

I was one of the people who wanted the Bills to go away because they killed too many Super Bowls. That is over. Thomas finally turned me around on the character of a remarkable team. “Nobody has ever stayed in there like this,” Thomas said one day last summer. “You can’t keep rooting against that.” And he was right. The glory of the Bills is that they are still here.

“Nothing against the Jets, because they beat us once already and they always play us tough,” Thomas said. “But if we play with the same intensity as we did against the Chiefs, we’ll win. When this ballclub plays like that, nobody can beat us. We’re still the Bills.

“In the locker room before (last Sunday’s) game, every single player on this team--even the ones not playing--was fired up. I haven’t seen the room like that in a long time. If it had been like that all season, we’d be 8-0.”

I had lunch with Thomas before the Bills’ first exhibition game in September, at a place called the Nickelodeon Cafe, not far from his home in Dupuy, N.Y. Thomas was full of big talk that day about going back to the Super Bowl. But he also spoke wearily of all the preseason games ahead, and then 16 regular-season games, then the playoffs after that. The last Sunday in January seemed like some distant point on the football map, especially for the Bills, who were supposed to be through after losing four Super Bowls in a row.

“But now I feel like we’ve got the old feeling back,” Thomas said. “After Sunday’s game, I felt like I did the first year we went to the Super Bowl. And I wasn’t the only one. I looked around and everybody was excited, everybody was having fun. We must have had 50 players at Jim Kelly’s house Sunday night, watching the Sunday night game between the Cardinals and the Steelers, but mostly going over our game with the Chiefs, play by play. Kelly kept saying, ‘We’re on a roll now, we’re on a roll, we got to play like this every Sunday.’ We all know that if we do, we’re going back to the big game.”

They have lost some players, the way everybody else in the league has. They are thinner, and older, and watching the clock. “I saw some graphic the other night where we’re one of the oldest teams in the league,” Thomas said. “Fourth-oldest, fifth-oldest, something like that. I know we’re always saying that this might be our last chance. But maybe this is our last chance.” There was the shocking loss to the Jets on the first Sunday, Thomas only gaining 5 yards on seven carries. There was a loss to the Bears when Thomas was hurt. A couple of weeks ago, the Bills lost to the Colts at home and it was as if they didn’t even show up.

So there was a chance, if the Bills had lost to the Chiefs, that the record would be 4-4 halfway through the season. If ever the Bills were going to declare themselves ready to make another run at the big game, this was the time. Bills vs. Chiefs ended up 44-10 and must have felt like 84-10 to the Chiefs. Bruce Smith made Montana look like an old man. Kelly did all he wanted against the pass defense of a Chiefs team that also fancies itself a Super Bowl contender. It was never a game after the first period.

This came on a Sunday when the Jets could not make a yard against the Colts and then whined about the spot of the ball afterward.

After the Bills-Chiefs game, the Bills players said a team prayer and then Marv Levy made a short statement.

“Great game,” Levy said to his players. “Now let’s kick the----out of the Jets next week,” and walked out of the room. A little while later, Thomas was in the interview room and got tired of answering questions about where the Bills’ offense had been before Sunday. So he started telling reporters to shut up before he stormed away from the podium. Clearly, the Bills are moving toward January.

The Chargers still have a better record. The Dolphins have a better record. Maybe this will be one of the rare seasons when the AFC Championship Game is not played at Rich Stadium. And with all that, go tell Joe Montana the Bills are not the best team in the AFC, or anywhere.

“Don’t get me wrong. We’re not there yet,” Thomas said. “I’m going to put us right where our record should put us, behind the Chargers and the Dolphins. What we need to do now is play four or five weeks in a row the way we played last week. If we do that, then you’re looking at the best of the conference again.” Thomas paused and then said something the Bills say a lot: “Deal with it, America.”

Everybody outside western New York State has been against them. I ran with that crowd for a while. The Bills never care and never quit. They come to Giants Stadium Sunday. The place finally sees a real team. The Jets and their fans should treat this like Super Sunday. A game against the Bills is as close to the Super Bowl as they ever get.

(c) 1994, Newsday Inc. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate