Bills IV: It’s Finale, if We’re Lucky

ATLANTA â€”  The Buffalo Bills lost the Super Bowl here Sunday.

And a pie is round, water’s wet, roses are red, the sky is blue and what else is new?

Dog bites man. Don’t hold the presses. Put it on Page 12. The underdogs lost. They usually do.

They had a great first half. So did the German Army. So did Robert E. Lee. So did King George, Napoleon.

Back up the truck. Buffalo was “b-a-a-a-ck!� as they liked to say. Deal with it America. Well, deal with it Buffalo.

The guys in the cowboy hats and the boots beat the guys in the hard hats and the blue collars.

Buffalo’s Steve Tasker said they were “looking forward to next year.� Wait just a darn minute, guys. Give us a break.

They sandwiched the game between exploding fireworks, dancing chorus lines, high-kicking cheerleaders, rap musicians, Roman candles. Busby Berkeley would have loved it. You hated to interrupt it with something as mundane as a football game. The game had a good chance to be a big anticlimax. Super Bowls often are.

It wasn’t. It was a very exciting. For 45 minutes. After that, order was restored.

It will come as no surprise that Buffalo was undone by a turnover. The Bills are like a sailor on leave with three weeks’ pay in a waterfront dance hall. Sooner or later, they find a way to self-destruct.

They hit the button for it when the second half had scarcely begun Sunday. Pretty soon, here they were lying in a ditch again with their hair singed, clothes torn, nose bleeding and teeth loose again.

Here was their Waterloo: they were leading a Super Bowl game at the half, 13-6.

No one was really fooled. It was like watching Little Red Riding Hood on her way to Grandma’s. You couldn’t bear to look.

Sure enough, it happened. On the third play of the second half, Buffalo’s Thurman Thomas crashed into Dallas’ Leon Lett. The ball popped loose. James Washington picked it up.

Washington, in a sense, crossed his Delaware, too. He kept letting would-be tacklers fly by him as he got in the end zone for the tying touchdown.

In a sense, that was the old ball game. Buffalo never recovered.

Dallas was too fast, too tough, too lucky.

For a while, it looked as if the Cowboys were finally going to be undone by a foine broth of an Irish lad and a venerable tactic.

The “shotgun� is an offensive scheme that was introduced in the ‘60s by a San Francisco coach, Red Hickey, who had three quarterbacks of limited mobility. Notably one--Bill Kilmer. Instead of having his quarterback crouch under the center and then begin a mad dash backward with the ball, he took a direct pass deep.

It didn’t work long. The defenses caught up with it by the second month or so.

Buffalo’s canny old coach, Marv Levy, dusted off this hoary old maneuver, which is ordinarily used on third down and long. He used it on every down. He figured to save his quarterback from the ferociously fast Dallas pass.

And, for a long time, it did. Dallas looked like a bunch of guys running for a passed bus, and Jim Kelly threw the ball for 176 yards with 18 completions in 25 passes in the first half. He was having the time of his life. The Cowboys were running around like cattle in a thunderstorm.

Dallas even threw in the dumbest play in football. This is the gaffe where a defensive player runs into the kicker on a punting situation. Why? You’re going to get the football anyway. The other guys are about to give it to you with ribbons around it. Running into the kicker is like returning a present to sender. Pros shouldn’t do it.

A pro named Dave Thomas did. The picture was this: Buffalo, trailing, 3-6, had just flamed out. It was fourth down and three to go on its own 41. Punter Chris Mohr kicked the ball to the Dallas 22. But Dave Thomas had crashed into the kicker. Buffalo got the ball back, first down on the 46-yard line.

That’s all the break Kelly needed. Eleven plays later, Thurman Thomas had scored Buffalo’s first and only touchdown.

That might have been the pivotal play except for Thomas’ fumble. That fumble for an enemy touchdown seemed to take the heart out of Buffalo. More important, it put the heart back into Dallas. It put the John Wayne back in the Cowboys’ makeup, the swagger back in their walk. They were the guys in the white hats again. America’s team. Wyatt Earps in charge of the town.

Emmitt Smith miraculously reappeared. After a first half in which 10 carries produced only 41 so-so yards, he came back in the second half to carry 20 more times for 91 yards. He caught four passes for 26 yards. He scored two touchdowns. He carried the ball six consecutive times, then a seventh for 15 yards and a touchdown.

You can move over Red Grange, O.J. Simpson, Walter Payton and other football forces of nature. Emmitt the Eminence may be as good as any. He gains more yards with tacklers hanging on him than most guys can get in a clear field.

So, it was ultimately a victory again for the brash upstart, Jimmy Johnson. The word dynasty begins to creep in on his charges.

It would seem it takes something more than Buffalo to rate you a Dynasty. It’s not a series, it’s a Punch-and-Judy show. Buffalo should be punchy.

Maybe it should be like the fight game. When you’ve had a lot of early-round KOs, the boxing commission suspends you. Waits until the doctors can certify you healthy. Buffalo may be healthy enough on the stethoscope, but on a psychiatrist’s couch the Bills may come up seeing shadows and hearing voices.

Still, the rest of their conference isn’t much better. The AFC not only lost Super Bowl XXVIII, it lost Super Bowls XXVII, XXVI, XXV, XXIV, XXIII, XXII, XXI, XX and XIX. It’s officially in a rut.

Maybe for Buffalo, the Super Bowl should have handles on it. For sure, the football should.

If they make it again, maybe the Bills should just mail the loss in. If they come again next year, they should at least blindfold them. They don’t execute, they get executed.