Monday Night Memories: Buffalo Bills vs. Houston Oilers - October 11, 1993
October 11, 1993
Ten months prior to this Monday night game, the Houston Oilers seemed to have ended the reign of the Buffalo Bills over the AFC. The Bills were without Jim Kelly, without Thurman Thomas, and staring down the barrel of a 35-3 deficit. What happened next was the sort of thing that gets referred to in capital letters, as backup quarterback Frank Reich led the Bills to The Comeback. Behind four touchdowns by Reich and one from backup running back Kenneth Davis, the Bills won a stunning 41-38 victory. Reich led another victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers in the next round, and Kelly returned to beat the Miami Dolphins to become the second team ever to reach three consecutive Super Bowls.
Once they reached that Super Bowl, though, the magic ran out. Kelly was strip-sacked for a defensive touchdown, threw an interception in the end zone on a pass that would have tied the game had it gone as intended, and was knocked out of the game in the second quarter with a concussion. Frank Reich came back in but lightning did not follow him wherever he went, he was picked twice and lost two fumbles, as the Bills committed a playoff record nine turnovers in their 52-17 loss to the Dallas Cowboys.
As the Bills set their sights on their record-breaking fourth straight Super Bowl and first victory, there were some skeptics. How much heartbreak could one team take? They were another year older with another disappointment to carry with them, and the new free agency system had cost them left tackle Will Woolford, and linebackers Shane Conlan and Carlton Bailey. The other contenders in the AFC had not been standing pat. The Miami Dolphins completely retooled their skill players, the Kansas City Chiefs went as far as adding Joe Montana himself, and the Houston Oilers, so recently humiliated at the hands of the Bills, had been making some splashy moves of their own.
It stands to reason that you can’t blow a thirty-two point lead and keep the same defensive coordinator, so Jim Eddy was out in Houston within 24 hours of The Comeback. Replacing him was Buddy Ryan. It’s hard to make headlines with the hiring of a defensive coordinator, but Buddy was a surefire way to get press. The architect of the 1985 Chicago Bears, still the gold standard of defenses, Buddy had also had a head coaching stint with the Philadelphia Eagles, one with mixed results, but an incredible defensive record. Buddy had two conditions: acquire his old Chicago linebacker Wilber Marshall, and grant him complete autonomy over the defense. The first was simple enough, and in truth made very little difference. The second might have been the cause of all the trouble that followed.
Buddy’s autonomy over the defense meant that all twenty-eight offenses were the enemy, even their own offense. Buddy held the Houston system, the Run and Shoot, in ideological contempt, calling it the Chuck and Duck in interviews. Not that Buddy cared, since he was never for one moment in his life a diplomat, but this was an attack on Houston as a municipality; head coach Jack Pardee had used the Run and Shoot in Houston for almost a decade, first with the Houston Gamblers of the USFL, then with the NCAA’s Houston Cougars, then with the Oilers. In addition to regional signifiers, it was just plain stupid. The Oiler offense had seven players named to the Pro Bowl. It didn’t need fixing, it needed nothing other than routine maintenance, which Ryan went out of his way to make impossible. On a drill meant to be for Warren Moon and his receivers to work on their timing, Buddy Ryan sent his defense into a kitchen sink blitz. Offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride was furious, but Ryan used the smirking technically true language of an internet troll; he’s going to be hit in the real games, isn’t he? What’s wrong with turning the heat up?
It would have been tragic if it wasn’t also rather funny. The Oilers functionally became two different teams. Offensive captain Mike Munchak and defensive captain Ray Childress, teammates and friends for seven years, exchanged fisticuffs in practice. Ryan took shots at Gilbride on his radio show, and Gilbride would respond on his own radio show, and on his radio show, supposed head coach Jack Pardee would smile and wave like one of the Habsburg Emperors with epilepsy. Between the three of them they accounted for eleven hours a week of content across Houston television and radio. It was a golden age for local media. Meanwhile the Oilers lost three of their first four games, including one to San Diego in which Moon threw four interceptions. Maybe he did need that timing drill after all.
With the Oilers at 1-3, already two games behind the Browns in the AFC Central, this rematch of The Comeback no longer had the appeal ABC was hoping for when the schedule was released. Nevertheless, The Temptations opened the telecast with an ill-conceived reworking of Ball of Confusion, with Melvin Franklin gravely intoning “And the Bills have won” instead of “And the band played on.” For Oiler fans, being made fun of by a legendary Motown group would very likely be the highlight of the evening.
The trouble started very early, on the first Oiler drive, when two Bills defenders played volleyball with a low Moon pass before Cornelius Bennett emerged with the ball. The K-Gun wasted no time in firing; on their next play from scrimmage, the Bills scored on a connection from Jim Kelly to Don Beebe. Already in panic mode, Moon threw another interception on the next drive, and took two straight sacks on the third drive. The fourth drive he was helped along by a personal foul call when a Bills player forearm shivered the diminutive Ernest Givins, who stayed in the game despite a very nasty spill. Ryan made fun of Givins in the pre-season but Givins was pound for pound one of the toughest men in the league. Soon after the penalty Moon connected with Leonard Harris to tie the score, which is how the first quarter ended.
Kelly’s other five passes besides the touchdown in the first quarter were all incomplete, but he marshalled a long drive to take back the lead and capped it by finding Andre Reed for a score. Kelly found Reed again on the next drive completely uncovered for a thirty-nine-yard score. After a Houston fumble, Thurman Thomas took over, gashing the Houston run defense, leaving them chasing wind. On second and goal Thomas ran through the teeth of yet another Ryan blitz for a seven-yard touchdown, the first Bills rushing touchdown of 1993. This was over at halftime, already 28-7. It would finish 35-7.
Moon’s turnovers make him an easy scapegoat, with his three interceptions and one lost fumble, and was benched in the fourth quarter for Cody Carlson. But Buddy Ryan’s vaunted defense looked as helpless as a newborn, struggling with very simple plays like draws. With the game in hand the Bills ran a reverse just for fun and it got ten yards. Where was the aggression of the 46? Had Buddy Ryan skipped the charismatic front phase of cult-building and skipped straight to the random abuse? Was Jack Pardee even still trying to coach this team?
We are all familiar with the formulation of “first as tragedy, then as farce,” but we are less prepared to receive both at the same time. The Houston Oilers would not lose another game on the field in 1993. The defense would snap to and not allow more than 20 points during this 11-game win streak, and Moon would also right the ship, taking back over the next week when Cody Carlson tore his hamstring, but they would continue to be on the brink of disaster off the field, and farce turned to tragedy when Jeff Alm shot himself, guilt-ridden after a late night single car accident killed his passenger. It turned back into farce at the very end when Ryan and Gilbride literally got in a physical altercation on the sidelines of the final regular season game. It was a season that went beyond the predictable beats of televised soap operas into the incomprehensible trills of opera. But even in Italian and falsetto, you can spot a villain as big and bold as Buddy Ryan from the moment he opens his mouth.