December 26, 1999

The Buffalo Bills started the decade with a claim to being the team that defined the 1990s. With stars and immortals on both sides of the ball, an innovative system cobbled together by coach Marv Levy, and some incredible wins along the way, the Bills could have been emissaries of the 90s, the same way that Pittsburgh’s Steel Curtain stands in for the 1970s, or Vince Lombardi’s Packers stood for the 1960s. At decade’s end, all of that looked like wasted potential. The Bills had done something no team had ever done, reaching four straight Super Bowls, only to do something else no team had ever done, and lose four straight Super Bowls. They were set to be remembered as the ultimate bridesmaids, teases and disappointments.

Now, we at Kit Talks Sports Enterprises reject such negative framing and title-or-bust mentalities out of hand, but the idea of something left undone and the clock ticking down to Y2K did give the Bills an animating force to begin the 1999 NFL season. Quarterback Jim Kelly retired after the 1996 season, and Levy had followed him a year later, but quite a few players from the Super Bowl teams remained, still hoping for a title. Thurman Thomas, though no longer a marquee running back, could still play a complementary role out of the backfield. Andre Reed was assuming a similar mentorship role in the receiving corps for the young and talented Eric Moulds, and Bruce Smith was still the defense’s leader, and only had one name to overtake in his chase to become the all-time leader in sacks.

Replacing Kelly at the helm would prove to be tougher than easing Thomas and Reed out. The Bills signed tall pocket passer Rob Johnson to a huge five-year contract. Johnson looked the part and had impressed in backup duty with Jacksonville, and his six-four frame marked quite a contrast with the other quarterback brought in, Doug Flutie, the former Heisman Trophy Winner turned Canadian Football star. They contrasted further on-field. Johnson moved like his knees had rusted through, and Flutie, despite the extra miles on his odometer, was still shifty and mobile, getting compared to Fran Tarkenton for his creative ways of finding new throwing angles. Behind the same offensive line, Johnson was sacked twenty-nine times, and Flutie only twelve. Flutie led the Bills to the playoffs and was the clear answer going forward, but coach Wade Phillips, acting in fear of the sunk cost fallacy, declared the two co-number ones in 1999’s training camp, and further suggested that the age difference between the two meant that he had a clear succession plan when the 36-year-old Flutie retired. Flutie’s play dropped slightly from 1998, but nobody had retirement on the mind, and the Bills were 9-5 headed into a key game against the New England Patriots. With a win, the Bills were in the playoffs; with a loss, the Patriots were out.

The Patriots were also Super Bowl losers of a recent vintage, falling to the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XXXI. Shortly after, coach Bill Parcells retired, and then unretired, taking a new job with the Jets that gave him more control over personnel. This was breach of contract, and the Patriots gained considerable draft compensation as the price for letting Parcells out of his obligations. New coach Pete Carroll still had a young core to work with and kept the Patriots in the playoffs over the next two years, but he had some ostentatious failures once he got there. Though Carroll had a defensive background just like Parcells, the two coaches couldn’t be less alike in personality. Some people who were used to the Parcells brashness and rudeness never warmed to Carroll’s happy-go-lucky demeanor.

Parcells also may have had some valid points about the New England personnel department. In one of the first signs of dissent between he and the Krafts, he famously said “if they want me to cook the meal, they should let me buy the groceries.” Carroll didn’t have any such complaints, and the 1997 and 1998 drafts produced no players for the Patriots who ever made the pro bowl, even with additional picks from both the Parcells compensation and the package from the Jets poaching running back Curtis Martin. They did hit upon someone promising with Martin’s replacement, Robert Edwards, but Edwards blew out his knee playing beach football with other rookies as a part of the Pro Bowl festivities. Edwards narrowly avoided amputation and didn’t play football again for four years, and the rookie beach football game was canceled and never brought back.

Some injury luck would have gone a long way towards the Patriots returning to prominence in the crowded AFC East, and with defensive end Willie McGinest and Terry Glenn healthy and playing at high levels, the Patriots started 4-0 and were 6-2 by the time they took their bye week. After the bye, it was like a new team was lining up. Under offensive coordinator Ernie Zampese, the Patriots offense had become predictable to the point of parody. Opposing corners would line up across from Terry Glenn, guess out loud what route he would run, and be right more often than not. For the month of November, Drew Bledsoe posted a quarterback rating of 40.3 and the Patriots dropped all three games. Even when the Patriots won a game against Dallas, Bledsoe was at best a spectator, throwing no touchdowns, and the Patriots lost the next two games as well. Bledsoe threw sixteen picks in this miserable six game stretch. It was a complete and total colony collapse.

The Patriots still had a mathematical chance at the playoffs, but those hopes were hanging by a thread, and it was up to the Bills to cut that thread. Bledsoe had yet another horrible day, and his 101 yards represented the lowest single game total since his rookie year. Kicker Adam Vinatieri also had an ugly game, but he can at least blame the wind for throwing back his three different field goal misses. But the Patriots defense held firm and made the first half a brutal 3-3 stalemate where neither team broke a hundred yards, and then Chad Eaton recovered a fumble and got up untouched for a thirty-yard return. The Patriots scored the first touchdown by either team one play later, but Flutie answered them, going five for five with deep connections to Peerless Price and Eric Moulds to set up a short touchdown run for Jonathan Linton.

Desperate to make something happen, Bledsoe scrambled for a twenty-five-yard gain, a rarity for the immobile quarterback. This set up Vinatieri for a game-winning thirty-three-yard field goal, but Vinatieri sliced it badly to the right, almost like he hit the ball with a golf club. The first drive of overtime, Bledsoe hit Ben Coates for twenty yards and set up another field goal attempt. This one was true but was stopped cold by the wind. Unable to take advantage of another turnover, this time a fumble recovered by Tedy Bruschi, the Patriots watched as Flutie once again led the Bills up the field with another drive without an incompletion. A twenty-three-yard field goal by Steve Christie sealed the win for the Bills and sealed the end of the Pete Carroll era in New England.

So ended the decade for the Buffalo Bills, the would-be team of the 1990s. Far from being a lost or disappointing decade, it still stands as one of the best runs in sports. The Bills actually had one more ten-win season than the orthodox choice for team of the 90s, the Dallas Cowboys. This era would shine even brighter in contrast to the next twenty years the Bills spent in search of a playoff win. They ended the 1999 season by losing in the first round on a play named the Music City Miracle, a story for another day. Though the Bills would soon fade, the seeds of the next decade were in this game. Pete Carroll would turn to the NCAA and lead the University of Southern California to a signature run of success, and the Patriots would choose Bill Belichick as his successor, setting in motion a dynasty that refuses to die. It is so hard to know where to end these stories. In trying to recreate how it felt and looked that week, it is hard to know how to cleave the victory from the heartbreak on the horizon, and how to sit in the defeat without hinting at the redemption to come. Every week, all these wins and losses feel incontrovertible, yet in the fullness of time, they completely disappear, falling away like the background details of dreams, leaving us with the faint sense of knowing something important, and with the growing alarm that we can’t remember what we know.