Stranded in Boston

Fred Jackson, baby!! I like the pass-blocking by our young RBs, but nobody could crunch a blitzer like Fred! 😃

In addition to his athleticism and size, Rousseau plays incredibly smart football. He displays fantastic vision, both on the edge and when he drops into short zone coverage. What a great draft pick. ... And for my fellow old-timers here, I was surprised that Joe Cribbs wasn't among the former Bills rookies who won a POW award. I can't recall a first-year Bills player with a bigger impact than Cribbs -- 12 TDs his rookie year.

shhhhhhhhh!! 😎

Aw, did you have to bring up Ray Sheppard? It only took me 30 years to forget that one ... 😫

That's some fine old-time sportswriting there, Chan! 😃

As a kid I used to watch (or listen to) Bills games with my brothers, but since I left Buffalo 35+ years ago, I generally watch alone. I'm just an insufferable a-hole during the game -- scaring my poor kids when they were little, etc. One exception was Super Bowl XXV in 1990, when I stupidly decided to host a Super Bowl party in my crappy apartment in Boston. After wide-right, everyone kept talking and laughing at commercials and sh**, so I basically threw them all out (including this girl I was dating at the time; maybe not the smartest move). Now I will only watch games with fellow WNYers, catching a few games a year at the Bills fan club at The Harp in Boston, and years ago every Sunday at Sam Sansone's Bills Backers bar when I lived in Houston. You just have to be with your own species on game day ...

Nice write-up, Mi -- er, I mean Rubes. (However, you forgot to acknowledge your Bills' fandom in the COI disclosures. 😜 ) But we Bills fans-scientists all do what we have to do, eh? For example, I have tortured my Boston-area medical school classes for 25 years before Bills-Pats game (last year was more gleeful than usual in that regard). In addition, I know from an [ahem] EXTREMELY well-placed source that an engineer and fellow Bills fan at the Jet Propulsion Lab slipped a "Go Bills" message onto the Perseverance rover, currently cruising around on the surface of Mars. But don't tell anybody ...

Heck yes, Aaron -- that was a fantastic play by Zimmer. The kid can really run.

J. Zimmer continues to impress; man, that meatball can cover some ground! B. Basham also looked very stout at point of attack; he shed blockers extremely well on run plays, and really sticks his tackles. He looks a lot more like a very mobile, strong DT than DE to me.

Good point Chan, plus I recall our own Shane Nelson wasn't much bigger than that -- and he could hit like a hammer!

#15 Todd Collins, 1990s royal blue. After the Bills waived Collins in '98, a buddy of mine found it at a rest stop outside Erie, PA, on sale for ten bucks, LOL. I never much liked it, for some vague reason. Then one day I realized it reminded me of Jeff Hostetler's Super Bowl jersey ... 🤬

45 years on, it still baffles me that the Braves let Malone slip through their fingers -- 2 freakin' games?? I've often wondered if the Braves would have survived in Buffalo if they'd kept him ... Indeed, that front line would have been unstoppable!

I'm with you on Randy Smith, Promo. Big Mac had some unforgettable seasons in Buffalo, but Randy was the heart and soul of that Braves team, one of the greatest all-around athletes in NBA history -- and a Buff State guy to boot. (As for Gronk, he can go ... well, you know!)

Thanks Chandler#81!! That was awesome. During those grim mid-late 70s Bills teams, it seemed like Bobby was the Bills entire offense sometimes! Besides his incomparable hands, people forget that he was also an amazing athlete, a top high-school decathlete and high jumper. His body control was superb. The only guy in the NFL who could out-highpoint Bobby back then was maybe Harold Carmichael -- but he was also 6'-8" !

Hell yes, Promo!! With things reopening here, I'll definitely be there this fall with my twin sons, who -- despite being born and raised in Boston -- are now irreversibly Bills fans (= Pats haters), having been successfully propagandized, er, raised by their dad. I kept things real simple: Kid wanna eat? Kid root for Bills. 😎 Let me buy you a beer. You should be easy to spot: rumor has it that you're the biggest guy at the Harp.

Thanks again, Chandler; you're keeping me sane before training camp! What a shame Rashad blew out his knee in '75. The Bills gave up on him, only to watch him become a perennial pro-bowler with the Vikings. But surgeons were just not that good at fixing knees back then: think of Jerry Butler and Jeff Nixon -- and (no offense to Tre White and Butch Byrd!) the Bills' greatest cornerback ever, Robert James.

"Thanks" for that, RJ 😑 ... Indeed, it was painful to watch the Bills collapse in '75, despite OJ's brilliance. I'm a little older than you, LOL, but it's amazing how long those disappointments sticks with you from when you're young ... And I'll never forget (or forgive!) that loss to Miami. The Bills were mounting a furious comeback, and the Morris fumble would have given them the ball deep inside Miami territory. Instead, Jerry Frickin' Bergman calls it a non-fumble, and -- to rub salt in the wound -- slaps Pat Toomey with a 15-yard penalty for pushing an official out of the way to get to the loose ball!! My brothers and I almost smashed the TV ... This is probably a false memory, but I could swear that the Buffalo Evening News published Bergman's home address the next day! took me a second ... 😅

Thanks Chandler! Please keep the "old stuff" coming! 😀

Thanks for that, Chandler! I remember that game well -- my brothers and I were out raking leaves, listening to Van Miller's call on the radio (or maybe Al "Oh Baby!" Melzer was still doing play-by-play in '78?). Indeed, Miller was an enigma -- a promising rookie year, and then crickets -- but I recall he had an eye injury in '79 that affected his game (not to mention having to compete against the great Joe Cribbs in 1980). It was also fun to watch the Bills' offensive line first starting to gel under Chuck Knox. Joe D and Reggie M were at their peak, and Ken Jones and Joe Devlin were hitting stride at the tackle spots, where they anchored the line for better part of the next decade. Amazing how quick and athletic the OL players were on running plays; of course they probably averaged 260-280 lbs. in those days!

Yup ... I recall a 3rd and 20-something against SF a few years ago when he zigzagged about 40 yards total to just pick up the first down; an unbelievable scamper. I think they called the run just to surrender and get into better punt position, but Shady was determined to get to the marker. The guy just played hard here. He was also much better at blitz pick-up than people give him credit for.

It was also fun watching Jeff Nixon; what a terrific, instinctive ballhawk. Pity he blew out his knee ... Same thing for Jerry Butler -- career sadly cut way too short by a knee injury.

LOL, I stayed up waaay too late last night watching that until the end, just waiting for the goalpost "scene" ... That said, it's funny how much that game was NOT as I had remembered (and I am certainly "of age" to have remembered!). I mean -- Fergy was Peterman-esque in the first half!! Also, for 42 years I had carried the thought that Shula had pulled Griese on their penultimate drive just to spite us. After 20 straight losses to those SOBs, I wanted Griese ON the field at the final gun, drinking in the humiliation! But Miami was very much still in the game at the end; I guess Shula was genuinely trying to win after all with Strock in there!

Marve ("e" at the end, guys) was super solid. It's just a shame his mid-80s teams were so awful. I always felt kind of sorry for Marve: he just missed out on the Bills early 80s run, and then left on the cusp of the Kelly-era SB run. I don't think they were recording tackle stats at that time, but man, Marve was a tackling machine! RIP.

"Bullet" Bob Hayes ran a 10.06 at the 1964 Olympics, tying the world record at the time. He played football and ran track at Florida A&M, and went on to have a great 10-year NFL career, culminating in election to HOF in 2009. Of course, he was also 45 lbs. lighter than DK!

Thanks Ethan; that was indeed a great game (even if the '83 season fizzled out). Sometimes I forget how great Joe Cribbs was. He ran with incredible stop-on-a-dime balance, power and vision -- and was damn near unstoppable as a receiver. Teams would occasionally try to cover him with a LB, and Fergy would just light them up ... Cribbs scored *35* TDs over his first four seasons with the Bills (before he jumped to USFL), despite missing more than half of the '82 season. I don't even think OJ had a more productive 4-year run.