[Vague Title]Great Scott !! Why is He Always to Blame ??

[DC Tom]

20 minutes ago, blacklabel said:

 

Good grief, Thomas, are you okay? The lessons you share as the world's foremost expert on mockery have caused you to start communicating in complete gibberish. Maybe you should get that checked out. 

 

Furthermore, mockery can be noticed, acknowledged, and then moved on from as one does when sharing some opinions relative to the topic. 

 

 

Just too damned subtle an insult for you, wasn't it?  

[corta765]

1 hour ago, 2003Contenders said:

I always have to laugh about how much misinformation is out there about this Super Bowl. In many cases, cloudy memories make us believe things that never happened/didn't happen.

 

Myth 1: The Bills were by far the superior team.

 

Myth 2: The Bills passed the ball too much in that game because of Kelly's ego

 

Myth 3: Scott Norwood is the reason the Bills lost the game

 

Myth 4: Kelly and the coaches were guilty of poor clock management at the end of the game

 

 

Well drawn up here are my thoughts:

 

Myth 1: Disagree to the extent that Buffalo was the better team and if they played 10 times Buffalo wins 8-9 of them. This was the one we got bit on. BUT to your point it wasn't like the Giants were 9-7 scrubs. A lot of talent there and tremendous coaching made them a very formidable and valid foe.

 

Myth 2: Agreed. One of the things I laugh at is when people say a team should completely stop doing what made them successful. Kelly actually called more run plays over his career then pass, like you said he took what was given to him. If anything in the 2nd half the coaching staff maybe should've just ran the clock a touch more at points. They didn't have to break from what worked in the K-Gun just modify it slightly. But any interview I have heard with the offense from the 1990 team they've said they were going to do what made them successful and die that way if it came to it. If you want to say by Superbowl 28 perhaps the offense should've evolved a touch to be a bit more ground and pound or ball control sure, but in 25 no way.

 

Myth 3: Yep. My dad has always said it wasn't Norwood and the amount of blown tackles by the defense alone killed them. The Bills made enough errors as a collective unit that they created a situation where everything came down to a kick. Daryl Talley himself has said on the one 3rd and long if he would've just tackled normal it would've been 4th and long. He went for the big hit and it blew up in his face. There are a lot of what ifs on the defensive side especially. People also forget in today's age of automatic kickers that back in the early 90s kickers were far less trustworthy and accurate with success kicking.

 

Myth 4: Agreed. The only criticism I could see would be not trying one more play that was a quick out pattern or something just to get a few more yards but that is more a coaching call. The offense as many have said left feeling mission accomplished.

[Chandler#81]

Ancient history. The reason this game gets talked about more than FOUR STRAIGHT SUPER BOWLS is because it’s the only one we were really in. No team was going to derail the Redskins the following year, nor Dallas the year after. While the last SB was close for 3 quarters, by then the doom had set in. Kick goes through the uprights and we’re 1-3. 

[3rdand12]

3 hours ago, DC Tom said:

 

No ****, Mr. Wizard.  I was mocking the whole "this play cost us the game" argument.  Now have another drink.

Of the Johnny Walker ? or the Beer ?
waiting...

2 hours ago, Fadingpain said:

I simply don't have the emotional reserves to re-hash that game.

I have never viewed a replay of it, only saw it live once.

 

Don't really want to discuss it in detail.

The pain hasn't faded! 

 

I won't re watch any of those games.

I stopped watching Bills football after the Giants loss. I couldn't take anymore. seriously. brutal 4 SB losses. no fun at all

[Augie]

2 minutes ago, 3rdand12 said:

Of the Johnny Walker ? or the Beer ?
waiting...

 

Play it safe....BOTH! 

[3rdand12]

2 hours ago, 2003Contenders said:

I always have to laugh about how much misinformation is out there about this Super Bowl. In many cases, cloudy memories make us believe things that never happened/didn't happen.

 

Myth 1: The Bills were by far the superior team.

 

I think we as Bills fans too often dismiss that Giants team unfairly.

While the Bills were there representing the AFC thanks largely to their high-power offense (they had scored nearly 100 points in the two playoff games against Miami and the Raiders), the Giants were there thanks to their defense. That defense had just held the mighty 49ers offense to 13 points in the NFC Championship game. 

 

In fact, the 1990 Giants boasted one of the greatest defenses in NFL history. Their run defense was so fantastic that Belichick purposely decided to essentially play a prevent-defense for the entire game (allowing short patterns, but punishing defenders when they caught the ball), fearing the Bills' downfield passing offense (which had dominated the other 2 playoff games). He wanted to force the Bills to run the ball -- and even told the Giants players before the game that if Thurman Thomas had a big day running the ball, that would mean that the Giants won the game. 

 

Myth 2: The Bills passed the ball too much in that game because of Kelly's ego

 

Given the success that the Bills had had in the post-season passing the ball -- and knowing that the Giants' strength was in stopping the run, it makes sense that the Bills came out throwing the ball.

 

But it is unfair to suggest that Kelly was pass-happy.

 

A careful look at the pass-to-run ration shows that the offense threw the ball 30 times and ran it 25 times. That is a pretty balanced attack. The problem is that the passing game was not effective largely due to the defense employed by the Giants. For example, Andre Reed, who was one of the greatest YAC receivers in NFL history only managed 62 yards on 8 receptions -- or barely 8 yards per reception.

 

Rather, than criticize Kelly for being egotistical and insisting on passing the ball, I always felt he did a great job of taking what a dominant defense was willing to give him. Rather than forcing the ball downfield into heavy coverage, he was content to check-down or scramble for positive yards. Remember, he did not turn the ball over in this game at all. Meanwhile, the Giants' own offense -- not known for passing the ball -- actually put it in the air MORE often (32 attempts) than the Bills did. 

 

 

Myth 3: Scott Norwood is the reason the Bills lost the game

 

Yes, the missed field goal at the end did turn out to be the difference. However, there were plenty of other factors that contributed in such a close and well-played game. The mythical story about this game has always been "Wide Right", but I always felt that the real story of the game was 41-to-19 (40:33 - to - 19:27 to be exact). That would be the Giants' time of possession against the Bills. Now, thanks to the Bills' hurry-up offense, they were often on the losing side of that stat even in games that they dominated. However, in this particular game that time of possession disparity made a huge difference. The Giants had a grind-it-out offense that was capable of milking the clock. Remember, the Bills' defense was built to stop Dan Marino's passing attack in Miami, but the defense was never sufficiently equipped to mussel an opponent's committed run game. Case in point: the Giants converted a strong 9 of 16 3rd down conversions. Meanwhile, the Bills were only 1 of 8.

 

I would suggest that an unfortunate sequence of events that began midway through the 2nd quarter played a significantly larger role in the game's outcome than did Norwood's miss:

 

-- The ability of Hostetler to hang onto that ball when Bruce sacked him and gripped his wrist. I still have no idea how he managed to NOT fumble it! A TD there would have made it 17-3. It is easy to say that the this would have impacted the final score in a game that was decided by 1 point -- but more importantly, the Giants' offense was NOT built to overcome large leads. Essentially, they were able to stick to their game plan.

 

-- The offense's inability to capitalize on the series immediately following the safety. The Bills had the ball in great field position -- and seemingly had the Giants on the ropes leading 12-3. This was the offense's worst series in the game -- and those that criticize Kelly for passing too much in the game can use this series to bolster their point. I suspect that the thought here was that they believed they could put the game away there with a score, so they chose to be aggressive. Kelly DID hit Reed on a bomb that would have set them up inside the redzone, but Reed dropped it. On another attempt on that series, Reed was crushed by a defender on a crossing route. Instead of adding to the score -- or at least gaining field position/milking the clock, the Bills quickly went 3-and-out and took virtually no time off the clock. Even if the Bills did not score here, if they manage to convert a 1st down or run the ball to take some time off the clock, it is possible that the Giants do not score a TD to end the half.

 

-- After the failed 3-and-out, the Giants more or less ate up the remainder of the quarter on a grind-it-out TD-scoring drive to go into the half trailing just 12-10.

 

-- After the extended halftime, the Giants came out with another grind-it-out series that ate up much of the 3rd quarter and ended in another score to take the lead 17-12. 
 

-- During that sequence from the mid-2nd quarter to late in the 3rd quarter in which the Giants scored 14 points, the Bills' offense never took the field. With the extended halftime, the offense was off the field for over an hour. They looked rusty when they finally did take the field in the second half -- and, worse, the defense was starting to wear down. There were several missed tackles on that TD drive to start the 2nd half, for example.

 

Myth 4: Kelly and the coaches were guilty of poor clock management at the end of the game

 

We now know that Levy and Kelly approached Norwood and asked him where he would feel comfortable kicking a game-winning field goal. Norwood told them he felt good with anything inside the 30. Hence, the offense's goal on that final drive was to get it inside the 30 and leave as little time on the clock as possible for the Giants to respond. You could tell when Thurman ran that draw up the gut to set them up in such field position, the offense left the field believing that the mission had been accomplished.  We all know what happend next.

 

The issue here was not clock management. Rather, the issue was the stupidity on the part of Levy (or whomever) to trust that getting the ball to a spot on the field where his kicker seemed comfortable would be sufficient. 

 

As painful as it may be, I encourage everyone to go back and watch the game in its eternity rather than watching edited versions.  For example, edited versions imply that the Bills' final drive occurred immediately after the Giants kicked the go-ahead field goal. That is not the case: as the Giants' field goal occurred with almost 8 minutes left in the game.

 

It was a great game (very few penalties, no turnovers, a back-and-forth battle) played by two awesome teams. It is just unfortunate that the Bills came up on the short end.

 

One thing I almost forgot: early in the game, Hostetler was literally knocked out cold. The Giants revived him with smelling salts. In today's NFL with the concussion protocol, etc. he would undoubtedly have been forced to leave the game. That would have left the Giants with their 3rd string QB behind center.

Most excellent effort here

 Thanks to you very much indeed !!

8 minutes ago, Augie said:

 

Play it safe....BOTH! 

down to the Catacombs i go..bbl

[BuffaLoko]

17 hours ago, eball said:

This thread has made me sad.

Me too...just to think that each of those ¨little ¨factors summed to cost us the best game they out in the 4 trips to Sb,  regardless of the aforementioned mistakes we made, which is part of the game, I.E. you can ask TB about how much his ¨drop¨ cost him in SB LII...

[blacklabel]

16 hours ago, DC Tom said:

 

 

Just too damned subtle an insult for you, wasn't it?  

 

Nah, just that people using the R word are about as useful as people who use the N word so whatever subtlety you're going for is cancelled out by your ignorance.

[Best Player Available]

18 hours ago, DC Tom said:

 

It's also one of those failures that, in failing, is glorious on its own.

 

Think about it...without looking it up, who was the game MVP?  Who was blocking Bruce Smith?  Who were the safeties that kept hammering Reed over the middle?  

 

And who was the kicker on the final play of the game?  

ON Norwood's kick. Some claim it was also a bit of Frank Reichs fault too.

Not suprisingly at least one coach who didn't partcipate in the game. Made that observation.

On the snap he pointed the laces to the right. Not towards the goal posts.

Some replay's clearly showed this. Besides it was far from a chip shot. Norwood to my knowledge

never mentioned it. 

[DC Tom]

2 minutes ago, Best Player Available said:

ON Norwood's kick. Some claim it was also a bit of Frank Reichs fault too.

Not suprisingly at least one coach who didn't partcipate in the game. Made that observation.

On the snap he pointed the laces to the right. Not towards the goal posts.

Some replay's clearly showed this. Besides it was far from a chip shot. Norwood to my knowledge

never mentioned it. 

 

Norwood was money inside 40 yards all season.  Outside...very iffy.  As they lined up for the kick, I was telling the people I was watching with that 47 yards on grass was not a kick he was going to make.

1 hour ago, blacklabel said:

 

Nah, just that people using the R word are about as useful as people who use the N word so whatever subtlety you're going for is cancelled out by your ignorance.

 

You don't know what Loren ipsum is, do you?  You don't understand why I included it?  You really are kind of a clueless little chipmunk, aren't you?

[T master]

On 5/16/2018 at 4:41 PM, Drunken Pygmy Goat said:

There was still time in the clock after the kick...

 

Yep thats why thy should have took one more shot to get Norwood in range where his accuracy had been great all year !! 

[Warcodered]

Were the laces out?

[Not at the table Karlos]

On 5/16/2018 at 1:50 PM, QB Bills said:

Jim Kelly trying to be the hero cost the Bills the game.

When he called the time out with the Giants player a few miles offsides and struggling to get off the field I wanted to push my grandpa's tv over. Iirc that would have been enough to make the fg even if norwood pulled it the same way.

 

Edit- it would have moved us from the 46 to the 41. Not fg range

Edited May 20, 2018 by Not at the table Karlos

[BuffaloRush]

It’s a great point that I’ve said many times.  Norwood was not a good kicker in 1990.  He had reached his peak in 1988 and two seasons later he was no longer as reliable, especially from 40+ and especially from kicking in grass fields.  Making a 47 FG for Norwood is probably the equivant to havong Steven Hauschka kick a 60 yard FG in 2018.  There’s a chance he could make the kick, but it’s likely a long shot.

 

Hate to say it, but Marv and the coaching staff was completely out coached by Parcells and Belichick.  They outworked and outsmarted Buffalo early on, and they just couldn’t respond.  But I agree - it was an overall team loss. Still....what could have been....