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Quarter To A Win

The Bills win one for Jauron, for whatever that’s worth

The Buffalo Bills and Denver Broncos first appeared on several of the dozen televisions in the main room at Slick Willy’s on Niagara Falls Boulevard a minute into the still-scoreless game late Sunday afternoon, with the hosts lining up for a third-and-one at their own 29-yard line.

“At least they aren’t behind yet,” Pommy said with the well-earned cynicism of a Bills fan who has seen, and expects, the very worst.

As he spoke, someone named P.J. Pope raced around the left end for 20 remarkably easy yards. After five more almost equally unopposed plays gouged Buffalo for nearly 10 yards per crack, Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler rolled to his left, a maneuver that shocked the Bills’ defenders into perfect stillness.

Cutler wandered sideways for long enough that he could have text-messaged Broncos coach Mike Shanahan about how well the play was working. Instead, he turned upfield and trotted across the goal line.

Denver glided within expectorating distance of the Buffalo goal line on its next possession. The key play of the 89-yard march was a reverse to superb rookie receiver Eddie Royal.

When Royal got the ball, the linemen, linebackers and defensive backs wearing Buffalo’s heinous road whites (if ever a matchup screamed out for throwback uniforms, it was this one) reacted as if they had never seen such a play before and were awaiting the officials to blow the whistle and declare such trickery illegal.

MOST VALUABLE BILL: With Marshawn Lynch sidelined for most of the second half, Fred Jackson keyed the comeback with 160 all-purpose yards, including the 65-yard catch that sparked Buffalo’s most complete quarter of football since early October against a real football team (sorry, Chiefs).

AND YOU CALL YOURSELF A SPORTS BAR: Pommy and I briefly departed Slick Willy’s and headed south on Niagara Falls Boulevard to Tully’s. We spent several minutes vainly scanning the myriad televisions for the Jets-Raiders game. We soon realized that the place did not have the NFL Sunday Ticket.

In these difficult financial times, you could forgive them that frugality, but not the fact that several screens in our immediate vicinity were not even showing sporting events. A note for management: There is no excuse for a sports bar to ever, ever carry paid programming (paid religious programming, nonetheless) or the public-access channel. To be fair, though, the silent showing of Lockport Community Television raised a number of questions, primarily whether Joyce M. Santiago, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce of the Tonawandas, was wearing a winter coat or the most uncomfortable-looking sweater ever during her appearance with North Tonawanda Mayor Larry Soos.

SAMMY CEASES SLINGIN’: My first favorite football player died last week.

Sammy Baugh, the near-mythical quarterback of the 1930s and 1940s who died at the age of 94 on December 17 in Rotan, Texas, played his last game for the Washington Redskins 17 years before I was born.

That he was my first athletic hero might say something about the antiquity of the selections at the public libraries where my football addiction germinated (the Ewell Free Public Library in Alden offered full-color yearbooks for the 1973 Bills and New York Jets—in 1978), or my general eccentricity. But the pictures of Slingin’ Sammy, wearing a facemask-free leather helmet that made his head resemble the ball in his cocked arm, as well as the tales of his exploits against Sid Luckman’s Chicago Bears, defined the sport for me as a kid.

Such was Baugh’s impact that the Washington Post devoted a 2,868-word, double-bylined obituary to his death. While the passing statistics he compiled during 16 seasons were Ruthian at the time in what had been a run-dominated sport before his arrival are rather mundane by today’s standards—modern-day mediocrities like Matt Hasselbeck, Daunte Culpepper, and Jon Kitna rank ahead of Baugh on the all-time yardage list—he still holds the NFL one-season punting record with a 51.3 average.

And his legacy was less about numbers than his transformative effect on the sport, as well as his tough Texas personality, captured in several terrific NFL Films interviews, even if pitiably little film of his on-field performances remain.

My favorite Baugh story was retold in the obituary published by the New York Times:

“One time there was a defensive lineman who was coming down on me with his fists closed,” he once told The San Antonio Express-News. “A couple of plays later, I found a play we could waste and I told our linemen to just let him come through.

“The guy got about five feet from me, and I hit him right in the forehead with the ball. He turned red and passed out. It scared the hell out of me.”

The incident was recreated by Burt Reynolds in The Longest Yard (Season Ticket refuses to acknowledge the existence of Adam Sandler’s alleged remake), though his aim was quite a bit lower, as well as by Keanu Reaves in The Replacements.

As usual, the real thing is far superior to any cinematic version, even if, and maybe because, you can only imagine it.

The Broncos settled for a field goal, but their mastery of Buffalo looked so complete, you expected the public-address system at Invesco Field to start blaring “Sweet Georgia Brown” while Cutler, Royal, and Pope started flipping the ball around behind their backs and through their legs on their way through the helpless Bills.

The Broncos’ third possession yielded another three-pointer, giving them a 13-0 lead and an absurd advantage in total yards of 222 to minus-two.

At that point, the guy next to me asked if one of us could give him a lift to the nearest emergency room if his racing heartbeat continued.

“I think it’s just a panic attack,” he said. “But I’ve already taken my medication for those, and my heart’s still racing.”

At that point, the idea of driving a troubled stranger through a blizzard in search of medical care seemed like a preferable alternative to wasting two more hours observing an abject surrender by a team that once entertained fantasies of playoff games in Orchard Park and first-round byes.

Fortunately, cooler heads—and this may well be the first time Pommy has ever been characterized as such.

“Um, if he’s really having a heart problem, I think he’d be much better off in an ambulance than in my car,” Pommy suggested.

Fortunately, the young man’s pulse apparently slowed as the Bills finally began showing signs of possessing one.

A blend of Marshawn Lynch runs and short passes by Trent Edwards, with a misguided Denver field goal attempt sprinkled in, pulled Buffalo within 13-10 at intermission, perhaps the least-deserved halftime score in recent memory.

Things got even weirder in the third quarter, when two more Rian Lindell field goals sandwiched around an interception by the aptly named Reggie Corner put Buffalo into an improbable lead.

“They even come back dull,” I suggested, fully expecting the Broncos to quickly regain control.

Which they did, slicing up Buffalo for 84 yards on nine plays, capped by another Cutler trot into the end zone just before the end of the third quarter.

Then something truly strange, even by the standards of this day, happened: The Bills became an exciting team again.

It started with Edwards’ 65-yard strike to Fred Jackson on the first play of the fourth quarter, which led to the three-yard flip to Steve Johnson that put the Bills up 23-20.

After Denver tied it, the same team that somehow managed to give away a certain victory a week earlier in New Jersey charged down the field to again seize the lead against an opponent in desperate need of a win to make the playoffs, this time on Jackson’s eight-yard charge into the end zone.

The Broncos again moved swiftly within range of tying it, but Kawika Mitchell, Terrence McGee and Corner each made key plays to preserve the most unlikely of wins, as well as Dick Jauron’s slimming hopes of returning for a fourth year as Buffalo’s coach.

The Associated Press reported on Monday that Ralph Wilson has not decided whether to retain Jauron, who oversaw a skid encompassing seven losses in eight games following a 5-1 start.

Beating a potential playoff team on the road is always a nice notch for a coach, but calling the badly flawed Broncos a contender would be a tremendous stretch. So would retaining a coach unable to pull his team out of freefall after such an impressive start.

“What we learned today is that the Broncos stink,” Pommy pronounced as we prepared to head out into the snow.

The vantage point was preferable from the stands at Invesco Field, where Season Ticket correspondent Tim Saracki was thoroughly enjoying the view, calling it “one of the best NFL experiences I’ve had,” a declaration that encompassed a gathering of Buffalo fans at a Denver nightspot the evening before, the tailgate scene, and sumptuous ribs when it was all over. Oh, and the game itself.

“It’s a great stadium with plenty of restrooms and they sell micro-beers,” he reported. “And I only got called an [obscene anatomical reference deleted] by one fan.”

Of course, Tim was wearing his Willis McGahee jersey at the time, so you could certainly argue that he had it coming.

Dave Staba has covered the Bills since 1990. He welcomes e-mail at dstaba13@aol.com. To read further analysis of Sunday’s game, go to AV Daily at Artvoice.com.

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