The Buffalo Bills won the AFC East Sunday by beating the New York Jets. And the goalposts are still standing.
That’s not how it happened when the Bills downed the Jets to clinch the AFC East in 1988. Bills fans stormed the field just after Scott Norwood’s 30-yard field goal won the game, 9-6, in overtime. Amid the madding crowd, several intrepid souls climbed the goalposts, which tilted at first – and then came down. Fans ferried pieces of the posts up to Ralph Wilson’s box, paying tribute to the team owner with hollow yellow metal.
One thing connects that division-clinching Sunday to this one: “Shout” offered the soundtrack on both of those rainy, crazy days at the stadium formerly known as Rich.
As for the goalpost-storming day in 1988, Bills fans can thank one Frederic Charles Smerlas that the game got to overtime at all. The score was 6-6 with 25 seconds to play when New York lined up for a surefire field goal from 40 yards. Jets kicker Pat Leahy had made 47 of his last 49 field goals from 40 yards or closer.
“I couldn’t bear to watch,” Bills center Kent Hull said then. “It looked like a chip shot and I figured there was no way they were going to miss.”
Smerlas, the Bills nose tackle, figured otherwise. Leahy had just made one from 40 yards minutes earlier in the fourth quarter, and Smerlas noticed something on the play.
“They left a little gap on my side,” Fred said. “I figured if I turned sideways a little bit, I could squeeze through and get the ball.”
About three decades ago, an overtime field goal win over the Jets was enough to clinch the 1988 AFC East title for the Buffalo Bills and enough for fans to take down the goal posts at Rich Stadium.
This is exactly what happened: A sideways Smerlas slid through in the middle of the Jets line and got his big paw on the ball.
“Freddie looked like Michael Jordan on that one,” Hull said.
The wind picked up as the game wore on. Leahy said the wind is what made him feel he had to kick the ball harder, which meant a lower trajectory, which meant Smerlas had a chance to reach it.
“I had a strange feeling we were going to block it,” Smerlas said. “It’s just something about this team. A few years ago we would have blocked it and they would have picked it up and run for a touchdown. But things have changed for the Buffalo Bills.”
Norwood’s OT winner moved those Bills to 11-1. NBC’s cameras cut to Smerlas, who pumped two fists in the air and jumped for joy. (This jump, if we’re being honest, was not to be mistaken for Air Jordan’s.) And then some fans made their way onto the field. Then came some more. Pretty soon, hundreds swarmed on the field. And then the goalposts came down. (You can watch the whole game on YouTube here, with Buffalo-born Don Criqui on the call.)
As it happens, that was not the earliest tear-down in Bills history. Fans tore down the goalposts when the Bills beat Miami to snap a 20-game losing streak to the Dolphins, in 1980. That tear-down came, ahem, on opening day. And you can’t get earlier than that.
Bills linebacker Darryl Talley coined a word about 1988’s madcap scene. “What do they call it, pandemonium?” he said. “This was fan-demonium.”
And so it seemed only right that when the Bills released a hype video to celebrate Sunday’s win, Talley was the star of the show – connecting a couple of crazy division-clinching Sundays across time.
The Bills released the video on Twitter with these words: “We’ve got some unfinished business to take care of.”
Bills coach Marv Levy offered a similar sentiment on that day in 1988. “If I can, permit me a little hyperbole. ‘We have liberated Paris, but it’s 600 miles to Berlin.’ ”
That season, the Bills beat the Houston Oilers, 17-10, on New Year’s Day 1989 in their first home playoff game since New Year’s Day 1967. Then the Bills lost to the Bengals, 21-10, in the AFC championship game in Cincinnati.
And now comes another postseason for the Bills of Buffalo. Once more, it is 600 miles to Berlin.
Where else would you rather go?
