Jan 31, 1994
So what manner of damnable curse is this, anyway, that hangs over the tortured, luckless Bills of Buffalo?
Their torment continued without abate last eventide in a football game of some importance.
The haughty Cowboys toyed with them - almost cruelly, it seemed - and then stepped on them, grinding down with their booted heels, and you can probe for all manner of explanations, but the most inescapable one is this:
Thurman Thomas.
And, parenthetically, Emmitt Smith.
Smith enjoyed another productive Super Bowl , while Thomas stumbled through yet another horror.
He burped up the ball twice, in most inopportune moments, thereby contributing a full one-third of the Cowboys' point total of 30.
His second fumble was the most decisive play of the game.
It led to the touchdown that enabled Dallas to tie the game, and it began a deluge of 24 unanswered Cowboys points.
He had no run of serious consequence.
At a time when his team needed him most, he was observing from the sideline. Leg cramps were alleged.
It is unfair, of course, to weigh down just one single soul with the terrible guilt of four consecutive Super Bowl defeats. Defeat, after all, is the offspring of many.
But there is no getting around the notion that, of all of the Bills, Thomas, for whatever the perverse reason, has been singled out for special haunting.
The most glaring difference in this game was between the two running backs:
Two touchdowns for Smith; two fumbles for Thomas.
Smith finished the game joyously scrubbing the starch out of Jimmy Johnson's concrete coif and getting named MVP. Thomas finished the game kneeling in despair, his shaven head bowed. Surely he must have been wondering: What have I done to deserve this?
His is one of those unfathomable cases of an athlete who excels in the regular season, who is heroic in the playoffs, but then, in what we quaintly refer to as the ultimate game, is reduced to stumbling, lurching ineptitude.
The torment of Thurman Thomas began even before the first kickoff of what has become Buffalo's well-documented trip through hell.
Four Supes ago, in Tampa Bay, he missed the Bills' first possession
because, of all things, he said he couldn't find his helmet.
It was inexcusable. You simply don't misplace your hat seconds before the most significant game of your career.
The Bills lost that game, when a field goal missed by about the width of Thomas' helmet.
It seemed to set the tone for what has followed.
The Bills have now been buried in Florida, in Minnesota, in California and in Georgia. They have lost under the night sky and under a dome.
And in every Super Bowl , Thomas, so productive as runner and receiver in virtually every other game, has been a factor only by contributing to defeat.
He has reacted churlishly to what has befallen him, but you can forgive him his snarling, for he and the Bills have kept pushing that big rock up that steep hill, only to have it fall back on them.
Thurman Thomas is the Sisyphus of football.
Last night, he and the Bills gave us The Big Tease.
There was an unmistakable tenor to this game right from the start that these were not the Bills of past loathsome Super Bowls .
They had worn a quiet confidence and ease like a comfortable sweater all week, and they came out playing as though they knew something the rest of us didn't.
Buffalo tried to make Dallas' breathtaking speed on defense work against itself. The Bills used mis-direction and ran counter plays inside, with Thomas taking a handoff from Jim Kelly, then pivoting back the other way.
In the first half, Kelly avoided the vapor lock and brain cramps that have afflicted him in past Super Bowls . He threw only one pass that could have - and should have - been intercepted.
He was in a nice groove, a comfortable rhythm, and the out pattern seemed always to be open, either to his wide receivers or to his running backs. Time after time, Kelly completed sideline passes, and it became obvious that the Bills felt they could work over the left corner, the station of Kevin Smith.
The Cowboys said that if Thomas still were running in the fourth quarter, then they would be in trouble.
Well, Thomas wasn't running in the fourth quarter.
He had been taken out of the game, literally and figuratively.
The Bills, to the frenzied delight of their long-frustrated backers, took an unaccustomed 13-6 lead into the locker room, and you could see their confidence swelling. They began to believe that deliverance might, finally, be at hand.
After all, all of the things that used to conspire against them in this game now were turning their way.
Thomas had fumbled, true, and there was a groan from Bills backers. You knew what they were thinking: Oh, no, here we go again.
But Buffalo's defense had limited the price of that turnover to three points. In the past, it would have been the beginning of the end.
Kelly's interception?
No, it slithered through one defender, and then the ricochet, hanging there invitingly, also was muffed by a Dallas defender.
Forced to start from their own 1-yard line, did they self-destruct as they had in the past?
No, they moved the ball, smartly, crisply, out of danger.
When forced to punt, they were given second life. Dallas was flagged for running into the punter, and though the replay showed it to be a questionable call, the point is that it was the Bills catching a break.
And then cashing it in, emphatically, confidently.
On the 17th play of a marathon drive, Thomas made a nifty little skipping sidestep at left tackle, where the hole was clogged, and that one move, with a half-jab step to the left, allowed him to dance into the end zone untouched.
It was the only touchdown of the first half.
And it was the difference, the opposing kickers stalemating each other with two field goals apiece and not a miss.
And here again, you thought things were breaking favorably for the Bills.
Because their first field goal was hugely ambitious. It was from 54 yards away and, frankly, it looked to be a bit chancy so early in the game.
Not to worry. Steve Christie was long and true.
The Bills had done virtually nothing wrong, and survived when they did.
But would the Bills be able to play one more pristine half?
The answer was quick enough in coming.
Thomas fumbled again, the ball hacked away from him by Leon Lett - who knows a little about erring in public himself - and there was James Washington, the safety, picking it up and running a giant Z that covered 46 yards and concluded in the end zone.
Fifty-five seconds into the second half, and it was 13-13, and you just knew what was coming.