Joeseph Valerio - Second to None: The Relentless Drive and the Impossible Dream of the Super Bowl Bills

For my DC, Being next to youAll those Sundays, all those playing fields, all those great times in our lifeHas been my greatest joy

You know what they say about the six degrees of separation? Up here its about three degrees of separation. Everybody is connected. Everybody knows somebody. Fans and players.

Dick Zolnowski

Buffalo Bills season-ticket holder since 1969

Contents

Foreword by Steve Tasker

L et me tell you how I became a Buffalo Bill.

I was on the waiver wire with the Houston Oilers because I had been injured, and league rules say you have to be on the waiver wire for 24 hours. They put me on Thursday night at 5:00 pm , and Friday morning when I came in, Jerry Glanville, the Oilers head coach, said there was a phone call for me and that I had been picked up by Buffalo.

I picked up the phone, and this guy on the phone said, My name is Bo Shempley of the Buffalo Bills, and then he asked, Has your agent called you about being picked up by Buffalo?

I said, no, he hadnt. The fact was I didnt have an agent. And he continued, Well call you back in about a half hour because were going to fly you into Buffalo this afternoon.

This was a real shocker and disturbing because I had invited my parents to Houston for the game that Sunday. To make a long story short, I eventually learned from a teammate that it wasnt anyone from the Buffalo Bills on the phone at all, but the Houston conditioning coach playing a joke on me.

The irony of all this is that when I got home that day, the first message on my answering machine was from Bill Polian, the Bills general manager. And this time it was real.

I couldnt help but smile when he told me the news. The next morning I got on a plane and flew to Buffalo and never looked back. People used to ask me if I was unhappy to be going to a team with a 214 record. Not at all, I would tell them. I was proud that somebody wanted me to play for them.

What I didnt know back then was how much my life was going to change and all for the better. I had grown up in a small town in Kansas called Smith Center, where I played football, basketball, and ran track in high school and later married my high school sweetheart, a cheerleader. If all this sounds very storybookish, it really was. I made my way to Dodge City Community College and then to Northwestern before the Oilers selected me in the ninth round of the 1985 NFL Draft as the 226 th player chosen. I wasnt even in Houston for two years before I got the call from Buffalo. But that turned out to be the best call of my life. And the same can be said for just about every one of us who played for the Buffalo Bills in those golden days.

What Joseph Valerio has done here is bring all of us, players and fans and front office people alike, back to that special time for all of Buffalo. And we really did feel like we were second to none. We were all in it together. Buffalo was much more of a small town than a big city. Fans would travel for hours to come to our games, even if it meant driving through snowstorms or sitting in arctic conditions. Long before the Seattle Seahawks celebrated their 12 th Man, we knew we had ours everywhere we looked around Ralph Wilson Stadium and throughout the greater Buffalo area.

Youll meet so many of them here, the fans who are the backbone of sports. Fans who would never miss a game and traveled to our Super Bowls. Fans who couldnt wait for training camp to open or for next Sunday to come. Fans who took such pride in our performance and made us feel like part of their families.

Red, white, and Bills blue were the colors of upstate New York. Youd stop at a traffic light, and the fellow in the car next to you would roll down his window to tell you were going to win this Sunday. It was like that week after week, year after year, for an amazingly long time as we went to four straight Super Bowlssomething that had never been done before and has not been done since.

We were able to do this not just because we had great players but because we had great people. The bonds we forged off the field carried us forward on the field. So many of us lived together in Buffalo during the offseason, and so many of us still do, long after our careers have ended because the people of Buffalo have made this a special place through their hard work and dedication, and they still embrace those small town values that I grew up with.

There was a lot more to those Buffalo Bills than those gamedays. And its all here in this book you are holding. Step back in time with us, as we begin our relentless drive to the Super Bowl.

Steve Tasker

Introduction by Marv Levy

I n this book, Second to None , Joe Valerio has done a magnificent job in capturing the focus, the character, and the unique qualities of those sterling Buffalo Bills teams of the early 1990s. He has also reawakened for meand he will for all those great football fans in Buffalo and elsewhere alsomany fond memories and many emotions that we all experienced during our never-give-up quest for that impossible dream. He has also conveyed, in real life, examples for everyone who reads this book, a mantra that I always presented to that remarkable group of men whom I am so proud and grateful to have coached, and that mantra is: Football doesnt build character. It reveals character.

While almost every good football fan is undoubtedly aware that those Buffalo Bills of the early 1990s were the only team in the history of the National Football League to play in four consecutive Super Bowls, this is a story about much more than just wins and losses. Yes, getting to the Super Bowl was exhilarating. And then losing those games was emotionally crushing.

But what did all the members of our team and organization do after experiencing those heartbreaking losses? Did they just lie there and whimper? Did they give up? Did they throw in the towel? Never! With an almost unparalleled resolve, back at it they went. The road back wasnt an easy one to travel, and Joe Valerio does a wonderful job of providing insights into the character of the people who rose to the challenge. And on that journey, with rare exception, those great Buffalo Bills fans played a role in providing unwavering support for our team. I can, however, recall one minor exception.

That exception came on the Monday after our second loss, when a listener to a call-in show on which I was appearing called in and pleaded, Coach, please dont go back to next years Super Bowl game. I cant stand the agony I have felt after we lost these two games. I cant even muster what it takes to go back to work the next day. Please dont go back.

My response was, Sir, I understand your anguish. I share it. ButIm glad youre not on my team.

And so, once again, back to work we went. And along the way on that renewed quest, the Buffalo Bills, a wild-card playoff team that year, had to, in the first round of the playoffs, fight their way back from a 353, third-quarter deficit in order to win the game. It was the greatest comeback victory in the history of the NFL. After that we still had to win two more road playoff games in order to make it back to Super Bowl Sunday. Somebody said that it couldnt be done, but we did it!

And so, what could be a more perfect title for a book than the one that Joe Valerio has embraced in order to bring us this entire story about a group of players who, in my mind, truly were Second to None .

Marv Levy

1. Coalescing in Jim Kellys Man Cave

D eep into the night, they kept streaming into Jim Kellys house on Hillsboro Drive, out in the woods of Orchard Park, a short drive from Rich Stadium where, just hours before Kelly and his teammates had demolished the Los Angeles Raiders 513 to win the AFC championship and earned a trip to the Super Bowl the following Sunday.