Fairy tale for Bills as veteran Williams weighs in
After failing to reach the NFL play-offs for 18 years, Buffalo have delighted their fans,
At 300lb, the defensive tackle became the fifth heaviest to rush for a touchdown
On the 30th anniversary of the release of Fairytale of New York, it seems fitting that the Buffalo Bills qualified for the NFL play-offs for the first time in 18 years, breaking the longest post-season drought in American team sports.
Eight of the 12 teams who have qualified for the play-offs this year failed to make the post-season last year. The Bills are by far the most unlikely entrants, needing an improbable sequence of events to qualify. What transpired, including the franchise’s longest-serving player scoring his first career touchdown in potentially his last game in a final-minute heave and hope, would have been considered outlandish by Friday Night Lights standards.
The Bills have long been considered a study in mediocrity; not really big enough to be seen as underachievers, but not bad enough to fall into the basket-case territory occupied by the Cleveland Browns. They just plod along each season, playing an unspectacular brand of football and occasionally bloodying the nose of the New England Patriots, their American Football Conference East rivals. Think of them as the NFL’S Stoke City.
They started Sunday as one of four teams still capable of nabbing a wild-card berth in the AFC, but needed to beat the Miami Dolphins and for the Baltimore Ravens to lose to a Cincinnati Bengals team who had nothing to play for. One bookmaker had the Bills as 200-1 shots.
The first job was to beat the Dolphins in Miami. Perhaps it was destined to be their day when in the third quarter Kyle Williams plunged over from a couple of yards for what proved to be the decisive touchdown. As a defensive tackle, whose job it is to block and push, the 300-pounder became the fifth heaviest player to rush for a touchdown in the NFL.
An exception to the rule of mediocrity, Williams has established himself as the heartbeat of the team during his 12 years with the franchise. At 34 and his contract expiring at the end of the season, this could be his final campaign.
Still, the 22-16 victory was only the first part of the equation. The second part was that they needed the Bengals to upset the Ravens. With less than a minute remaining, the Ravens led 27-24. Cincinnati were in possession but facing a fourth down and 12. Normally teams would punt in this situation, but with nothing to lose the Bengals rolled the dice.
Andy Dalton, the quarterback, has a reputation for freezing in such situations, but on this occasion, the ‘Red Rifle’ stepped up, evaded pressure and threw a perfect dart to the unheralded Tyler Boyd, who slipped through two tackles for a 49-yard touchdown.
The filmed scenes of pandemonium in the Bills’ locker-room were repeated in bars throughout the state of New York. Williams, who had his two sons with him, was in tears but roused himself to give a stirring speech to the team. “Not us, right?” he said. “Not us. Let’s tank it, man. Let’s just be done with it. They don’t know anything about heart. They don’t know anything about work. That’s who we are.”
In the 24 hours after the Ravens defeat, Bills fans donated $57,000 (£42,000) to Dalton’s charity foundation, which helps seriously ill and physically challenged children in Cincinnati. They will now return to Florida on Sunday to face the Jacksonville Jaguars, another franchise who have been in the doldrums for some time.
More than 400 fans gathered at Buffalo airport at 1am with the temperature below -6C to welcome the team back.
“This win is for the city of Buffalo,” Richie Incognito, the Buffalo guard, said. “This is for the people from all walks of life, the average Joes who show up at all our games, in rain, sun, wind, snow, sleet, everything. And all they do is root their a---s off for us.”