By Budd Bailey, Buffalo Sports Page Columnist

Steve Christie – Signed by the Bills in 1993

It’s not easy to be a great kicker while playing half your games at Orchard Park. It can be windy and cold there. But Steve Christie beat the odds and had a memorable run with the Bills.

Christie started his career with Tampa Bay, where he displayed a strong leg by going 9 for 11 on field goals from at least 40 yards. That caught the Bills’ eye, because incumbent Scott Norwood didn’t have that sort of range. When Christie became a free agent, the Bills signed him.

He needed little time to make an impression. You might remember his game-winning field goal to beat the Oilers in the “Comeback” game that season. Christie’s shoe from that game is on display at the Hall of Fame in Canton. It was the start of a great nine-year run for Buffalo, with several crucial kicks in that time.

An injury forced the Bills to cut Christie in 2001. He spent three seasons with the Chargers and one with the Giants before retiring. Christie had nine overtime field goals in his career; no NFL player has ever had more.

Here’s a nice interview with him:

(Follow Budd on Twitter @WDX2BB)

Budd Bailey

Budd Bailey has been involved in almost every aspect of the local sports scene for the last 40 years. He worked for WEBR Radio, the Buffalo Sabres' public relations department and The Buffalo News during that time. In that time he covered virtually every aspect of the area's sports world, from high schools to the Bills and Sabres and everything in between. Along the way, Budd served as a play-by-play announcer for the Bisons, an analyst for the Stallions, and a talk-show host. He won the National Lacrosse League's Tom Borrelli Award as the media personality of the year in 2011, and was a finalist for that same award in 2017. Budd's seventh and eighth books, one on the Transcontinental Railroad and the other about Ichiro Suzuki, are scheduled to be released in the fall.

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