The Best of One Bills Drive - Jan. 5, 1992

(Greg D. Tranter and Budd Bailey have written a book about the history of the football stadium in Orchard Park called "One Bills Drive." It is scheduled for publication by Reedy Press around October 15. The books covers the top 50 games played in the stadium's history from 1973 until January 2025. However, there are several other games that qualified as thrilling - but they couldn't crack the top 50. Those contests deserve to be remembered too, so we'll offer them in this space a couple of times per week during the season.)

Score by Quarters

                                          1        2       3        4       Final

Kansas City (L)                       0        0         7        7        14

Buffalo (W)                             7       10      7       13      37

Scoring Summary

Quarter – Team – Play

1 – Bills – Kelly 25-yard pass to Reed (Norwood kick)

2 – Bills – Kelly 53-yard pass to Reed (Norwood kick)

2 – Bills – Norwood 33-yard field goal

3 – Bills – Kelly 10-yard pass to Lofton (Norwood kick)

3 – Chiefs – Word 3-yard run (Lowery kick)

4 – Bills – Norwood 20-yard field goal

4 – Bills – Norwood 47-yard field goal

4 – Bills – Davis 5-yard run (Norwood kick)

4 – Chiefs – Vlasic 20-yard pass to Jones (Lowery kick)

Recap:

On October 7, 1991, the Bills went into Kansas City with a 5-0 record and the look of a team that was absolutely determined to take one more step than they took the year before, when they lost in the Super Bowl. They left the Missouri city thoroughly embarrassed, thanks to a 33-6 beatdown by the Chiefs. Kansas City scored the game’s final 23 points while holding the Bills to 11 first downs and 211 yards in total offense.

The loss didn’t seem to bother Buffalo for the rest of the regular season. The Bills finished with a 13-3 record and home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs. You’d have to think the members of theeam had a smile on their faces when their opening postseason matchup was finalized. Yes, those same Kansas City Chiefs were coming to town. They were carrying the same gameplan that had worked in the fall – run, run, run.

“It’ll be a different game than the last time,” Bills linebacker Shane Conlan said. “But it’s still going to be a close game. I don’t see it turning around with us blowing them out. It’s just going to be a tough football game.”

Conlan wasn’t much of a prophet. As dominant as the Chiefs were in the first meeting between the teams, they were no match for the Bills in the rematch.

Buffalo set the tone immediately. Jim Kelly hit Andre Reed with a 25-yard pass for the first score of the game. Early in the second quarter, the Kelly-to-Reed combination doubled its fun with a 53-yarder to go up by a score of 14-0. The second play came off an audible at the line of scrimmage by Kelly.

“Jim saw something out there,” Reed said. “I think it was a running play, but he saw a look out there that was perfect. It was just my job to beat the guy and go to the post, and he (Kelly) threw a perfect pass.”

Scott Norwood added a field goal before halftime, and the intermission didn’t change much. Kelly completed a pass to James Loften for another score to put Buffalo up 24-0. The Chiefs had a good team that knew how to hold a lead, but they didn’t have an explosive offense. That was particularly true when starting quarterback Steve DeBerg left the game with an injury in the second quarter. Kansas City had run up 247 yards rushing in the first meeting, but that formula wouldn’t work now.  

“What we did was simplicity itself,” Bills defensive line coach Chuck Dickerson said. “What they do is try to pick their hole, then look for air. We didn’t give them any air. We weren’t going to let them knock us off the ball like they did in the first game.”

Kansas City got on the board when Barry Word ran it in from the 3. Then the Bills made sure there was no comeback. They had three different scores in the fourth quarter to go up by 30 points. Mark Vlasic threw a meaningless touchdown pass to make the score near the end of the game a little more respectable, but the Bills still had sent a powerful message to the rest of the league that they hadn’t lost anything from the previous year.

Many football games are decided at the line of scrimmage, and this one qualified. Buffalo obviously received a major boost from the return of Bruce Smith and Jeff Wright to the defensive line; they missed the first meeting between the teams. The Chiefs’ quarterbacks were under constant pressure, particular when the Bills grabbed the lead. It led to Vlasic throwing four interceptions in the last game of his NFL career.

For the Chiefs, whose season ended at 11-7, the loss emphasized how one-dimensional their offense had become. Nevertheless, Kansas City Coach Marty Schottenheimer said turnovers were more the problem than the lack of offense.

“The thing that hurt us was the same thing that hurt Buffalo when we played the first time this year,” Schottenheimer said. “And that is turnovers. You can't turn it over against any good team. It will always get you.”

On the other side of the ball, the Bills held the edge as well.  “When we played then the last time, they put pressure on us all night,” Kelly said. “But our offensive line was determined today. They opened holes for the running game and they gave me time to throw. They played a great game.”

Put the two sides together, and the result was a one-sided win for the Bills.

“The key was what happened on Monday night,” safety Leonard Smith of the Bills said. “They dominated that game and we didn’t want that to happen again. I don’t think it was so much revenge. It was just going out and getting some respect.”

Noteworthy: The Bills finished with an impressive 29-14 edge in first downs, and picked up twice as many yards in total offense (448 to 213). … DeBerg finished 5 of 9 for only 22 yards, while Vlasic was 9 of 20 for 124 yards and four interceptions.  … Kelly was 23 of 35 for 273 yards with three interceptions of his own. … Buffalo’s starting wide receivers – Reed, Lofton and Don Beebe – caught 13 passes. Thurman Thomas ran for exactly 100 yards, while teammate Davis had 75 yards of his own. … A playoff game between the teams was the first since the end of the 1966 season, when Kansas City beat Buffalo to advance to the Super Bowl. Schottenheimer was a backup linebacker for the Bills in that game.

Legacy: The Bills didn’t have to go anywhere for the AFC Championship. They were set to host the Broncos with a Super Bowl trip at stake. Kansas City decided to change quarterbacks for the 1992 season, turning to Dave Kreig. The results were the same, as the Chiefs had a good regular season (10-6) but lost in the playoff opener to San Diego.