Our thoughts on Jim Kelly when he fled for the USFL

[T master]

3 hours ago, oldmanfan said:

We thought he was a jerk to put it mildly

 

TO put it mildly for sure !! I was so pissed when he just dissed the Bills & he was pretty open about not wanting to play here in a way i'm kind of hoping that the USFL screwed the pants off of him !! 

 

I'm not sure what Pollen told him to finally get him to come here but i know the Bills fans changed his thoughts about the Bills & the city of Buffalo seeing that he is now a permanent fixture in Buffalo .

 

 

[Buffalo_Gal]

3 hours ago, oldmanfan said:

We thought he was a jerk to put it mildly

Yup. 

[Marv's Neighbor]

Having lived in both Houston and Buffalo, he was out of his freakin mind!

[BillsFan1988]

I missed this situation by a few yrs. Lol

[vorpma]

During this time period the Bills Front Office had a horrible reputation dealing with players and negotiating contracts. Stew Barber, an All Pro Tackle from the AFL days handled all negotiations and totally dropped the ball losing many - Cousineau, Cribbs, Kelly, and we almost lost Haslett (remember the bumper sticker "Pay Haslett and cut Barber).  Fred Smerlas wrote that Barber resented the raising salaries and the players receiving what be assessed as unreasonable and inflated paychecks for playing football and actually openly displayed his hostility. Not sure if Barber was still in place for the Kelly debacle for Bill Polian slowly turned it around. 

[Freddie's Dead]

Think fax machine in Office Space (Die Mutha.....)

[Bing Bong]

2 hours ago, T master said:

I'm not sure what Pollen told him to finally get him to come here but i know the Bills fans changed his thoughts about the Bills & the city of Buffalo seeing that he is now a permanent fixture in Buffalo .

Probably him being jobless in a failing league that couldn't afford him was a pretty strong persuasion tactic.

 

"You know you HAVE to play for the Bills if you want to make good money playing football right? We packed you some cold weather clothes. You're gonna love home field advantage here after a few years bud."

Edited March 5, 2019 by BarkleyForGOATBackupPT5P

[Dopey]

4 hours ago, oldmanfan said:

We thought he was a jerk to put it mildly

Very Mildly!   

[BillsFanNC]

As a teenager I remember being pissed when he jilted the Bills for the USFL, and then getting depressed reading about him tearing up that league every week, especially while Marino was doing the same in the NFL. Meanwhile we suffered with the likes of Joe Defek, Vince Ferragamo and Bruce Mathison. It was brutal football mired at a level we've never even approached during our current two decade run of relative mediocrity/irrelevance. 

 

Still, an even more vivid memory was when he signed with the Bills and all the local stations covered his plane landing at the airport and the fans lining the 33 and thruway overpasses cheering with hastily made signs. I was also lucky enough to score tickets to his first game as a Bill. Rich stadium was rocking when he came running out of the tunnel. Good times.

[wagon127]

We should find the Two Bills Drive archive threads from 1984!

[Peevo]

3 hours ago, cwater10 said:

Your question may have been best answered by Roger Waters and David Gilmour in 1979

 

"I don't need no arms around me

And I dont need no drugs to calm me.

I have seen the writing on the wall.

Don't think I need anything at all.

No! Don't think I'll need anything at all.

All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.

All in all you were all just bricks in the wall."

 

It was easily the most dispiriting time ever to be a Bills fan.  The drought of 2000 -2017 was mind numbing mediocrity for the most part.  This was something quite different.  For Baby Boomer Bills fans, the 10 year period from 1976 - 1986, the experience of waking up every day to read the Courier Express, watching a 4 minute local sports report (or 3) every evening, just trying to live the good life of being a Bills fan,  was brutal.  And strangely, it was also wonderful.  It was, as Marv would eventually say, exactly where and when we wanted to be.  It was like a twisted dream that drew on emotions that would have been expected from...  let's say: The Great Depression, Woodstock, and some other horrific historical reference that was so inhumane, that a football metaphor would be completely and irresistibly inappropriate for.  By the time Jim opted for the USFL and declared that being drafted by Buffalo made him cry, it was just another brick in the wall.  Still, it somehow made viscous cosmic sense to Bills fans just like losing that 4th Super Bowl did. 

 

In 1976, we came crashing to earth from the euphoric ride of the OJ era.  First OJ held out and demanded to be traded to LA.  Then, on the eve of the opener, he signed with Buffalo once again, and all seemed normal.  We all exhaled that the thrill ride of OJ would continue and at least the offense would keep us on the edge of our seats.  After a 2-2 start, Fergy suffered a broken back somewhere in that haze, and they never won again.  2 -12 in 1976 led directly to 2-12 in 1977.  OJ tore up his knee, and would never again be relevant (until he was again... in ways that we could not believe, until we had to believe it).  Because of prior trades and expansion, those twin 2-12 finishes did not even net us a #1 overall pick.  Instead we drafted Phil Dokes.  Remember him?  If you do, it's just scar tissue.  If you don't, there is good reason. 

 

Finally, 1979 brought us a good break and the OJ trade gifted us the #1 pick overall.  After much fanfare, we selected a linebacker, Tom Cousineau from Ohio State.  Cousineau was apparently a role model for future Buffalo highly drafted stars.  He said thanks, but no thanks and opted to sign with the freakin' Montreal Allouettes of the CFL.  Seriously...  we lost the #1 overall pick to the CFL.  Can you imagine the Twitter meltdown if that happened today?  Yep, it was another brick in the wall to feed tortured Bills fans souls.  More hemlock please!

 

Somehow the Bills landed on their feet and had a great draft anyway, landing foundational players in Jerry Butler, Fred Smerlas, Jim Haslett, Jeff Nixon and good depth in Rod Kush and Ken "Baby" Johnson.  A pleasant 1979 turnaround to an encouraging 7 - 9 (sound familiar), actually did usher in a brief period of Woodstock like euphoria for Bills fans.  1980 began with breaking the Miami "curse" of the 1970's (0-20).  The curse was every bit as vile in the 70's as "The Drought" was for modern day Bills fans.  Soon the city was all singing "Talking Proud" and players were dancing and partying on field.  Goal posts came down.  Chuck Knox was the football messiah that we had been dreaming of.  With the # 1 defense and Ferguson in a groove, Super Bowl dreams were real, even likely.  And then more bricks....  Fergy with a gruesome ankle injury on the eve on the playoffs followed by an apparent playoff victory in San Diego blown up in shocking and sudden Billsy fashion as Rod Smith (who?) goes like 85 yards with a minute left.  WTF?  Another playoff season followed in 1981.  1982 arrived with promise of more playoff fun, and the Bills started 2-0 after a thrilling come from behind home victory over Minnesota on Thursday night.  Times were good, right.  Look out!  INCOMING BRICKS!

 

At that point the NFL Players went on strike for a month or two, and nothing was ever the same for Bills fans.  For added foreshadowing effect, 3 days after that thrilling Bills victory over Minnesota, the beloved Courier Express just went out of business.  The player strike followed a day later.  Bricks everywhere!  When the smoke cleared the Bills were a mess and just tanked the rest of the abbreviated season.  After the season ended in misery, Chuck Knox said "get me outta here" and decided that Seattle would be a nice place to live.  An angry Joe Cribbs would soon decide to spend what seemed like an eternity demanding more money or a trade, while checking in daily with reporters from "his mother's home in Sulligent, Alabama", instead of on the field with The Bills.  He would soon take his talents to Birmingham, Alabama of the USFL.  One last ray of hope was that The Bills had recouped some measure of compensation for the Tom Cousineau debacle in the form of an extra first round pick in the upcoming draft when Cousineau decided that The CFL was not so cool and he wanted back into the NFL.  Buffalo traded his rights to Cleveland for a first.  Yes, Cleveland Rocks!  

 

That pick, of course, became Jim Kelly.  A moment of silence to digest the kick in the gut that we all felt when, almost on queue, Kelly turned around and pulled a "Cousineau" and refused to come to town. It really was the final brick in the wall.  1984 brought 2-14.  1985 brought 2-14.  Darcy Regier never imagined this kind of suffering.  

 

So, in summary...  for those of you that were not around, don't remember or maybe don't care, this should give you a sense of why we lined the streets in welcome when Kelly finally came to town in 1986.  The 4 Super Bowls that followed were so great and so Buffalo!  I would not have missed a minute of any of this.  

 

God bless Tim Russert's soul, and "GO BILLS!"

 

 

Wow, and I thought we Millennials had it bad with the 2000's drought. 

 

 

[Albany,n.y.]

At the time I had these thoughts:

1) Same Old Ralph.  Remember, this was only 4 years after the Bills made NFL history by losing the 1st overall pick of the NFL draft to the CFL.  So, it wasn't that much of a surprise that one of their 1st rounders signed with the USFL.  

2) I thought that one of the reasons Kelly went to the USFL was because he didn't want to sit behind Joe Ferguson for a season or 2, he wanted to play immediately.  At the beginning of the 1983 season, Ferguson was entrenched as the starting QB & Kelly was drafted for the future.  Nobody thought that Fergy's talents would fall off the face of the earth in the 2nd half of the 1983 season.  It was assumed Kelly wouldn't be playing if he joined the Bills.

3) I thought that eventually the USFL would fold & Kelly would end up on the Bills.  One game in either 1984 or 1985 I was in my car listening to the Generals/Gamblers game when Kelly went out in the 1st half with a knee injury.  The announcers were speculating Kelly would be out for weeks.  When he started the 2nd half, I knew how tough he was and couldn't wait for him to end up on the Bills.  

 

[Steve O]

4 hours ago, JMF2006 said:

Well said CWater10 

 

That's the perfect Coles notes version  

So yeah, what CWater 10 said on page 1. They were called Cliff notes in the 70's, when did they become Coles notes?

Edited March 5, 2019 by Steve O

[Bing Bong]

53 minutes ago, BillsFanNC said:

As a teenager I remember being pissed when he jilted the Bills for the USFL, and then getting depressed reading about him tearing up that league every week, especially while Marino was doing the same in the NFL. Meanwhile we suffered with the likes of Joe Defek, Vince Ferragamo and Bruce Mathison. It was brutal football mired at a level we've never even approached during our current two decade run of relative mediocrity/irrelevance. 

 

Still, an even more vivid memory was when he signed with the Bills and all the local stations covered his plane landing at the airport and the fans lining the 33 and thruway overpasses cheering with hastily made signs. I was also lucky enough to score tickets to his first game as a Bill. Rich stadium was rocking when he came running out of the tunnel. Good times.

Wow.. I never thought about it, but the man had immense pressure after jilting a team and showing back up to all that fanfare. I know he went off in the USFL.. but cmon, it's USFL. Props to Jim Kelly for having the nads to not skip a beat and give the fan base everything he took from them and more.

40 minutes ago, Peevo said:

 

 

Wow, and I thought we Millennials had it bad with the 2000's drought. 

 

 

Millennial Bills fans are awesome. We have NO reason for it! We're just plowing ahead with 1 playoff game in 20 years. And we ain't band wagoners from the 90s teams either lol. Just aware that good things used to happen for the Bills.

[vorpma]

4 hours ago, cwater10 said:

Your question may have been best answered by Roger Waters and David Gilmour in 1979

 

"I don't need no arms around me

And I dont need no drugs to calm me.

I have seen the writing on the wall.

Don't think I need anything at all.

No! Don't think I'll need anything at all.

All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.

All in all you were all just bricks in the wall."

 

It was easily the most dispiriting time ever to be a Bills fan.  The drought of 2000 -2017 was mind numbing mediocrity for the most part.  This was something quite different.  For Baby Boomer Bills fans, the 10 year period from 1976 - 1986, the experience of waking up every day to read the Courier Express, watching a 4 minute local sports report (or 3) every evening, just trying to live the good life of being a Bills fan,  was brutal.  And strangely, it was also wonderful.  It was, as Marv would eventually say, exactly where and when we wanted to be.  It was like a twisted dream that drew on emotions that would have been expected from...  let's say: The Great Depression, Woodstock, and some other horrific historical reference that was so inhumane, that a football metaphor would be completely and irresistibly inappropriate for.  By the time Jim opted for the USFL and declared that being drafted by Buffalo made him cry, it was just another brick in the wall.  Still, it somehow made viscous cosmic sense to Bills fans just like losing that 4th Super Bowl did. 

 

In 1976, we came crashing to earth from the euphoric ride of the OJ era.  First OJ held out and demanded to be traded to LA.  Then, on the eve of the opener, he signed with Buffalo once again, and all seemed normal.  We all exhaled that the thrill ride of OJ would continue and at least the offense would keep us on the edge of our seats.  After a 2-2 start, Fergy suffered a broken back somewhere in that haze, and they never won again.  2 -12 in 1976 led directly to 2-12 in 1977.  OJ tore up his knee, and would never again be relevant (until he was again... in ways that we could not believe, until we had to believe it).  Because of prior trades and expansion, those twin 2-12 finishes did not even net us a #1 overall pick.  Instead we drafted Phil Dokes.  Remember him?  If you do, it's just scar tissue.  If you don't, there is good reason. 

 

Finally, 1979 brought us a good break and the OJ trade gifted us the #1 pick overall.  After much fanfare, we selected a linebacker, Tom Cousineau from Ohio State.  Cousineau was apparently a role model for future Buffalo highly drafted stars.  He said thanks, but no thanks and opted to sign with the freakin' Montreal Allouettes of the CFL.  Seriously...  we lost the #1 overall pick to the CFL.  Can you imagine the Twitter meltdown if that happened today?  Yep, it was another brick in the wall to feed tortured Bills fans souls.  More hemlock please!

 

Somehow the Bills landed on their feet and had a great draft anyway, landing foundational players in Jerry Butler, Fred Smerlas, Jim Haslett, Jeff Nixon and good depth in Rod Kush and Ken "Baby" Johnson.  A pleasant 1979 turnaround to an encouraging 7 - 9 (sound familiar), actually did usher in a brief period of Woodstock like euphoria for Bills fans.  1980 began with breaking the Miami "curse" of the 1970's (0-20).  The curse was every bit as vile in the 70's as "The Drought" was for modern day Bills fans.  Soon the city was all singing "Talking Proud" and players were dancing and partying on field.  Goal posts came down.  Chuck Knox was the football messiah that we had been dreaming of.  With the # 1 defense and Ferguson in a groove, Super Bowl dreams were real, even likely.  And then more bricks....  Fergy with a gruesome ankle injury on the eve on the playoffs followed by an apparent playoff victory in San Diego blown up in shocking and sudden Billsy fashion as Rod Smith (who?) goes like 85 yards with a minute left.  WTF?  Another playoff season followed in 1981.  1982 arrived with promise of more playoff fun, and the Bills started 2-0 after a thrilling come from behind home victory over Minnesota on Thursday night.  Times were good, right.  Look out!  INCOMING BRICKS!

 

At that point the NFL Players went on strike for a month or two, and nothing was ever the same for Bills fans.  For added foreshadowing effect, 3 days after that thrilling Bills victory over Minnesota, the beloved Courier Express just went out of business.  The player strike followed a day later.  Bricks everywhere!  When the smoke cleared the Bills were a mess and just tanked the rest of the abbreviated season.  After the season ended in misery, Chuck Knox said "get me outta here" and decided that Seattle would be a nice place to live.  An angry Joe Cribbs would soon decide to spend what seemed like an eternity demanding more money or a trade, while checking in daily with reporters from "his mother's home in Sulligent, Alabama", instead of on the field with The Bills.  He would soon take his talents to Birmingham, Alabama of the USFL.  One last ray of hope was that The Bills had recouped some measure of compensation for the Tom Cousineau debacle in the form of an extra first round pick in the upcoming draft when Cousineau decided that The CFL was not so cool and he wanted back into the NFL.  Buffalo traded his rights to Cleveland for a first.  Yes, Cleveland Rocks!  

 

That pick, of course, became Jim Kelly.  A moment of silence to digest the kick in the gut that we all felt when, almost on queue, Kelly turned around and pulled a "Cousineau" and refused to come to town. It really was the final brick in the wall.  1984 brought 2-14.  1985 brought 2-14.  Darcy Regier never imagined this kind of suffering.  

 

So, in summary...  for those of you that were not around, don't remember or maybe don't care, this should give you a sense of why we lined the streets in welcome when Kelly finally came to town in 1986.  The 4 Super Bowls that followed were so great and so Buffalo!  I would not have missed a minute of any of this.  

 

God bless Tim Russert's soul, and "GO BILLS!"

Best post "ever" on TBD; many who B word daily on this board have no idea how bad it was back then!!

[K-9]

3 hours ago, T master said:

 

TO put it mildly for sure !! I was so pissed when he just dissed the Bills & he was pretty open about not wanting to play here in a way i'm kind of hoping that the USFL screwed the pants off of him !! 

 

I'm not sure what Pollen told him to finally get him to come here but i know the Bills fans changed his thoughts about the Bills & the city of Buffalo seeing that he is now a permanent fixture in Buffalo .

 

 

Perhaps the most persuasive thing he said was they’d make him the highest paid player in the league. 

[Rico]

It reinforced my belief that Ralph was a complete and total POS of an owner.

[Bing Bong]

4 hours ago, cwater10 said:

Jim opted for the USFL and declared that being drafted by Buffalo made him cry

hahahahaha he cried.. nice little nugget slipped in there. Probably a good thing the USFL got him introduced to playing football as a job. It ain't college, you can't choose where you go (unless USFL gives you money and choice lol). You go to friggin Buffalo, the guys that drafted you, and you take your money, and you don't cry.. At least until you last until whenever FA became possible.

 

Probably not literally, but still sounds like the maturing was a good stepping stone for him for professional football.

[nucci]

3 hours ago, T master said:

 

TO put it mildly for sure !! I was so pissed when he just dissed the Bills & he was pretty open about not wanting to play here in a way i'm kind of hoping that the USFL screwed the pants off of him !! 

 

I'm not sure what Pollen told him to finally get him to come here but i know the Bills fans changed his thoughts about the Bills & the city of Buffalo seeing that he is now a permanent fixture in Buffalo .

 

 

The Bills owned his rights and Polian wasn't going to trade him. Kelly either plays in Buffalo or sits for a couple of years

[BringBackFlutie]

4 hours ago, nucci said:

Really pissed off

Getting to the Superbowls was great....

 

The real question I'm repeatedly asking myself is...who will kill Tom Brady to make sure he doesn't do it too?