The 2,003-Yard Odyssey: The Juice, The Electric Company, and an Epic Run for a Record

By Joe Zagorski

“It was a season where the impossible became possible. It was a season where the hard to believe became believable.”

--Marv Levy, Pro Football Hall of Fame Coach.

The 1973 Buffalo Bills made pro football history. They had an offense that broke several important rushing records during that memorable year. And they had a superstar running back by the name of O.J. Simpson, who broke a glass ceiling of sorts by becoming the first man -- and indeed the only man -- to ever rush for more than 2,000 yards in one 14-game regular season. That glory-filled accomplishment provided the celebrated culmination to this epic tale of a week-by-week journey from an initial goal to its triumphant ending.

In The 2,003-Yard Odyssey: The Juice, The Electric Company, and an Epic Run for a Record, several members of that Buffalo Bills team recall their memories of that year. They discuss how that 1973 season began with a bunch of question marks, then how a boast by one of their offensive linemen led to a challenge for the whole squad to address. A major focus in this book are the feats of the incomparable O.J. Simpson, who earned pro football fame and glory with his record-breaking 1973 performance. This story recounts how Simpson set a mark that was thought of by most people to be impossible to achieve. It was an odyssey unlike any other in NFL annals, and it is explored in concentrated depth and detail within these pages.

Joe Zagorski is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America and the Pro Football Researchers Association. He has written several previous books about various teams and players of the NFL. He is also a contributing writer to the website Pro Football Journal and the administrator of the Facebook page, The NFL in the 1970s. He resides in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Marv Levy, who wrote the foreword for this book, is a coaching legend in both the United States and in Canada. He led the Buffalo Bills to four straight Super Bowl appearances from 1990 to 1993. He is also an honored member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798886939156

Book preview

Preface

One age-old sports cliché seems to get repeated on an annual basis, even today. It is the one that claims records are made to be broken. Well, despite its repetition, that timely phrase would be heard once again during the pro football season of 1973. That was the year where one distinct offensive rushing record—one that virtually no one would have ever predicted would fall by the wayside—did.

The annual rushing standard of a typical benchmark of greatness for a pro running back was 1,000 yards, gained on the ground in one year. It still is the same today. And if a runner eclipsed 1,000 yards by a few hundred yards in a 14-game season back in the early 1970s, he was deemed to be one of the better runners in the National Football League (NFL). Such a ball carrier would have earned for himself the potential possibility of winning a conference or a league rushing crown. Certainly, he would be in the running (pun somewhat intended) for those esteemed titles.

An extraordinary designation, however, was seen for the very first time ever in 1973, and it stood out as vibrant proof of the magnitude of pro football rushing excellence and excitement. One man took his place forever in the annals of great athletes with his performance that year. Regardless of what he did or did not do afterwards, the incomparable O.J. Simpson of the Buffalo Bills made a mark on the gridiron that had never been made before.

With every succeeding Sunday in 1973, Simpson racked up carries and yardage in increasing tabulations. Millions of NFL fans nationwide were left wondering by the middle of that year if he was going to do it…if he was going to actually break the 2,000-yard rushing barrier. It seemed almost ridiculous to most football watchers to even contemplate, especially at the beginning of the season.

The very thought that a player might conceivably run for over 2,000 yards in a 14-game regular season was seldom given any serious consideration. But if anyone could do it, Simpson just possibly might be the one.

This book tells the story of Simpson’s epic feat in 1973. It does not go into detail on Simpson’s post-football life and his post-football troubles, however. This is a football history book, first and foremost. And it should be kept in that vein of thought. What happened in the aftermath of Simpson’s gridiron career are for other authors to explore and discuss.

This book, instead, details the challenges and the legendary status that the man called Juice or The Juice faced during his 1973 odyssey. It also lists his successes and challenges in each game, looking in-depth at his big plays, and exploring the many different efforts of his teammates, which had a lot to contribute to O.J.’s extraordinary rushing record.

This is a story that focuses much of its attention on Buffalo’s offense, and naturally so. But the Bills’ defensive players still had a major say in how that season developed. Thanks to the Buffalo defense putting forth one of their best collective efforts in years in 1973, the team’s offense kept gaining possession of the ball more and more. Both sides of the line of scrimmage therefore receive their due attention within these pages.

But the primary focus here is naturally the man who handled the ball the most in 1973, the great O.J. Simpson. O.J. was a celebrated athlete and a highly recognized television personality across the nation, even well before he achieved his phenomenal rushing record and league immortality in 1973. He won the Heisman Trophy while as a senior at the University of Southern California in 1968. He had won the pro football rushing title in 1972 with 1,251 yards. His achievements extended well beyond the stage of football, however.

Simpson regularly showed up on numerous advertising commercials, endorsing products from a company such as the Hertz Rent-a-Car business, where travelers could see O.J. on their television sets, running through airports and dodging a variety of obstacles on his way to securing his ride. Buffalo’s prized tailback was also no stranger to Hollywood, as he appeared in the 1970s and 1980s in a bevy of movies, such as Capricorn One, The Naked Gun, and the famous television mini-series Roots.

It was on American football fields, however, where Simpson earned his first label of stardom, and he knew it. After his playing career was over, he spent some time in the broadcast booth as a popular analyst on ABC-TV’s Monday Night Football. He was a man who was apparently born to be in the public eye, and his popularity seemingly knew no bounds.

In 1985, O.J. received the greatest individual gridiron honor that can be awarded to a person, that of being enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. That honor is a true testament to his greatness, and his epic season of 1973 did much to insure his ticket to Canton, Ohio, the home of the Hall of Fame. Simply put, O.J. Simpson achieved superstar status in the prime of his playing days, and he embraced that status for many years after he hung up his helmet and shoulder pads.

If one gets the feeling that Simpson was first and foremost an individual searching for personal honors, however, one would be greatly mistaken. Simpson may have been a beacon for Madison Avenue and a magnet for a thick and expanding wallet, but on a football field, O.J. was undeniably a team man. He never refused to do anything that his coaches asked of him, from serving as a decoy to draw opposing defensive players toward him while the actual ball carrier was someone else and somewhere else, to breaking out of the backfield and running pass patterns.

He never made any demands on the number of carries that he wanted, or the types of plays that he expected to be run by the Buffalo offense. The bottom line for Simpson was simply that—the bottom line. Whatever it took to make the Bills a winning team, then that would be where O.J.’s mind resided.

Indeed, it was his unselfishness that enticed his teammates to regard him as a natural leader. His teammates knew that he was going to be the man who would have their backs as they went into Sunday’s battles. Regarded as the greatest running back in the NFL during the first half of the decade of the 1970s, Simpson would draw attention from all corners of the league.

Despite this, he always put his blockers and the rest of his teammates first. In their response, his blockers smashed into opposing defenses with a ferocity and a determination that would give their unit a nickname of their own… The Electric Company. They got that nickname because they simply turned on The Juice. Sometimes, O.J. was referred to as Orange Juice Simpson.

The offensive line and the superstar halfback fed off each other, and they succeeded together. It would have been a special kind of sacrifice and teamwork between number 32 (Simpson’s jersey number) and his blockers which helped to make the 1973 season one of the most memorable in Bills history.

Buffalo did not win enough games in 1973 to make the playoffs, but no matter. They did not allow that fact to be detrimental to their frame of mind. They did post an impressive 9-5 record, their best mark in seven years, back when they finished 1966 with a 9-4-1 record. Like any winning team, a winning streak or two comprised a vital part of their season.

The Bills had a foundation in 1972, and that foundation was due to the examples and the performances of Simpson. His league rushing title that year gave his teammates a taste of what could be attainable in the season of 1973. That little bit of a showing of success, that little bit of an instance of foreshadowing, helped to inspire the Buffalo team.

The offensive line, Simpson…indeed the whole team…took the accomplishments of 1972 into the season of 1973. They wanted more victories. They expected more, they earned more, and they got more. The 1973 season was therefore a step up from the previous year.

From the very first day at summer training camp, the 1973 Bills had an accepted method to their desire to succeed. They knew that hard work accompanied winning, and they knew that they could not and would not succeed without hard work. Buffalo, from head coach Lou Saban down to the assistant coaches, the managers, the trainers, the team doctors…heck, even down to the ball boys and the cheerleaders, were intent on sacrificing and giving it their all. They were intent on working their hardest to achieve victory.

In a way, this is a book about those sacrifices that the Bills made in 1973, and their subsequent memories from that year. Whenever you write a retrospective book about a team from several decades ago, you must consider the fact that many of the players that you interview have their own perceptive recollections of events from the past, some of which may not be factual. That is not unusual.

Now 50 years have gone by since 1973, and details are often forgotten by the participants. So are several dates receiving mention, as well as the people/subjects involved in their remembrances, and many other factors which can come into question. Some events are sensationalized and even exaggerated, while others are somehow neglected in favor of some other specifics. You must do diligent research on as many topics as possible prior to the interviewing stage, and you must possess a solid foundation of knowledge regarding your subject.

What you as an author would be most interested in, however, when writing such a book, are the intense personal memories of each player, in the hopes of discovering anecdotes which are believable, and which have never been mentioned or published before. That keeps the story fresh and vibrant. It is not always easy to obtain such aspects of events, because many former players will sometimes just repeat what their teammates may have already stated. Even so, occasionally, you happen to come across a gem of a story, and you know it. That is when you get a great feeling about writing about the past.

The story of the 1973 Buffalo Bills gave me that feeling, even before I began putting pen to paper. I knew that this was a team worthy of celebrations. Several of their surviving players have introspectively looked back into their memory banks, and they have come upon some outstanding stories from that epic season.

Some of them have focused on one or two of Simpson’s exploits, while others stick to memories of what they did or what they themselves experienced. Some players can remember certain quotes from the other players and their coaches, and those quotes are certainly important treasures to add to this narrative. Those quotes give this story a lively feel of the past.

The accomplishment of rushing for a new league record in 1973 by O.J. Simpson has since been broken and eclipsed several times by different running backs on different teams. But Simpson will always be honored as the first man to ever rush for more than 2,000 yards in one season, and in a 14-game season to boot. Also in 1973, The Electric Company earned a moniker that no other future offensive line could possibly claim.

Very few offensive lines have been given a group nickname in all the history of the game. Those that do are incredibly special. Those men who comprised the 1973 Buffalo Bills offensive line were the blockers who made that record-breaking season happen. In that sense, Simpson’s accomplishments are theirs as well. Simpson’s rushing record belongs to his blockers as much as it belongs to the man toting the ball. It was indeed a symbiotic relationship between the running back and those who provided him with an escort. It was that kind of season…1973 in the NFL. The year of The Juice, The Electric Company, and a glorious and memory-filled odyssey in an epic run for a record.

Chapter 1

A Hope and a Goal

Many pro football historians regard the quality and value of the typical NFL game during the early 1970s as a somewhat less than exciting version of the sport, especially when compared to the style of play following the 1978 season, when several new changes in the rules made throwing the ball easier and more popular.

Those rule alterations included new grasping techniques for the offensive linemen, who from 1978 to the present day could (and do) legally extend their arms and grab the jerseys of the opposing defensive linemen, as long as their arms did not (or do not) expand beyond the shoulder width of those charging linemen.

One other new rule in 1978 forbade defensive backs from hitting a wide receiver beyond five yards past the line of scrimmage, thereby giving those pass catchers a veritable carte blanche free pass, as they roamed throughout the defensive secondaries, waiting for the ball to arrive to their destination without being hit.

Those new rules were indeed a dynamic move by the NFL’s Competition Committee, a group of men who were comprised of several influential team owners, several persuasive coaches, and several convincing front office personnel. These new rules were intended to open up the NFL offenses and produce more scoring and more excitement. It would not be the first attempt by the league’s rule makers at trying some measure to generate more excitement into the game, however.

Back in 1972, the rule makers decided to shorten the hashmarks on the field to just 18 and a half feet, which was the length that the goalposts were apart from each other. In between those hashmarks, where each play would begin, lay a major hope for improving the league’s offenses. The thought behind this hashmark relocation was that the offenses would now begin to see more quarterbacks throwing the ball downfield.

What happened in 1972, however, was the exact opposite. The new hashmark placement allowed more room for running backs to run…on every single play, regardless of what type of running play was used. By season’s end, a total of 10 running backs rushed for over 1,000 yards in a 14-game schedule, which was a new league record at that time. Moreover, three more running backs came to within 100 yards of joining that elite group. Indeed, the 1,000-yard plateau was the gold standard in those days for the men carrying the ball. Anything more than 1,000 yards would lead to various levels of agreeable greatness for those runners.

O.J. Simpson, the starting halfback for the Buffalo Bills, had enjoyed his first great season in 1972, when he managed to lead the entire National Football League in rushing for the first time ever in his career. The University of Southern California product rushed for 1,251 yards that year, his fourth season in pro football, and he accomplished that total minus several key starting performers along his team’s offensive line. Buffalo’s blockers in 1972 were banged up, to say the least.

Most of them missed more than a handful of games due to various injuries, and those blockers who were able to play often took their stances at a different position from where they played in their previous game. That offensive line earned the nickname the Line of Strangers, due to their unfamiliarity with each other and their new positions. By season’s end, the Buffalo offensive line also surrendered a total of 49 quarterback sacks. Simply and honestly put, the Bills blockers were not particularly good in 1972.

Most experts recommended that if a running back were ever to lead the NFL in rushing, he would have to run behind the services of several blue-chip starters along that team’s offensive line, and those men had better stay healthy all throughout the year. Buffalo did not have many of those types of players during the 1972 season. Nevertheless, Simpson managed to become the league’s most productive rusher in 1972. That fact alone stands out as a powerful but often overlooked testament to his greatness.

True, the Bills did have some fairly good players on their offensive line, like 6-foot-4, 235-pound rookie guard Reggie McKenzie. But even he needed better linemates to really excel as a blocker. Simpson nevertheless made the most of whatever interference his line could offer in 1972, and he managed to accomplish quite a few stellar runs into the opposing defensive secondaries that year. Everyone in the know, however, acknowledged that if Simpson was going to have another great year in 1973, he would certainly need more consistent blocking help.

Great things were expected from O.J. Simpson from the moment that the Heisman Trophy winner out of the University of Southern California appeared on the pro football scene back in 1969. Yet it took until 1972 for him to really prove that he had the abilities to excel against tough NFL competition. Simpson led the league in rushing for the first time in his career in 1972 with 1,251 yards.

Photo courtesy of Joe Zagorski collection.

Buffalo head coach Lou Saban admitted that too. Like all head coaches, he made a list of goals going into the new season for his team and for his individual players. Saban naturally wanted to see Simpson repeat as the league’s rushing champion in 1973. To do that, Saban would first and foremost have to select some high-quality offensive linemen in the annual NFL Draft. This Saban did, and his decisions on making the right selections on draft day would indirectly lead to success beyond what anyone thought was possible.

You see, having a losing team one year is not always a terrible thing, especially if your team can somehow make good use of its higher drafting position and choose several strong candidates, to address your team’s most evident needs. Saban accomplished that feat during the 1973 off-season, thanks to the draft.

The players whom Saban picked were young men with strength, speed, and a clear ability to do their job well as their most telling qualities. Once these rookies showed what they could do in spring workouts, optimism among the coaches and the other players increased. Saban saw this glass half full frame of mind as something that needed to be latched onto and—lo and behold—everyone in the Bills organization did so.

Saban had to feel a sense of optimism in the aftermath of the annual college draft. That is because the Buffalo head coach found himself to be the heir of an extra first-round pick, when the Bills traded the services of one of their former and supposedly expendable wide receivers, a guy by the name of Marlon Briscoe, to the Miami Dolphins. Saban used that extra pick to choose stellar offensive guard Joe DeLamielleure out of Michigan State University.

Saban would also use Buffalo’s original first-round pick with the seventh overall choice to obtain the outstanding offensive tackle Paul Seymour out of the University of Michigan. Both DeLamielleure and Seymour were consensus All-Americans in college. Because both men excelled at Big-10 colleges, where running the ball was the primary means of gaining yardage, both DeLamielleure and Seymour would be a natural fit for what Saban wanted his team to do in Buffalo.

There certainly was no doubt or question regarding Saban’s intention for his offense, especially when he decided to convert Seymour into a tight end during preseason. It was not too bold of a move to draft a couple of offensive linemen with your first two picks, especially if you plan to feature your running game as a signature sign of your offense. But moving one of those men into a tight end position…well, that took chutzpah…or desperation, whichever term you think is the most accurate. Nevertheless, Saban’s bold decision for Seymour somehow worked out well for Seymour, for Saban, and for the Bills. Seymour was expected to catch passes like any other tight end, but Saban wanted him at that position mostly because he was a superior blocker.

In effect, Saban would have two outstanding offensive tackles lining up right next to each other on many plays, with Seymour taking his three-point stance alongside either right offensive tackle Donnie Green or left offensive tackle Dave Foley. This lineup in turn would make those outside sweep runs that O.J. Simpson enjoyed so much to become very successful. Yes, Seymour was going to be a positive addition for Buffalo’s running game.

But it is important to note that Seymour was not really a stranger to the tight end position. He served as a tight end in his first two years in college, and he knew enough about the position to know how to fight his way off the line of scrimmage and to run a pass pattern.

But he also played enough at the offensive tackle position during his final two years at college to be able to perform exceptionally well as a run and pass blocker if Saban needed him to spend time at both the tight end and the offensive tackle positions. Truth be told, if pressed, Seymour could probably have played well as an offensive guard if Saban even required him to play that position. He was that athletic.

Almost overnight, the Bills went from a good offensive line in the preseason of 1973 to an outstanding offensive line by midseason. By season’s end, they were deemed by most experts to be a great offensive line, and the outlook for Simpson’s future rushing statistics naturally followed suit. That was certainly Saban’s hope for 1973. He wanted his team to proceed along the road of continual improvement, both as a team and as individuals on his roster.

Saban certainly was feeling hopeful by Seymour’s transitional efforts throughout Buffalo’s summer training camp. The rookie was impressing his coaches on the practice field at Niagara University, where the Bills held their July and August practices in 1973. Seymour would be catching passes from the likes of quarterbacks Dennis Shaw and Joe Ferguson, who was also a rookie, but who nevertheless put forth a strong challenge for the starting quarterback position. Moreover, O.J. Simpson’s efforts certainly did not go unnoticed this summer either.

Standing out as Buffalo’s only real superstar, Simpson displayed his speed and his agility all throughout training camp, and he would go on to give the team and the city itself a solid jolt of notoriety and fame in 1973 that it did not possess since the mid-1960s, when the Bills managed to win back-to-back American Football League (AFL) championships in 1964 and 1965.

Simpson was a magical performer, and his size and speed were nearly perfect for a glittering tailback. He stood 6-1, and he weighed 212 pounds. He ran the 40-yard dash in the speedy time of 4.5 seconds. He was the type of runner who could take a pounding, and yet still could outrun seemingly leaner and faster defenders in a race downfield. That is what happened time after time in 1973. But there was much more to the man than just his athletic prowess.

Simpson led by his own example on displaying to anyone who observed him how the team’s results came first in his mind. He knew that he ranked in the upper echelon of superstars in the league. Even so, he never let his fame or his national notoriety overtake his feelings about his teammates. He knew that he was just one man, and he was a team player, through and through.

He would go out of his way to be nice to his teammates, recalled Buffalo offensive tackle Dave Foley. And certainly, to his offensive line…that would be my viewpoint. I saw him go out of his way to be nice to everybody in that locker room. His kindness sure made us want to block like hell for him.1

It was difficult—perhaps impossible—to find any player on that Bills team who would disagree with Foley’s assessment of Simpson. Many of the players were more than likely to be intimidated by Simpson’s fame and status. To his credit, however, O.J. made even those players, many of whom were rookies or free agents, feel like they were his equal. That is often one of the first and most common displays of a person’s leadership traits.

O.J. was the best teammate that you could ever have, admitted future Hall of Fame offensive guard Joe DeLamielleure. He was beyond humble. He was a good man. And if you asked him to do anything, he would do it for you.2

Coach Saban certainly knew what he wanted his offense to do. He wanted his offense to feature more runners than just Simpson as his lone ball carrier 100 percent of the time. The Buffalo offense needed to include other players in the running game, at least to a small degree, for nothing more than a change of pace to keep the opposing defenses guessing. Those different runners included a guy like starting fullback Larry Watkins, who was brought to Buffalo in an offseason trade with the Philadelphia Eagles. Saban used the 6-foot-2, 230-pound Watkins mostly in the early part of the 1973 season, and the head coach knew that a veteran like Watkins would give his team some much needed depth in the offensive backfield.

Another running back would surface a little later in the regular season, however, and he was a step above Watkins. Jim Braxton, a 6-2, 243-pound fullback, quickly became one of the best blocking fullbacks in the entire NFL. On the several occasions in each game that he was handed the ball, the beefy Braxton plowed into would-be tacklers with an explosion, and with his legs driving him forward like a churning locomotive.

Those defenders were often seen in many feeble attempts to hold on to him while he dragged them downfield. But carrying the ball was not really Braxton’s main duty on the team. He was in the lineup primarily to block for Simpson, and he certainly did that very well. When Braxton blocked men even larger than himself, it was a scene to behold. The holes in the defensive line opened wide in a mere instant.

Having Jim Braxton in our lineup was huge, explained Buffalo starting right offensive tackle Donnie Green, himself a giant of a man at 6-7, 272. We had a lot of quick-hitting plays, and he was the perfect blocker for those types of plays.3

To truly gauge how well a fullback like Braxton, or a group of offensive linemen like DeLamielleure, Green and McKenzie could block, one must have seen them perform in an actual game. Practice scrimmages are a good way to evaluate your players and their abilities, but nothing supersedes how well a player can play better than by seeing them work against an opposing team in an actual game. The same is true for every position on a team.

Coach Saban and offensive line coach Jim Ringo certainly knew this. Both men were on the same page when it came to evaluating their players, especially their offensive linemen. They both wanted to see how long their offensive linemen could sustain their blocks and keep the opposing defensive players from penetrating into the offensive backfield and making tackles. Their outlooks on player evaluations were not the only similarity between Saban and Ringo, however.

Both of those coaches also had previous careers as players in pro football. Saban played for legendary head coach Paul Brown in Cleveland from 1946 to 1949. Ringo starred as a center for the renowned Green Bay Packers of the early 1960s, and under the tutelage of the great Vince Lombardi, Ringo would eventually be enshrined as a Hall of Famer. He had a wealth of knowledge to pass on to his young charges on the offensive line.

Simplicity and repetition were the two biggest and most important keys to whatever Saban and Ringo were instructing their offensive linemen. They wanted a system where ease and understanding could be attained by their blockers almost immediately. Once those linemen learned what the offense was trying to do, by doing it repeatedly for several hours every day at practice, the linemen could almost make those blocks in their sleep.

We only had five basic plays, remembered DeLamielleure. It was a real simple type of system, with sweeps and traps. The goal on most of the plays was to give a double team at the point of attack. We always wanted an extra blocker to go to the point of attack. That extra blocker would help to drive the targeted defender back, and our fullback would kick out the other defensive player who would come up to the line of scrimmage to force the play.4

It was the simple diligence of continual perfection. It was learned by Ringo through Lombardi. You think that you have the play learned? Well keep on running it. Commit it to memory. Know it forward and backward. That was how Lombardi taught his linemen. And it was how Ringo taught his linemen. Ringo passed those blocking theories and ideas that Lombardi was so famous for onto his players in Buffalo.

Now there is the possible problem that comes about when repetition is involved…the problem of boredom seeping into the minds of the players. Starting offensive guard Reggie McKenzie, who was also an All-American from the University of Michigan, knew that he had to look at the big picture of overall success when it came to dealing with practicing the same play over and over again.

There is no substitute for hard, aggressive line play, admitted McKenzie in the early 1970s. It’s just the drive block coming off that ball. One thing that Ringo typified when he played was the determination that you have to have. One thing we learned from him is this self-determination. He’s the type of individual who doesn’t do any hollering. He comes, he tries to talk to you, he says, ‘Hey, I’ve been there, I know when you’re tired. But there’s a certain amount of that work you have to do in order to be good. You have to be determined.’5

That determination was felt throughout the Western New York summer during training camp in 1973, and it permeated the minds and hearts of every member of Buffalo’s roster. The veteran players started to see a new spirit in training camp, brought out by many of the younger guys on the team. Guys with exuberance and hustle. Guys with not only a desire to make the team, but a desire to make the Bills a better team than they had been in quite a while.

The hard work instilled by the coaches was displayed in many of the practice drills, and it produced positive results each day. The offensive linemen knew that they were improving, and they knew that if they kept working hard for Saban and Ringo in summer camp, holes would eventually open up in their games against most of their opponents. Holes in the line of scrimmage would indeed open wide in 1973 for one of the greatest running backs to ever step onto a football field.

Jim Ringo put it all together for us, said Donnie Green. Some of my favorite plays were the 28 sweep, the 48 sweep, and the 44 trap. And having a running back like O.J. made those plays work so well.⁶

The plays certainly worked well in practice. But could they work well in a game? That question had yet to be answered. Back in the early 1970s, every NFL team had at least six pre-season games on their schedule every summer. Buffalo’s first preseason contest was scheduled for August 4 against the Philadelphia Eagles…in Jacksonville, Florida. Jacksonville? Why? The league did not have a franchise there in 1973.

Well, you must consider that during the 1970s, the brain trust at the league office decided to play an occasional exhibition game or two every preseason in a city that did not have an NFL club. It was a way for the league to drum up interest and support for the sport among fans across the nation, even if their hometowns did not have a pro team. Eventually, the league even decided to see how popular pro football was when the NFL sent their product overseas.

In the summer of 1976, the league sanctioned a pro football game to be played in Japan, and in the summer of 1978, another game was also played in Mexico City. As a result of this futuristic-minded experimentation, a pre-season game in an American city that did not possess a pro team was not that big of a deal. Coincidentally, that Bills-Eagles pre-season game in 1973 also foreshadowed the next logical step in 1995, when the city of Jacksonville would be awarded with an NFL franchise of their own.

Now you must realize that pre-season games were also not considered by most fans to be that big of a deal, especially back in the early 1970s. One reason why is because they were—and frankly still are—-typically filled with mistakes, fumbles, interceptions, and penalties. Lots and lots of penalties. And that is because every team is trying out a bunch of rookies who will see a lot of playing time during those exhibition games. Those younger players without a lot of pro experience are typically the ones who make plenty of blunders,