These AFL
Team pages were salvaged from the defunct site
aflfootball.tripod.com,
which inspired my AFL pages. They are dedicated to that
site's creator, Robert Phillips, who has re-created his site at
afl-football.50.webs.com.
The Buffalo Bills began their pro football
life as the seventh team to be admitted to the new American
Football League. The franchise was awarded to Ralph C.
Wilson on October 28, 1959. During their more than three
decades in the AFL and, beginning in 1970, the merged
National Football League, the Bills have experienced
extended periods of both championship dominance and
second-division frustration. The Billsą first brush with
success came in their fourth season in 1963 when they tied
for the AFL Eastern division crown but lost to the Boston
Patriots in a playoff. But in 1964 and 1965, they not only
won their division but defeated the San Diego Chargers each
year for the AFL championship. Head Coach Lou Saban, who was
named AFL Coach of the Year each year, departed after the
1965 season.
Buffalo lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in the 1966 AFL
title game and, in so doing, just missed playing in the
first Super Bowl. Then the Bills sank to the depths, winning
only 13 games while losing 55 and tying two in the next five
seasons. In 1968, the Bills finished a dismal 1-13, but it
allowed the Bills to pick first in the AFL draft and took
Heisman Trophy winner O.J. Simpson from U.S.C. While Simpson
would be the key man in the winning years in the early
1970s, such stars as quarterback Jack Kemp, who later became
a United States Congressman, fullback Cookie Gilchrist and
defensive tackle Tom Sestak played dominant roles in the
1960s.
Through it all, Buffalo fan support has been magnificent.
Attendance demands forced the expansion of the Bills' first
inner-city home, War Memorial Stadium, from 26,000 to 45,748
during the 13 seasons the Bills played there. Through it
all, Wilson has remained as one of the oldest owners, in
terms of longevity, in the entire pro football world.
Bills Facts
Franchise Granted:
October 28, 1959
First Season:
1960
Stadium:
War Memorial Stadium
Head Coach:
Buster Ramsey, Lou Saban, Joe Collier, Harvey Johnson,
John Rauch
AFL Championships:
1964, 1965
AFL Division Championships:
1964, 1965, 1966
All-Time AFL Record:
67- 71-6
Retired Uniform Numbers:
None
Bills' Historical Performance
REGULAR SEASON
YEAR
GP
W
L
T
PF
PA
PCT.
HEAD COACH
1960
14
5
8
1
296
303
0.393
Buster Ramsey
1961
14
6
8
0
294
342
0.429
Buster Ramsey
1962
14
7
6
1
309
272
0.536
Buster Ramsey
1963
14
7
6
1
304
291
0.536
Lou Saban
1964
14
12
2
0
400
242
0.857
Lou Saban
1965
14
10
3
1
313
226
0.750
Lou Saban
1966
14
9
4
1
358
255
0.679
Joe Collier
1967
14
4
10
0
237
285
0.286
Joe Collier
1968
14
1
12
1
199
367
0.107
Joe Collier, Harvey
Johnson
1969
14
4
10
0
230
359
0.286
John Rauch
Bills
Totals
140
65
69
6
2940
2942
0.486
POSTSEASON
YEAR
W
L
PCT.
RESULT
1963
0
1
0.000
LOST AFL
DIVISIONAL PLAYOFF
1964
1
0
1.000
AFL
CHAMPIONS
1965
1
0
1.000
AFL
CHAMPIONS
1966
0
1
0.000
LOST AFL
CHAMPIONSHIP
Firsts, Records, and Odds and Ends
First Regular-Season Game:
A 27-3 loss to the New York Titans, 9/11/60.
First Regular-Season Points:
35-yard field goal by Darrell Harper vs. New York
Titans, 9/11/60
First Regular-Season Touchdown:
One-yard run by Wray Carlton vs. the Denver Broncos,
9/18/60.
First Regular-Season Win:
A 13-0 victory over the Boston Patriots, 9/23/60.
First Winning Season:
1962 (7-6-1)
First Playoff Appearance:
A 26-8 loss to the Boston Patriots in an AFL Eastern
Division playoff game, 12/28/63.
First Championship:
A 20-7 victory over the San Diego Chargers for the 1964
AFL Championship.
First to Rush 100 Yards In A Game:
Art Baker, 117 yards vs. the San Diego Chargers,
12/9/61.
First 1,000-Yard Rusher:
Cookie Gilchrist, 1,096 yards (1962).
First Bill Elected to the Hall of Fame:
RB O. J. Simpson, 1985.
Original Team Colors:
Royal blue and silver.
Copyright 1997-2004 Robert Phillips. All rights reserved.
And in Buffalo, it is
Mike Stratton's hit on Keith Lincoln, springboard to
the 1964 and '65 AFL championships, still the only
titles in the Bills' star-crossed history.
The line comes from
Ralph Waldo Emerson's Concord Hymn. Stratton's
tackle was poetry of a different sort — "one of the most
beautiful tackles I have ever seen in my life," as
Chargers coach
Sid Gillman put it afterward.
San Diego pummeled the
Boston Patriots 51-10 in the 1963 AFL title game,
and many believed Gillman's high-flying offense would
buffalo the Bills in 1964. Sure enough, Lincoln slashed
38 yards on the first play from scrimmage, and the
Chargers jumped to a 7-0 lead on an 80-yard opening
drive.
They were moving again on the
next possession when Lincoln flared out of the backfield
for a
Tobin Rote swing pass. Stratton remembers it in
frame-by-frame slow motion.
"I was running scared," Stratton
recalled recently from his mountain home in Tennessee.
"I knew if Keith caught it before I got there, he could
juke me out of my pants."
Running back, linebacker and ball
arrived in one terrible moment: Stratton lowered his
shoulder, and Lincoln crumpled to the grass, ribs
broken.
"They tell me you could hear it
in the stands," Stratton says. "I thought he just had
the wind knocked out of him; then he didn't get up."
Lincoln was done for the day, and
so were the Chargers. They did not score again in the
1964 title game (Bills 20-7) or at all in the 1965
rematch (Bills 23-0).
The Chargers exemplified the
pinball passing offenses on which the AFL staked its
name. The Bills won their titles with bruising defense
of the traditional
NFL style.
"When you look back, everything
gets rosier," says Stratton, 68, a retired insurance
agent. "But I know we had an excellent, just excellent
defense."
Paul Maguire, one of 20 originals who played in all
10 AFL seasons, played his first four seasons for the
Chargers, largely at linebacker, and six more in Buffalo
as a punter.
"The Bills had Harry Jacobs, John
Tracey and Mike Stratton at linebacker," Maguire says.
"I couldn't beat out any of them. They were so good, and
they were never hurt."
They played behind a talented
line anchored by tackle Tom Sestak and in front of an
active secondary led by safety George Saimes.
"Booker Edgerson and Butch Byrd
were lock-down corners," Maguire says. "That left George
free to roam."
Saimes and Sestak were named to
the all-time AFL team, as was guard
Billy Shaw. Quarterback
Jack Kemp was not, though he personified "The Other
League" on many levels. Kemp is another of the AFL
originals who played in all of its seasons. He also
played in five of its 10 championships, was an AFL
All-Star seven times and the MVP in 1965.
Kemp presaged his political
career, and his belief in supply-side economics, when he
said of his $5,189 player share for the 1965 title game,
"You can't play football forever, so I'm putting my
money in securities."
The Bills' kicker in 1964 and '65
was Hungarian-born
Pete Gogolak, pro football's first soccer-style
kicker.
The New York Giants signed him away in May 1966, an
escalation of the leagues' signing wars that had
previously involved college players. The merger with the
NFL took shape quickly in the weeks after as the leagues
opted not to drain their coffers while trying to outbid
each other for established stars.
Cookie Gilchrist was the AFL's
version of
Jim Brown. In 1963, he ran for 243 yards against the
New York Jets, then a pro football single-game
record. But the Bills traded him to the
Denver Broncos after the 1964 campaign because coach
Lou Saban tired of Gilchrist's headstrong nature.
Saban died in March, Kemp in May.
Maguire says he has done a lot of thinking about his old
friends in the weeks since. Maguire remembers especially
Saban's hurried pregame speech before the 1964 title
game. The referees were telling the Bills to get on the
field. Gilchrist shouted at Saban to get going lest the
Bills be penalized.
"So Saban jumped up on a table,"
Maguire says, "and, I swear to God, this is exactly what
he said: 'I only have one thing to say to you: Heads
down, toes up!'
"And Cookie started to open the
door, then closed it and looked at Lou and said, 'What
the (blank) does that mean?' And Lou said, 'I don't
know, I'm as nervous as you are.' And we all just
started laughing."
Maguire says the Bills hurried
out, still laughing as they passed by the Chargers, his
former teammates, in a narrow hallway outside the locker
rooms.
"Dave Kocourek — we used to be in
the bar business together in San Diego — he looks at me,
and we're all laughing, and he says, 'You think it's
going to be that easy?' And I said, 'David, I don't have
enough time to explain it to you.' And then we went out
and kicked their (rears).
"I never found out if Lou did it
on purpose to get us loose. I don't think so, but
knowing him, maybe he did. Every time I asked, he just
got that grin on his face."
The 1964 and '65 titles were the
last two AFL championships before the
Super Bowl era. The Bills reached a third
consecutive AFL championship game after the 1966 season,
but the Kansas City Chiefs beat them 31-7 for the right
to play in the first NFL-AFL championship game, now
retroactively known as
Super Bowl I. The Bills' glory years faded from
there.
Still, Stratton thinks if the
Super Bowl era had begun one or two years earlier, the
Bills just might have won against the
Cleveland Browns after the 1964 season or against
the
Green Bay Packers in '65.
"I would have relished the
opportunity," Stratton says. "And I would have picked
us."
In a league that was denigrated as a "no
defense" league, the 1964 Buffalo Bills not only
scored the most points that season, they gave up
the fewest, while marching to their first AFL
Championship. Their defense featured the
linebacker corps of Harry Jacobs, John Tracey
and Mike Stratton, who were in the midst of a
67-game run, playing together as a unit. In
front of them, Tom Sestak and the rest of the
"Formidable Four" started their own streak,
going 17 straight games without allowing an
opponent to score a touchdown by rushing.
I'm flattered that USA Today is using the
"charging bison" logo that I designed in 1965.
To see the original, click
HERE.
~
REMEMBER
the
AFL