January 30, 1994: The Fourth Fall of Buffalo

January 30, 1994: The Dallas Cowboys beat the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXVIII, 30-13 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. That's 2 straight wins for the Evil Ones, and 4 straight losses for the Bills. At this point, the people of Western New York have got to be thinking, "What does a team have to do?"

Actually, they looked for a while like they might do it. Early in the 2nd quarter, Thurman Thomas scored a touchdown, to take a 10-6 lead. On the last play of the 1st half, Steve Christie kicked a field goal. The Bills went into the locker room up 13-6. They were 30 minutes away from victory, from a championship, from redemption.

But less than a minute into the 3rd quarter, Thomas had the ball stripped from him by Leon Lett. There's the redemption for the day: Lett had made a fool of himself against the Bills in the previous year's Super Bowl, though the Cowboys still won big; and had also blundered on national TV on Thanksgiving Day 2 months earlier, costing the Cowboys a game against the Miami Dolphins. James Washington picked the fumble up, and ran it 46 yards for a game-tying touchdown.

It was still only 20-13 Dallas after 3 quarters, but the Bills never scored again. They had 4 more possessions, the 1st 3 ending in punts, and the last with them turning the ball over on downs deep in Dallas territory, and if they had scored, they still would have needed 2 more scores.

The Bills had been to 4 straight Super Bowls. That had never been done before -- although the Cleveland Browns went to 6 straight NFL Championship Games from 1950 to 1955, winning 3. Through the 2021 NFL season, it hasn't been done since.

In 2015, as part of its 30 for 30 documentary series, ESPN premiered The Four Falls of Buffalo, telling of the Bills' history, focusing on those 4 AFC Championship seasons of 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993, and how they each ended with a Super Bowl loss.

The Bills won the AFL Championship in 1964 and 1965, the last 2 before the AFL Champion would face the NFL Champion in the Super Bowl. They lost the 1966 AFL Championship Game, and didn't get to face the Green Bay Packers in what was retroactively named Super Bowl I.

They're still looking. No Buffalo-based team has ever won a World Championship, and the last team from Western New York to do so remains the 1955 NBA Champions, the Syracuse Nationals.

*

January 30, 1994 was, like all Super Bowl days, a Sunday. Baseball was out of season. Bowing to the likelihood of poor TV ratings, the NBA scheduled only 2 games for the day. The New York Knicks beat the Portland Trail Blazers, 103-93 at the Portland Memorial Coliseum. And the Boston Celtics beat the Phoenix Suns, 106-94 at the Boston Garden.

There were 3 games in the NHL:

* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 5-4 at the Montreal Forum. Guy Carbonneau scored the winning goal with 2:31 left in overtime.

* The Washington Capitals beat the Detroit Red Wings, 6-3 at the USAir Arena (formerly the Capital Centre) in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* And the Florida Panthers beat the Buffalo Sabres, 3-2 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.