no such game. I think you are thinking of the playoff game, when the Bills jumped out to a 24-0 lead to barely hold on 31-27.
Broomulack...I hear ya.......I was 10 years old and in tears after the game...that was my first full season following the Jets. Little would I know 30 years later nothing much would change..
I hear you broomulack. I was 16, looking forward to Christmas vacation, and after they destroyed Green Bay the way they did, I was on such a high. I still get the chills thinking about how the fans stormed the field and took down the goal posts. After the Buffalo loss, it was just an empty feeling. I went to a New Years Eve party and had an absolute blast but even then I was thinking "damn, this would have been so much better if they had pulled it out".
I got a DVD of this game a while back (minus the Harper fumble) I still shake my head thinking as many mistakes as the Jets made, Buffalo was still basically begging them to take the game (Ferguson 4 INT's). There's a lot of blame to go around Harper, Walker, Todd, Gastineau etc but in my mind Harper will always get the goat horns for setting the whole thing in motion.
As a ten year old I remember coming up with 8 or 9 different ways the Jets blew the game. Walker had another big drop too other than the dropped TD. Leahy missed a first half FG which may have made it a 1 point difference on the final drive instead of 4. What about two drives which stalled inside the ten yard line resulting with the 2 FGs instead of TDs. The game actually mirrored their season. Horrible start, nice comeback, missed opportunities.....that Todd INT deep in Bills territory in the third quarter on the first play after a Ferguson INT was a kick in the balls that's hardly ever mentioned.
That was my first full year following them as well. Put you, me, and others like us in a position similar to the younger guys who started following the Jets around 2008-09 - great hope but squashed dreams....ha I remember the high I was on after the Green Bay game too. Went to school the next day (was in 7th grade) and my friends and I were beyond excited. Playoffs!!! Little did we realize the signficance that it had been 12 years since the last playoff appearance, and that the true "same old Jets" were born.
It was my first year as well, I was 6. Looking back that season prepared me for being a Jet fan for the rest of my life. -Starting 0-3 and looking like another playoff-less season(team hadn't been to postseason since '69) -finishing season 10-2-1 but the 2 losses were to 6-10 Seattle -awful start to playoff game, come back to get our hopes up only to dash them in the end Actually the WC game alone kind of summarizes what it's been like to be a Jet fan but I'd never trade it, the day we finally win it will all have been worth it.
Absolutely correct about all those plays. And even during the final drive, the play following the unreal Mickey Shuler 29 yard catch to bring it to the 49, Todd throws into double coverage down the middle (luckily didn't pay for it at that point) when, if you look at the top of the screen, there's a receiver all alone by himself who could have walked in. And also the sack that brought them further back when there was no time to spare. I don't know if that was before the Steve Freeman play or after, I have to look again. Joe Fields changing a wet football for a dry one, and promptly muffing the snap....... you're right,too many to mention
It's true, Seattle at that point were in the Jets' heads. And with my famous 20/20 hindsight if they beat them once (the Dave Krieg game at Seattle, they should have won) they get the bye and we're not even having this disacussion. But, you're right it will be sweeter when they do win it, having gone through this. This forum and discussing this playoff game has been almost therapeutic. It's been a frustrating thing that I could never talk about all these years, and hopefully it will lead to forgiving the Jets for this one. Cause that's what being a Jet fan is being all about, isn't it? hope frustration and forgiving!!
Yeah, if we beat Seattle once we would have been 11-4-1 and tied w/ Miami but since we went 1-0-1 against them we would have won the division and gotten a bye. As frustrating as that Buffalo loss was I always look back on it fondly b/c that was my first year watching the team(knowing what I was watching) and I love seeing anything to do w/ those early 80s teams.
the similarities between this and the Buffalo playoff game are eerie, Shea in a frenzy, stands bouncing up and down, driving down the field with a chance to win and the dreaded pick at the end to finish it.
It was the last time everything was right for the Jets. Playoff bound team. Not sharing THEIR HOUSE with the Giants. Walt Michaels still the coach. No strikes or lockouts. The 98 seson was a great one but to me there was never a better year than 81. I was 3 yrs. old for super bowl 3 so that doesnt count.
On Youtube there was a ten minute highlight reel put together by a Bills fan of that '81 wildcard game with all of the major plays from the televised broadcast. It was actually put together pretty well. Charlie Jones and Len Dawson did the broadcast. However, I just looked for it and I guess Youtube took it down. Too bad....
I remember seeing that also as well as highlights of all of Jerome Barkum's TD's for the year. I hope they reappear someday but I doubt it.
That play sticks out for me as well, a lot of others I'd forgotten about. My dad and I were caught between yelling "fall on it" and "pick it up and run". It was like suspended animation, the ball and the play just seemed to hang there, he would have had a TD had he gotten it. He kicked the ball way forward, there's no reason Buffalo should have even gotten back in FG range but they did.
Charlie Jones said it all, "You gotta fall on it first. Gastineau wanted six points" as Ken Jones recovered for the Bills. Me and my father were screaming at the TV also.
Another costly oppurtunity is the Dykes interception in the 3rd qtr, as mrjet80 mentioned before. Klecko just finished driving Ferguson into the ground moments before, here comes Lyons about to do the same, when Ferguson makes a quick cut and Lyons slips on the muddy turf. Lyons quickly gets up and with Ferguson using the referee as a pick scrambles back near the 10 yd. line. I seen it on the DVD I have and can remember screaming at the time "boy, if he gets away with throwing the ball out of bounds or something after this i'm just gonna explode" Ferguson throws it right to Dykes just before getting hit, and Shea Stadium erupted. It was still 24-13 and really time for the Jets to cash in. Instead the first of Bill Simpson's INT's and the Cribbs TD run sent a lot of people to the parking lot.
Great February Thread Bump Gotta get involved here - This was the third year with my season tickets, and at age 19 my friends and I had a blast that season sitting in the covered Loge seats in section 2. Non-football memories include 'lighting-up" while driving in from Jersey in any of the tunnels - which we jokingly called the "Tunnel of confusion" because of our altered state we'd emerge from the tunnel in :grin: Then stopping at the IGA on Northern Boulevard for necessary pre-game munchies. (Tailgating skills hadn't been perfected yet) I remember buying a small nerf-type football at the IGA, bringing it in to Shea and throwing it on the field while the Jets were being introduced before one of the games. Even years later I'd see it in highlights in the background when they'd show Klecko charging out like a madman. We swiped the NBC Sports banner that hung in the open end after the Seattle loss. It was a premeditated theft - we planned an escape method, brought a bag with a pocket knife to cut the cord to the game, etc. I still have it. Other times we'd bring some other type of football in with us and after the games we'd throw it around in the Laguardia-side cavern inside of Shea. or the grassy circle we'd walk across near the highway bridge heading back to the car parked near the marina. Who else remembers driving over the curb to park for free under 25A? Football memories include Todd to Barkum right in front of us to win the Miami game. The older cigar-smoking-italian guy on the aisle who put up with our shenanigans was hugging me as we jumped up and down like lunatics - at the time it WAS my greatest sports fan moment. I hated those Dolphins and still do. (Note: that guy never returned after the announcement of moving to NJ was made. He stopped going mid-season '83. He was in Sect 2 Row J seats 1 & 2 should anyone know him..) The GB game was spectacular, because for the first time I could remember, I was extremely confident the Jets would crush them - and they did. They beat the hell out of Lynn Dickey and as many sacks as they had, they just missed many more. 'Twas an ass-kicking that day. Fans thirsted for a GB passing down. The sack exchange was shear beauty on that cold December day. My younger brother went with us that game, and we all scrambled down from our Loge seats onto the field where we joined the masses. My brother got bonked in the head and fell down while on the field. When he got up he realized it was from the goal post which had been torn down, and carried by a mob along the field. He was thrilled "I got hit in the head by the goal post!!!" A little later, we were back in the stands watching a Jets player get interviewed by WABC television. I forgot who the reporter was or who he interviewed but during the live interview a rubber band landed on his shoulder and stayed there. Later as we got in the car one of my friends says "hey, did you guys see the rubber band I shot land on the reporter?" We all laughed our asses off. I wish I had a tape of that interview. Yep, good times '81 was... In the week leading up to the famous Bills game, Jim Haslett - who later became the Saints HC and still coaches in the league, had a lot of trash talk to spew towards our Jets, leading to some serious anti-Bills hatred. He was a total ass then. An entrepreneur looking to cash in was selling "Buffalo Bills Suck" buttons for $1 outside of Shea. It was the best buck I ever spent, and I still have the button 30 years later. I'd wear it for the Bills home games for a number of years but as a 49 year old, I've grown out of that sort of thing. I'll look for it and scan it to post here to see if anybody else remembers it, or has one too. Shea was charged that day, and as we walked up the row and made the Italian Cigar Guy stand to get to our seats, the ball was kicked-off and Harper caught it just as our butts hit the seats. He cut right towards the sidelines, fumbled, and the biggest sports buzz-kill I'd witnessed occurred as documented here, only to be surpassed by the buzz-kill occurring at the end of the game. That hurt. From our vantage point 100 yards away in the opposite end zone, I remember the brief instant seeing the receiver open, and Bill Simpson seemingly popping up out of nowhere like a puppet to pick it off. It seemed we were winning that game as we had the Dolphins game weeks earlier. It was the first time feeling like the wind was knocked out of me, just from watching something. That play killed what for me was a great season of being a young punk with my buddies, going to every home game, misbehaving and watching the team I spent years suffering with turn into a legitimately tough NFL team. Some of you listed the most painful Jets moments moments but for some reason the Gastineau hit in Cleveland, though painful, was not as painful to me as the Miami AFC Championship game loss, this Bills game, or the Denver game. Probably because I had Super Bowl Tickets waiting for me in '83 and '98, and I was at the Denver game. That loss truly felt like we had a curse going against us. The weather in Denver was gorgeous the day before the game, and the day after. On game day the wind shifted, became strong, and the temps dropped 25 to 30 degrees. it was truly f*cked up. Seriously - it was in the 60's sunny and calm the day before, and after. Seemed the curse was bigger than Parcells... I rank; Bills, Miami, Denver because the Bills game was last-second, and we seemed to experience defeat multiple times in that one. The Cleveland OT loss was horrible, but I guess my SB dream that year ended with the 5-game losing streak, and I was proud of the way they bounced back in the playoffs.
