The Greatest (Losers) of All Time!

Oddly enough, after growing up in Chi-town and moving to Indy, my all-time favorite team is not the ’85 Bears or the ’06 Colts. No, it’s actually the ’93 Buffalo Bills.

Why?

Good question. Maybe because I grew up rooting for the Cubs and like most Americans, I always pull for the underdog. The lovable losers. And perhaps there were no more lovable a bunch of losers than the ’93 Bills.

Led by perennial All-Pros and future Hall of Famers like Jim Kelly, Bruce Smith and Thurman Thomas, the ’93 Bills were not the best of the four Bills AFC Champion teams, but they had the most heart. Most teams would have self-destructed long before making it to a fourth straight Super Bowl. But not the ’93 Bills. They waited until the second half of the big game; then they fell apart.

Is that not heart? Or maybe at least testicular fortitude?

It takes a special something for a group of guys to keep getting up and dusting themselves off after getting the crap kicked out of them over and over and over. I honestly thought they would repeat and go back to the Super Bowl the next year to redeem themselves. It seemed that these guys – the core of the Bills teams who lost four straight Super Bowls – would always bounce back. Take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’. After all, they’d done something no other team had ever accomplished. They represented their conference in four consecutive Super Bowls. That in itself is deserving of at least an honorary Lombardi Trophy.

I mean, come on. After OJ…And now TO…I think the fine people of Buffalo deserve something to cheer about. But if not, at least they can always look back on the splendor that is the ’93 Buffalo Bills.