Sept. 7, 1980 – Bills 17, Dolphins 7
Three-hundred seventy days earlier, Buffalo Bills offensive guard Reggie McKenzie – the longest-tenured man on the roster, having come to Buffalo in the 1972 NFL Draft – sat at his locker at Rich Stadium with a glazed, disbelieving look on his face.
The Bills had just blown their best chance in a decade to defeat the Miami Dolphins and thus end what at the time was an 18-game losing streak. It crept up to 19 on that day when Tom Dempsey inexplicably missed a 34-yard field goal as time expired, and it grew to 20 when the Bills lost in Miami six weeks later.
It’s almost unfathomable to consider that one NFL team could lose 20 consecutive games to another, a streak that neatly encompassed the entire decade of the 1970s and established an NFL record that might never be broken.
But McKenzie refused to believe that it could go on forever, and in the funereal silence of the Bills locker room, he told reporters, “I’m going to beat them once; before I’m through I’m going to beat them.”
Having watched in horror that day when Dempsey’s kick sailed wide of the left upright on Sept. 2, 1979, I certainly had my doubts that McKenzie and the Bills were ever going to beat Don Shula’s Dolphins.
Nonetheless, there I was, among nearly 80,000 fans at Rich Stadium on a gloriously warm and sunny Sunday afternoon, Sept. 7, 1980 to be exact, filled with renewed hope that not only might the improved Bills make the playoffs for just the second time since 1966, but that they might actually beat the Dolphins who were in town for Week 1 looking to start the new decade the same way the old one had ended.
The Bills felt the same way and while they tried their hardest to blow another one as Joe Ferguson threw five interceptions, Buffalo’s new 3-4 defense, nicknamed the Bermuda Triangle, came up with four interceptions of its own, one of which set up Joe Cribbs’ game-clinching touchdown leap on a fourth-and-1 play from the 2-yard-line with 2:02 left to play.
When the final gun sounded on this momentous 17-7 victory, you would have thought the Bills had won the Super Bowl. Fans poured onto the field to celebrate and they tore down both goal posts which I’m almost certain was the first time that had ever happened in Week 1 of any NFL season.
“This is the biggest win we’ve ever had here in 20 years,” owner Ralph Wilson said, perhaps in the euphoria of the day forgetting the two AFL Championship games his team won in the mid-1960s. “They brought the one goal post up to me. They carried it up the whole stadium, but they couldn’t get it in the box because it was too long. That was a great day, one that I’ll never forget.”
It’s one that no one who was there, whether you were a player, coach or fan, will ever forget. Fred Smerlas correctly opined that, “There was nothing wrong in the world that day.”
Because of Ferguson’s interceptions, the Bills were trailing 7-3 in the fourth quarter, but they took possession at their own 32 with 6:44 left to play, and finally, Ferguson decided to stop throwing to the guys in the white jerseys.
The critical play was a 29-yard completion to Jerry Butler that moved the ball to the 11, and a few plays later Ferguson rolled to his left and fired a dangerous pass to the left front corner of the end zone to fullback Roosevelt Leaks. Leaks made the catch in heavy traffic and crashed over the goal line with 3:42 remaining to give the Bills a 10-7 lead.
“I saw him all along. It was thrown where it had to be,” Ferguson said.
After the kickoff, Don Strock – having replaced the ineffective Bob Griese – was picked off by Isaiah Robertson and with the deafening roar of the crowd virtually carrying him through the Dolphins like a hot dog wrapper in a hurricane, Robertson weaved his way 39 yards to the 11, and Cribbs – playing in his first NFL game – put it away.
“It was a great win by a bunch of guys who were not going to be denied,” coach Chuck Knox said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a football team that came any more ready to play. In my 27 years of coaching, I’ve never seen such determination.”
Years later when I interviewed him for my book Relentless: The Hard-Hitting History of Buffalo Bills Football, Smerlas recalled a special feeling before the game, and he sensed that the Miami misery was going to end.
“I remember the spirit going into that game,” Smerlas said. “We walked onto that field and it was like a new era had begun. The fans were pumped, Chuck’s boys were tough, and there was no question, no reservation in anyone’s heart, that we were going to win that game. It was an electric atmosphere. When that final gun sounded and we beat them, there were no problems in the world that day. It was unbelievable.”
I was a freshman at Buffalo State College that year and living with my grandparents, and I remember the ride home with some buddies, and all along the way cars were pulled off the side of the road and fans were just partying as if it was Saturday night on the Elmwood strip, the hopping bar scene near campus.
It was such an amazing day.
Bob Kuechenberg, the star Miami offensive guard, had predicted way back in 1974 in the middle of the domination that, “Buffalo will never beat Miami as long as I am playing.”
He would have been right had he gone ahead and retired prior to the 1980 season which had been his plan. Instead, he made the decision to keep playing, and as fate would have it, Buffalo beat Miami.
“Yeah, I said that,” Kuechenberg said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have come back from retirement. The difference was the Bills didn’t beat themselves, we beat ourselves. We made the big plays in the fourth quarter over the course of the last 10 years. That’s how we managed to put together a 20-game winning streak against Buffalo. The streak against Buffalo is something I will stand back on 20 years from now and be proud of. It had to end sometime.”
He then summed up the feelings of Bills fans everywhere when he said, “There wasn’t a single Bills player who was 0-20 against us, but there were a lot of Bills fans who were 0-20. It was something for the city to enjoy. If the shoe was on the other foot, I’d call for work, school and everything else to be closed tomorrow. The fans endured and they deserve a holiday.”
As for McKenzie, he deserved a holiday, too. After 16 losses to the Dolphins, he finally tasted victory, and he said later that night that he would be expecting a call from his old teammate and best friend, O.J. Simpson, who never beat the Dolphins. “I know he’ll say, ‘You suckers finally did it. You beat Miami.’”
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Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for four decades including 35 years as the full-time beat writer for the D&C, he has written numerous books about the history of the team, and he is also co-host of the BLEAV in Bills podcast/YouTube show. He can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com, and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Top games in stadium history: Bills end the Dolphins curse in a 1980 classic
Reporting by Sal Maiorana, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle / Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
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