This Buffalo Bill was on the cover of Sports Illustrated in September 1991

“Lean, Mean Sack Machine” was the title of this lengthy, revealing article by Sports Illustrated’s Rick Telander about the 1991 Buffalo Bills and their goal of reaching the Super Bowl again with Bruce Smith.

Marv said that after the Super Bowl loss in the final season of 1990, Coach Levy was given an inspirational poem by his mother, which still lives on in Bill’s mafia circle.

“In terms of resilience, in the regular season, 12 teams make the playoffs, 20 don’t. 11 teams lose their final game. After a Super Bowl loss, take a period of grieving, acknowledge the good, make a plan, and work on the plan. After a Super Bowl loss, when some people told us they didn’t want us to go to the Super Bowl again, we said thanks for sharing, but we’re glad they’re not on my team. After we lost our first Super Bowl, my mother consoled me by giving me this poem:
“Fight on, my men,” said Sir Andrew
“I’m a little wounded, but not killed yet.
“I’m just going to lie down and bleed,
“And then I will rise and fight again.
Leadership is the ability to make people believe in themselves. Not to follow you, but to join you and believe in you. Bill Polian was not the greatest general manager in professional football. He was the greatest of all time. He always said, “It’s amazing what you can do when nobody cares about the credit.”

– Marv Levy

The 1990 season ended in a painful defeat to the NY Giants in Super Bowl XXV at Tampa Stadium, due to a missed wide right field goal.

This iconic sack of a safety by Giants QB Jeff Hostetler in the endzone was pure Bruce Smith.

They came within two points (a missed 48-yard field goal in the final eight seconds) of beating the New York Giants in Super Bowl XXV last January. If the Bills had won, we’d be talking about them as the team of the ’90s instead of wondering whether they could hang together long enough to make another championship run. But the Bickering Bills of 1989 appear to be dead (all the bickering and finger-pointing over tough losses has ceased) and the Boisterous Bills have arrived.

Smith recently guaranteed a group of sportswriters that the Bills would win the Super Bowl this year, a statement that might have caused chaos for the team in the past, but not anymore. “A lot of players feel the same way,” said Thurman Thomas, the Bills’ All-Pro running back. “Me too. We probably have more talent than anyone in the league.”

– Rick Telander, Sports Illustrated

Bruce Smith from the 90’s was full of ‘bad stuff’…’bad stuff man’.

But as we know, the never-quit Bills would bleed a little, regroup and rise again to challenge for their second straight AFC Conference title.