SAN DIEGO — If the Buffalo Bills ever win a Super Bowl, old folks will weep uncontrollably, raising toasts to departed loved ones who cheered the Bills for decades. Locals will risk frostbite to celebrate with strangers.
San Diegans could appreciate the pent-up emotion. For decades the Bills ran parallel to the Chargers in San Diego. Fellow members of the American Football League, the Bills won an AFL title one year after the Chargers did. Comparable to the "Air Coryell" thrill rides, the Bills fashioned flashy "no-huddle" offenses that took them to four consecutive Super Bowls in the early 1990s.
Starting with Thursday night's road game against the Los Angeles Rams in the league's opener, Bills fans will soak up this year's much-anticipated journey, while trying to repress memories of the franchise's near-misses.
This might be the year. Really. Oddsmakers like the Bills to win the Super Bowl in Glendale, Ariz.
Football experts say the same things about the Bills. They're deep. Balanced. Versatile. It's a complete roster, they say.
Buffalo's best two players, quarterback Josh Allen and edge defender Von Miller, may belong in the same conversation as Jim Kelly and Bruce Davis, franchise legends who led the four Super Bowl teams.
Allen can wing spirals through stiff winds, or he can run away or over defenders.
Growing up in rural Central California, he wasn't immersed in the national cookie-cutter circuit of quarterback clinics and passing leagues. He performs like a free-wheeling, cross-sport athlete. He can improvise startling throws, many of them lasers, to a diversely sized and skilled cast of targets.
There's no ideal comparison to Allen, but the best one is Broncos Hall of Famer John Elway. Both opened up the whole field with fastballs and scrambles or planned rushes.
The Broncos had lost four Super Bowls, same as the Bills, when Elway led their breakthrough in San Diego.
Remember Elway helicoptering into the east end zone at Qualcomm Stadium?
Allen does that kind of stuff. Only, at 6-foot-5 and 237 pounds, he more resembles a tight end.
Miller, 33, still tilts games as a constant threat to burst into the backfield.
As San Diegans know, he gets into the heads of playcallers and quarterbacks.
Norv Turner once said he began game plans against Denver thusly: by accounting for Miller.
In a pivotal late-season game four years ago, Miller spooked Philip Rivers into a critical mental mistake, one that had Rivers raging at himself afterward.
Fearing Miller would reprise an ambush from earlier in the game, when he slipped into coverage and picked off a short pass, Rivers aborted a similar short pass. However, because he spiked the football instead of going to the ground, the game clock stopped.
The Broncos turned those precious seconds into a field goal as the clock expired, winning as a 7.5-point underdog.
Miller's playmaking has enabled two franchises' Super Bowl glory.
Seven years ago with Denver, he derailed Tom Brady and Cam Newton in the AFC championship game and Super Bowl L, respectively.
In the recent Super Bowl tournament, doing exactly what Rams leaders had in mind when they traded for him in November, Miller blew up plays.
He surprised some observers in March by choosing the Bills, not the Rams, who, not entirely coincidentally, are two-point underdogs in the opener.
The Bills could offer Miller more money, a tribute to the Billy Beane-like payroll efficiency of team architect Brandon Beane (unrelated), also a believer in analytics.
For the Bills, who count blocker David Quessenberry (La Costa Canyon) and starting safety Micah Hyde (San Diego resident) on their active roster, there's extra urgency to this season.
As Allen, 26, commands much bigger salaries starting next season, it'll become trickier to provide him a roster as talented as the current one.
Their own history confirms that ripe chances come around only so often.
After the first of their four Super Bowl teams lost as a touchdown favorite when Scott Norwood's kick went wide right, the next three drew three NFC champions favored by at least a touchdown.
All three Bills teams got blown out.
