One Writer’s Quest To Win A Super Bowl With The Buffalo Bills On ‘NFL Quarterback Club 96’

NFL Quarterback Club 96

The Buffalo Bills have never won a Super Bowl. If you’re a football fan, you almost certainly know this. You also probably know that they’re the only team in NFL history to make four straight Super Bowls. That they couldn’t manage a single victory in that stretch is improbable and, for the western region of New York State, extremely painful.

The closest the Bills got was Super Bowl XXV against the New York Giants, their first appearance in 1991. Down 20-19 late in the fourth quarter, the Bills and quarterback Jim Kelly get the ball with 2:16 to play with the ball at their own 10. The Bills drove down the field and got in position for the game-winning field goal. With seconds left, Scott Norwood lines up to attempt a 47-yard kick to win.

If you’re a Bills fan, do not watch the video that follows.

I was two years old when Norwood went wide right at Super Bowl XXV, but the moment has haunted every Bills fan, alive or not, since. In fact, the first football video game I ever had — NFL Quarterback Club 96 for Sega Genesis — actually has a reference to the fateful miss. In its Simulations game mode, you can actually try to drive the field yourself and win with the Bills. Or, if you’re a sociopath, you can play as the Giants and stop the Bills for yourself.

I was thinking about that a lot over the last few years as things got increasingly dire with the Bills, and I realized something: Despite playing that mode a number of times, I never actually managed to win the Bills a Super Bowl. But I’m an adult now, and I kind of play video games for a living. I definitely write about sports for a living, too. So I downloaded a Genesis emulator, found a Quarterback Club 96 ROM and fired them both up. Folks, it’s time for my beloved Bills, a team which I hate with my whole heart, to finally win a Super Bowl.

Let’s cue the music.

Simulation 21 is Super Bowl XXV, which is just after a simulation in which the then-expansion Carolina Panthers played the also-expansion Jacksonville Jaguars in the Super Bowl in 2010. At the very least, NFL Quarterback Club 96 nailed the divisions that would represent the AFC and NFC that year, just not the teams.

NFL Quarterback Club 96

ATTEMPT NO. 1

My first try at this is terrible because, well, I’m playing on a 13-inch MacBook Air in 2019 and forgot to look up the controls. I accidentally audible out of a play and ran a counter to the right side that completely fooled the pixelated Giants defense. With open field in front of me, I then miss the tiny “up” key and digital Thurman Thomas stops dead in his tracks. I recover just in time to pick up 19 yards, but the two-minute warning hits just before I can get another play in. Not the best of starts.

The next play, somehow, is that same running play, which I now know is called HB Slice. It loses a yard. I really need to look at these controls. Is this what Jim Kelly felt like when he was widely reported to be woefully hungover on Super Bowl Sunday? I take another drink of seltzer and try to get my collective sh*t together.

I check the emulator’s preferences and realize through trial and error that you can set your own controls. I quickly make the Genesis’s A B and C my keyboard’s A S and D keys, respectively, and now I’m in business.

However, in a Bills-ian twist, after thinking I did the right thing, virtual Kelly immediately gets sacked for a loss of nine yards. Somehow, I pick up the first down on another run and we’re back in business. My drive chart looks a little something like this.

NFL Quarterback Club 96

But I’m now stuck in no-huddle and don’t know how to get out of it. My Bills run the same pitch to digital No. 34 (Thurman Thomas) twice in a row. By now, the Giants know what’s happening. I’m going nowhere and there’s less than a minute left. I call my final timeout in an effort to get a new play in there.

It works! This time, I successfully run a play out of the shotgun and go deep for Andre Reed … but I waited too long to throw it, and he was well covered. It’s now 4th-and-14 with 44 seconds left. I’m at the Bills 35. I need a miracle, and friends, the Buffalo Bills don’t get miracles in the Super Bowl.

NFL Quarterback Club 96

ATTEMPT NO. 2

Renewed by my efforts to actually learn the controls, I take the field with purpose. I run a quick slant to get us started and, uh, I can’t throw the football for some reason. The field is wide open to run, though, and just as I get digital Kelly in gear a Giants defender gets loose and sacks him for a loss of four yards.

OK, so maybe I still don’t know the controls. In my indecision to call another play we slip to the two minute warning. I’m Andy Reiding this attempt pretty bad already, but I’m still feeling confident. I’ve played this game a lot! But just like the golden age of the Bills, it happened a long time ago. I just have to get back into the groove.

Perilously close to my own end zone, I try to play it safe with a quick pass over the middle that gets broken up. Up against it once more with a third-and-long, I tried to switch it up by running a halfback toss with Thomas that might catch the defense unaware, and it worked! Thomas is off to the races off the left tackle, and rather than waste another timeout, I manage to get out of bounds after picking up 24 yards and the first down. We back, baby.

NFL Quarterback Club 96

Let’s try another pass aaaand I’m sacked.

The problem with Quarterback Club is that you have to tap a passing button once to bring up your receiving options. That files in the face of years of playing other games where the options pop up right away. That delay is absolutely killing me right now. Let’s just show you how this one ends and move on.

NFL Quarterback Club 96


ATTEMPT NO. 3

Ghost Mufasa did not come to me through the stars, but I’m starting to remember. You have to let the quarterback drop back on its own for the receiver options to pop up unprompted. I tap hike and let Pixel Kelly do his thing and, sure enough, I have receivers. The pass on a hitch pattern gets batted down, but a deep post goes to No. 23 for 19 yards on second down. I’m at the 29 by the two minute warning. Progress. I decide to run a slant and just trust that my receiver is going to get open despite the load of digital traffic in the secondary, and boom.

NFL Quarterback Club 96

The clock is ticking, but I’m at the Giants 44 and feeling good. Maybe too good. I try a halfback trap just to switch things up and it gains a yard. Clock is still moving, but I want to hang on to that timeout. I get the next snap off at 1:34 and want to throw it to B, who is wide open. Instead, it throws long to Reed in the end zone. The ball deflects. I’m controlling the receiver as he tries to track it down in the end zone to no avail. But there’s still time. It was never going to be that easy, right?

I go back to the same play, a deep ball to the same receiver that I let go as soon as the target options become available. It’s through traffic, again, but Don Beebe comes down with it. At the nine.

NFL Quarterback Club 96

It’s first-and-goal. We are doing it, gang. I pause the game to consider what needs to happen here. Should I try to punch it in? Do I kill the clock and attempt a field goal from here with no time left? If I score, I have to defend, and I honestly don’t know how well I can do that in a game I haven’t played in nearly two decades. It would actually be more embarrassing, I realized, if I scored and left Too Much Time on the clock for the Bills to lose in an even more heartbreaking manner.

So, I decide to try a run up the middle, just to feel it out. It’s a delay, and it fools the digital Giants defense, those friggin’ rubes. There’s open field for pixelated Thomas to the left side. My eyes widen, the digital yards are disappearing behind him, and just as I actually think he’s going to score a defender closes on him and tackles him short of the goal line at the three.

NFL Quarterback Club 96

Second-and-goal.

I decide to kill some more clock, which the defending AI doesn’t consider a bad thing because this game was mostly made before smartphones existed. But a halfback toss to the left side got absolutely blown up for a loss of two yards. Now I’m at the 5, it’s third down, and there’s 35 seconds left.

Once again, I consider my options. I could run the clock down, call timeout, and try to attempt a field goal. But that’s a legitimately scary proposal because, well, I completely forget how to kick field goals in this game. So we’re pushing that ball across the goal line unless it’s absolutely necessary to kick.

I try to dial up a quick slant but there isn’t one in the Pro Set playbook I picked. I try to back out of my selection and it picks a play instead. I didn’t even see which play. Oh. Oh no. I swear I had a dream about a disaster like this once. So I do the only thing that seems to make sense.

NFL Quarterback Club 96

OK, get it together buddy. Go shotgun and find something that has shallow drags across the end zone. This isn’t hard. Just make sure you don’t get sac—

NFL Quarterback Club 96

Sacked. Sh*t. It is now fourth-and-goal, and I am a complete and utter failure at making this easy on myself. With no timeouts left, I’m in utter panic mode. I have to navigate the special teams menu, get in place for what should be a fairly easy field goal, remember how to kick said field goal and then, you know, kick the damn field goal in 14 seconds.

It occurs to me while I’m frantically watching the special teams unit take the field that yes, I could screw this up. Since I’m keeping track of this, there will be a record of what a total disaster I am if I do. Is this how Scott Norwood felt all those years ago? How many more times was his anguish and terror magnified in that moment compared to what I, a complete idiot with a laptop, am feeling right now?

There are stakes and I hate it and hate this game and the hate the Buffalo Bills. I need to make this field goal just to feel relief more than anything. I am now overthinking it. I get the play in with six seconds left on the clock. It took too long, I think. I’m not going to make it. The gun is going to go off and I’m going to have to do this all over again. I’m pressing C to snap the ball as soon as possible. I am trying to remain calm.

I snap it with one second left and press C again. I don’t have any time to aim the kick so I just have to assume it was lined up straight. After the sack I didn’t even get to see how long of a kick it is, but it’s far shorter than Norwood’s 47-yarder in real life.

NFL Quarterback Club 96

The officials put their hands in the air. I did it. The game’s chiptunes gunshot goes off and the announcer’s voice shouts “THAT’S THE BALL GAME.”

NFL Quarterback Club 96

When you win a game in NFL Quarterback Club 96, the players of the victorious team pour out onto the field and all do the various sack and touchdown dances to celebrate. They basically run at full sprint to a spot on the field, do a dance, and then run somewhere else to do it again. It’s hilarious and, in this case, an utter relief.

Though it actually took me fewer tries than I expected, I nearly managed to bottle the whole thing anyway. After all the bad luck I’ve seen in my sports life, I’m not sure I could have faced the challenge again. Which is good, because now I don’t have to.

NFL Quarterback Club 96
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