1964 NFL champion Cleveland Browns
1964 AFL champion Buffalo Bills
The passing of Buffalo Bills’ legendary fullback Cookie Gilchrist this week got me to reminiscing about the championship team that he played on in 1964. I’ve always wondered what would’ve happened if the Super Bowl had been played between the NFL and AFL champions right from the outset, from the AFL’s inaugural season in 1960. In 1960, the matchup would’ve been the Houston Oilers, who, like all of the other AFL teams that year, amounted to an expansion team, against the one-year wonder Philadelphia Eagles, a veteran team with a lot of experience. I’d have to say that wily old NFL vets like Norm Van Brocklin and Chuck Bednarik, coming off a hard-fought win over Vince Lombardi’s Packers, would have won easily. Green Bay won the next 2 NFL titles, and would’ve faced Houston and then the Dallas Texans, in the “Super Bowl”. They would’ve beaten both. The Texans became the Kansas City Chiefs and a few years later in the actual first Super Bowl, Green Bay handled them quite easily. The matchup in 1963 would have been intriguing, pitting the Monsters of The Midway, the bruising Chicago Bears, with a take-no-prisoners defense, against Sid Gillman’s high-flying San Diego Chargers, who destroyed the Boston Patriots 51-10 in the AFL title game. I see this game playing out this way – the Chargers were shut down a year later by Buffalo in the AFL title game, and a 1963 Super Bowl probably would have turned out similarly, with the Bears winning. The Bills won in 1965 with defense and a battered team that was riddled with injuries, and would have had to face Lombardi’s Packers in the Super Bowl, so they likely would’ve lost. I think the matchup that would’ve occurred in ’64, when my 2 favorite teams at the time, the Bills and Cleveland Browns, were champs of their respective leagues, is the game that would have been a great one. The 2 teams, on paper, matched up well. On offense, both were led by cerebral quarterbacks – Cleveland’s Dr. Frank Ryan, and Buffalo’s Jack Kemp. Jim Brown led the Cleveland rushing attack, but the Bills had a similar weapon in Gilchrist, who only played for Buffalo 3 seasons but was dominant in ’64. Cleveland had an underrated defense – not great but good enough to shut out the highly favored Baltimore Colts, 27-0, in the NFL title game. They would have entered the Super Bowl riding a wave of momentum. Buffalo’s defense, however, was dominant, and especially adept at stopping the run. It would’ve been great to see how they fared in trying to stop Brown. If I had to guess how I think this game would have played out, I’d say that it would have been a highly competitive match, with little scoring. Buffalo’s defense would have slowed Brown down, and lockdown corner Booker Edgerson’s job would’ve been to cover Gary Collins, who torched the Colt secondary in the NFL title game. Edgerson would definitely have risen to the occasion, but somewhere late in the game, Ryan would have found a way to single up his other receiver, flanker Paul Warfield, on the Bills’ other corner, talented rookie Butch Byrd, and hit the fleet Warfield with a big play pass, most likely on Warfield’s signature route – the stop and go pattern – and Cleveland would’ve eked out a hard-fought win. On the other hand, maybe the game would’ve come down to a last second field goal, and Buffalo had a distinct advantage there – with pro football’s first soccer-style kicker, Pete Gogolak. There’s no way the football gods would’ve allowed the unspeakable in that situation, is there? The unspeakable being the “original” wide right? All this is speculation , of course, and filled with shoulda, woulda, coulda arguments. I’m betting the players on both teams to this day are confident that they would have been victorious.
