He is 95 years old and sounds Forever Young, especially when you begin talking about the team he once coached to four Super Bowls, and the loyal, hearty fans who treasure him and Jim Kelly to this day for getting there, even if they never won a championship.
Marv Levy knows better than most what the Buffalo Bills mean to a fan base that last week celebrated its first playoff win in 25 years and was on pins and needles watching Josh Allen duel Lamar Jackson and the Ravens on Saturday night at Bills Stadium for the right to play in the AFC Championship game.
“It’s really very much of a community,” Levy told The Post. “You can’t walk down the street in Buffalo if you’re the head coach there, or one of the top-notch players without people stopping and honking their horn and wanting to talk to you, it drives you crazy sometimes, but you develop a great respect for ’em.
“And I jokingly have said in the airports I’ve been stopped, now, I don’t know how many times, by somebody who proclaims he’s the No. 1 Buffalo Bills fan, and I say, ‘You know something? I’ve never met the No. 2 Buffalo Bills fan.’ ”
All these No. 1 Buffalo Bills fans like to call themselves Bills Mafia, and in truth, even in the grips of unforgiving arctic Decembers and Januarys of yesteryear, they would make Old Man Winter an offer he could not refuse to cheer on their team, long after Levy and Kelly, their Hall of Famers, and those 1990-93 AFC Champions were long gone.
Levy tells the story of the day after Scott Norwood missed the 47-yard field goal Wide Right that made the Bill Parcells’ Giants Super Bowl XXI winners, when the team returned to Buffalo and boarded a bus that, unbeknownst to him and his coaches and players, was headed over to City Hall, where they all stood on a balcony overlooking a sea of love.
“There were 30,000 people down there all chanting for Scott Norwood,” Levy recalled, “and they applauded him, and it was, ‘Scott, we love ya.’ And Scott said something which really was meaningful to us, he said, ‘You are the reason we are going back to the Super Bowl game.’ I remember that one.”
Kelly shunned the Bills for the USFL Houston Gamblers following the 1983 NFL Draft because he found it too cold and underwhelming from an endorsement standpoint.
“After his career was over, he said, ‘No one ever wants to come to Buffalo, but once they get there, no one ever wants to leave.’ He still lives there,” Levy said.
Bills fans have waited for what seems to them an eternity for The Next Jim Kelly. Levy doesn’t know Allen, but is impressed by what he has seen from him.
“Just his comportment I guess as much as anything,” Levy said. “He listens well, he learns, he stays cool even when something doesn’t go exactly his way.”
Levy coached at William & Mary from 1964-68 and is fond of the fact that current Bills head coach Sean McDermott played there.
“He’s a darn good teacher,” Levy said. “He’s a guy as far as I know with character qualities that players can admire and try to duplicate.”
McDermott has built a culture not unlike Levy’s during the glory days.
“Bill Polian, our general manager, [owner] Ralph Wilson and I, when I was first hired,” Levy began, “we sat in there, we said, ‘We’re only gonna bring aboard guys of high character.’ Their personalities may differ, some may be extroverts … but do they show up for work every day, do they not blame their teammate, do they bounce back, do they study, do they get ready? That was the big thing, and I think Sean is tuned into that as well.”
That unity and character were on full display in the locker room following Wide Right.
“Scott was a rather quiet, reserved guy, and he was sitting there, and one after another players came up to him,” Levy recalled. “Darryl Talley said, ‘If I would have made that tackle on that receiver on third-and-14, they never woulda got the go-ahead touchdown.’ One after another — ‘If I woulda hung onto that pass on the 5-yard line, we would’ve won.’ ”
Levy, a year younger than Lou Carnesecca and every bit as classy, has never shied away from his 0-4 Super Bowl record.
“Well sure, it hurts, no doubt about it,” he said. “You would have loved to have won ’em all, or won some, or won one. We didn’t, we can’t change it. It’s painful, but I’ll remember the good, I’ll remember the resilience, I’ll remember the support, and I’ll remember as hard as we worked how much we enjoyed it. It isn’t just a good coach, it isn’t just a good quarterback, it’s totally organization, and it was a fantastically run organization, starting right at the top with Ralph Wilson.”
Levy was watching Bills-Ravens at his Chicago home. He was slightly conflicted last week when Colts head coach Frank Reich, Kelly’s former backup, was knocked out of the playoffs. He had no such concerns on Saturday night.
“I’m for one team this week,” Marv Levy said.