
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, November 20, 1993                   TAG: 9311200162
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B-6   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BUFFALO, N.Y.                                LENGTH: Medium

THE JUICE FLOWED FOR 2,000

In the 13th game of that golden 1973 season, the Buffalo Bills were playing the lowly New England Patriots, and O.J. Simpson was 416 yards away from the magical 2,000-yard rushing mark.

Simpson had racked up an NFL single-game record 250 yards earlier in the year against the Patriots - but that was in autumn on a grass field. This was December in Buffalo, and the snow blowing in off Lake Erie left a slick coating on Rich Stadium's artificial turf.

Simpson remained confident. He turned to Reggie McKenzie, the left guard on Buffalo's swaggering "Electric Company" offensive line, and said, "The snow's only bad if you don't know where you're going." Laughing, he added, "I know where I'm going. It's the defense that's got to worry."

Simpson knew where he was going. On that sloppy, snowy field he ran 22 times for 219 yards, including a 71-yard touchdown sprint. When the day was over, Simpson had 1,803 yards, 61 shy of Jim Brown's single-season record. There was one game left in the regular season.

That 13th game was a turning point. "Until then I don't think anybody besides Reggie believed Simpson could get 2,000," said Budd Thalman, then Buffalo's public relations manager and now an assistant athletic director at Penn State. "I didn't think anybody who had to play in Buffalo snow could do that. O.J. made it all look so easy."

O.J. made everything look easy. From his long broken-field runs to his picture-perfect smiles for the cameras, all of O.J.'s moves appeared effortless.

But it wasn't always so easy. There was a time, only two years earlier, when Orenthal James Simpson was a flop.

A Heisman Trophy winner at Southern Cal, Simpson was known as an electrifying slash-and-burn runner. But used mostly as a decoy or as a receiver out of the backfield, Simpson became a round hole in Bills coach John Rauch's square-peg offense.

Buffalo was ready to give up on the speedy back. Then Lou Saban took over as coach.

Keywords:
FOOTBALL

by CNB