Music City Miracle
The Music City Miracle was an American football play that took place on January 8, 2000, during the National Football League's (NFL) 1999–2000 playoffs. It occurred at the end of the American Football Conference (AFC) Wild Card playoff game between the Tennessee Titans and Buffalo Bills at Adelphia Coliseum in Nashville, Tennessee. After the Bills had taken a 16–15 lead on a field goal with 16 seconds remaining in the game, on the ensuing kickoff return, Titans tight end Frank Wycheck threw a lateral pass across the field to Kevin Dyson, who then ran 75 yards to score the winning touchdown to earn a 22–16 victory.
Buffalo Bills (5)
(11–5)
January 8, 2000
66,782[1]
Aftermath[edit]
Immediate[edit]
The victory, in front of a franchise-record crowd at Adelphia Coliseum, advanced the Titans to the AFC divisional round for the first time since 1993, when they were still based in Houston. Subsequent victories over the Indianapolis Colts and the Jacksonville Jaguars sent the Titans to Super Bowl XXXIV to face the St. Louis Rams, in which they lost by a touchdown in another game that went down to the final seconds, known as "One Yard Short" or "The Tackle".
For the Bills, the debacle led to the firing of special-teams coach Bruce DeHaven, who had been with the team for 13 seasons. (DeHaven was eventually rehired by the Bills into the same position for three seasons beginning in 2010.) DeHaven's replacement, Ronnie Jones, did not perform well. In 2000, the Bills had one of the worst special teams units in NFL history, and it completely neutralized their #9 offense and #3 defense with the team going 8–8. After the 2000 season, Phillips was fired, having failed to lead the Bills past the first round of the playoffs during his tenure. Phillips was replaced by Titans defensive coordinator Gregg Williams.
Long-term effect on the Bills[edit]
The Music City Miracle was added to the list of infamous moments in Buffalo sports history, joining "Wide Right", "No Goal", and the later "13 Seconds". It marked the start of a long playoff drought, as the Bills went on to miss the playoffs for 17 straight years, eventually earning the longest active playoff drought in the NFL. Although Buffalo finally qualified again in the 2017 season (the playoff game in question then taking place in 2018), the Bills did not win another playoff game until Saturday, January 9, 2021. The Music City Miracle would also mark the last game in a Bills uniform for its last remaining key members of its 1990s Super Bowl runs, as Bruce Smith, Thurman Thomas, and Andre Reed would all leave the team in the offseason due to salary cap constraints; all three of them alongside Jim Kelly and Marv Levy (both of whom were already retired prior to the 1999 season) are now members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Although the Bills had lost four consecutive Super Bowls before this game, many Bills fans consider this game to be their single most humiliating loss in franchise history, due to the surreal and controversial ending as well as the long-term impact the game had on the team. Bills fans generally refuse to call this game and climactic play by its standard "Music City Miracle" name, and instead have taken to calling it more insulting names, most popularly "The Forward Lateral" and "The Immaculate Deception". In his 2017 autobiography Son of Bum, Bills coach Wade Phillips called the play "The Music City Mistake".
The drought eventually came to be called "the Curse of (Doug) Flutie". As the Bills' slump wore on, rumors circulated around upstate New York that Flutie's father Richard Flutie had become so enraged after learning his son had been benched on Ralph Wilson's orders that he swore the Bills would not make the playoffs again in his lifetime and/or that of the Bills' owner.[21] Either way, such a "curse" would have held — Wilson died on March 25, 2014, while Doug Flutie's parents both died of natural causes on November 18, 2015.[22] Within months of Wilson's death, the team was sold by his estate to Terry and Kim Pegula. The Bills' playoff drought finally came to an end three years after the Pegulas assumed ownership of the franchise.
Legacy[edit]
NFL Films hired a computer analyst to determine whether Luckett had made the correct call. After taking a closer look, it was determined that the ball indeed did not travel forward and that Luckett had made the correct ruling.[23]
Due to the massive amount of interest the game received as a result of its climactic play, the NFL scheduled a rematch between the Titans and Bills as the opening Sunday Night game of the 2000 NFL season. The Bills won this time, 16–13. However, the Titans would get the last laugh as they finished the season with the NFL's best record at 13–3 while the Bills finished 8–8 and missed the postseason. The Bills wouldn't defeat the Titans again until 2015—16 years after the Music City Miracle—with a 14–13 win.
During the NFL's centennial season in 2019, the Bills–Titans matchup in Week 5 was designated as one of 16 weekly games commemorating notable events in NFL history, namely the Music City Miracle.[24] However, in a reversal of luck, the Titans were denied a go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter after it was determined that Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota crossed the line of scrimmage prior to making a forward pass to the end zone. The subsequent penalty loomed large as Titans kicker Cairo Santos missed the resulting field goal attempt, and Buffalo scored the game-winning touchdown on the ensuing drive.[25] Santos was released shortly afterward.
During the Bills–Titans matchup in 2021, which the Titans narrowly won 34–31, the Titans attempted a "home run throwback" play during a first quarter punt return. After corralling a punt, Titans returner Chester Rogers threw the ball to teammate Chris Jackson, who advanced the ball 22 yards before being tackled. However, Rogers' pass visibly advanced 5 yards downfield, drawing an illegal forward pass penalty. This led to mockery from the Buffalo media and other Bills supporters.[26]