The dramatic touchdown that ended a drought and started a joyous tribute

CINCINNATI — Andy Dalton didn’t expect a single thing.

He wouldn’t have known to ask. As it unfolded, he couldn’t fathom.

He had no choice but to accept.

“I feel this is one of those cool stories you see happen to someone else,” Dalton said. “You never think it’s going to happen to you. We just happened to be on the receiving end of it.”

Within Dalton’s bewilderment lies the essence of what has become a forever connection with Western New York, a region beset with so much sports anguish its people have come to expect good things will happen only to others.

On a cold New Year’s Eve night in Baltimore, with the Buffalo Bills watching on television from five states away as their unlikely postseason hopes dimly flickered in the winter wind, Dalton eased a scarred fan base’s suffering.

In order for the Bills to end their 17-year playoff famine, the favored Baltimore Ravens had to lose at home to the Cincinnati Bengals, an erratic team already eliminated from playoff contention and one that was trailing by three points deep into the fourth quarter.

In the final minute of the lone unfinished game in the last week of the 2017 regular season, the Bills watched Dalton complete an unflinching, fourth-and-12 pass to Tyler Boyd, who raced into the end zone for a 49-yard touchdown and a stunning victory.

The Bills, for the first time since 1999, qualified for the postseason. Players, coaches and executives erupted in the visitors’ locker room at Hard Rock Stadium, where they’d beaten the Miami Dolphins a few minutes earlier.

Bills fans exploded, too. The dam broke. After 17 desolate years, their euphoria, blind love and generosity spilled all over the cursed drought.

Delirious gratitude and affection and a whole lot of money flooded Andy Dalton and his wife’s foundation. Just because.

“All these $17 donations were coming in from New York,” said Amy Floyd, executive director of the Andy & Jordan Dalton Foundation.

“I didn’t understand what that meant.”

The denomination merely was symbolic for Bills fans. But the rising total has been a game-changer for the foundation.

The Andy & Jordan Dalton Foundation helps seriously ill and physically challenged children in Cincinnati and Fort Worth, home of the Daltons’ alma mater, Texas Christian University.

Floyd’s cell phone notified her every time a donation was deposited. It was New Year’s Eve, a Bengals game day, her wedding anniversary and a month before her daughter’s due date.

Donations were submitted every few seconds. The onslaught rendered Floyd’s incessantly buzzing phone useless.

Nearly nine months later, contributions from Bills fans all over the world still come in. Floyd said last week the Daltons’ foundation has amassed about $450,000 from 18,000 donors inspired by the touchdown that ended Buffalo’s misery.

“That’s not $450,000 from a billionaire CEO of a company,” Bills safety Micah Hyde said. “That’s hard-working money that people forked over. A lot of people don’t have money to just give away, but they did it.”

The figure could reach half a million dollars with the help of Dalton’s visit Sunday to Orchard Park. The Bengals will play the Bills in a nationally televised preseason exhibition, likely reinvigorating the phenomenon.

Before the game, Dalton’s wife, who prefers to go by JJ, will make a donation to Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center’s pediatric department and appear at (716) Food & Sport to thank Bills fans in person.

The Daltons also taped an appreciation message that will be shown on the New Era Field scoreboard during the game.

“A whole ‘nother fan base, who doesn’t know anything about what we do, just came in and turned around what we were doing and amplified it,” JJ Dalton said last week at Paul Brown Stadium.

The foundation offers five programs: Andy and Jordan’s Hub (technology and entertainment centers for families to use at the hospital), Date Night (sending parents to a five-star dinner while the Daltons and volunteers babysit their kids), King for a Day (all-expense-paid trips to the Kings Island amusement park), Holiday Hearts (handing out presents at Cincinnati-area hospitals) and the Pass It On Fund (financial support for medical equipment and debt).

The Daltons channeled most of the Bills-related donations to the Pass It On Fund, essentially doubling the number of families they could help.

“We’re paying bills that families scrape pennies together for,” said Floyd, her voice trembling. “We’ve paid funerals for families. How heartbreaking is it to write a check to pay for your child’s funeral?

“The impact that money makes is one more dollar that families now have to take a day off work to be with their child in the hospital, to drive their car one more mile.”

Before the unexpected infusion of charity, the Pass It On Fund allocated $114,000 a year to financially strapped families with sick or disabled children.

“To be able to say ‘Yes’ instead of ‘No’ and approve more,” JJ Dalton said, “to be able to help, to just give some sense of relief at a time of desperation for these families has just been one of the best and most emotional experiences.”

Andy and JJ review each application themselves. Families approach them vulnerable, broken and exhausted.

Twice as many will be helped now.

“For these people, we are their backstop,” Floyd said. “We are the last hope that they have for paying off these bills or to get any kind of break.

“Because of Buffalo, we’re able to help wipe that clean.”

Nearly half a million dollars of mercy weren’t the result of a fundraising campaign or a telethon.

Bills fans within eight days also sent about $65,000 to Tyler Boyd, a second-year pro who hastily set up a charity to field those contributions. Boyd chose the Western Pennsylvania Youth Athletic Association to help 5-to 14-year-old kids from low-income neighborhoods get involved in sports. Boyd said the account has grown to about $150,000.

The movement was organic, a joyous tribute, and it all began with a dramatic touchdown.

Fourth down and drought to go

Buffalo won its own game rather easily on the day of the improbable Dalton-to-Boyd haymaker. Miami, with nothing to play for, inserted third-string quarterback David Fales on its second possession, trailed by 19 points halfway into the third quarter and lost top offensive players Jarvis Landry and Kenyan Drake to ejections.

The Bengals-Ravens game kicked off at the same time, but Hard Rock Stadium added to the Bills’ tension with scarce score updates.

To end their playoff drought, the Bills needed one of two scenarios to unfold on top of beating the Dolphins: the Oakland Raiders to defeat the Los Angeles Chargers and the Tennessee Titans to defeat the Jacksonville Jaguars; or the Bengals to defeat the Ravens.

“I was very focused on the Dolphins game,” said Bills captain and center Eric Wood, who retired in the offseason, “but I’d been in Buffalo long enough and matured enough as a player that I was also very worried about that score throughout our game.”

The Dolphins finally wiped aside, the Bills hurried to the locker room to monitor their fate 940 miles away. Rookie coach Sean McDermott, unsure if his team would get another week, hugged each player as he entered the locker room.

“We knew Cincinnati-Baltimore was coming down to the end,” Wood said. “We get into the locker room, and I’m yelling to our equipment guys, ‘Hey, get the game on the TV in here!’”

The Bills’ game ended at 7:40 p.m. There was 2:31 left in the NFL’s last game of the final week, and the Bengals trailed by three points.

Bills owner Terry Pegula, coaches, players and support staffers nervously paced when not staring silently at the screen.

Some players, like defensive tackle Kyle Williams, didn’t bother to remove their shoulder pads. Williams lifted two of his young sons to his chest and waited to see if his 12th NFL season would finally be the one to bring his playoff debut.

“I turned around when the ball was gone and thought, ‘This has got a chance.’”

Cincinnati’s possession had begun two plays earlier on its 10-yard line. Based on the situation, the win-probability calculator at Pro-Football-Reference.com gave Cincinnati a 13.7 percent chance at victory.

“We were just out there, trying to win a game,” said ex-Bengals center Russell Bodine, who was signed by the Bills in March to replace Wood. “We weren’t going to make the playoffs. So we asked ourselves as a team, ‘Are we going to quit and lay down and give it up, or are we going to scrap?’”

Bodine was aware, nevertheless, of Buffalo’s stakes. His University of North Carolina roommate, tight end Sean Fitzpatrick, is a native of Pittsford, N.Y., the Bills’ training camp site.

“He was texting me before the game: ‘Please, please, please, just beat them,’” Bodine said.

Bengals offensive coordinator Bill Lazor also fielded texts that begged for compassion. Lazor made friends in Western New York while the University at Buffalo’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2001 and 2002.

Lazor called nothing but pass plays on Cincinnati’s decisive drive. Thirteen snaps, 13 throws. Dalton moved the chains three times before reaching a third-down situation.

Then, on a third-and-5 play with 73 seconds left, safety Eric Weddle appeared to intercept Dalton. But cornerback Marlon Humphrey mugged intended receiver Brandon LaFell.

The penalty resuscitated Buffalo’s locker room.

An illegal shift, two incomplete Dalton passes and a 3-yard toss to tight end Tyler Kroft led Cincinnati to call its final timeout with 53 seconds to go, fourth and 12 from Baltimore’s 49-yard line.

As bleak as the situation seemed, Cincinnati’s win-probability had risen to 16.6 percent.

Lazor: “If you don’t make the play, then at that point it’s going to be 0 percent.”

The win-probability was roughly the same as a Major League Baseball team being down one run with a runner on third, two outs in the bottom of the ninth or an NBA team that’s trailing by a point, with the ball and 1:12 on the clock.

Wood: “It definitely didn’t feel like a one-out-of-five or six chance. I don’t know that those analytics sites account that this was a Bengals team that had not played extremely well on offense throughout the year, that they were not playing for the playoffs, that the Ravens were in a must-win situation for the playoffs.”

Lazor: “We were playing in that game with our left guard, Clint Boling, moved out to left tackle. Eric Winston had been with us a few years, but was a free agent we cut in training camp and had been back with us at right tackle only a couple weeks. We were facing good pass-rushers on an obvious passing situation with two new tackles.”

Wood: “All of those things combined made it feel all the more improbable they would convert there and win the game.”

Boyd: “Andy came out of the timeout and said, ‘We’re going to get this and continue the drive. If this is going to be our last game, let’s make the best of it.’ We just wanted to finish the last play of the last game on a high note. We wanted to score.”

Lazor went with a Delta route combination, four verticals to get past the first-down marker, but with a running back leaking out of the backfield as an emergency option.

Superstar A.J. Green, the “X” receiver, lined up all alone to the left sideline. LaFell, the “Z” receiver, split out far right. Boyd was in the right slot.

Dalton stood in shotgun formation between running back Giovani Bernard and tight end C.J. Uzomah, the “Y” receiver, showing maximum protection against a possible Ravens blitz. Dalton required time for his targets to get at least 12 yards downfield.

Andy Dalton’s sketch of the touchdown play, although he recalled Giovani Bernard (“H”) on the wrong side.

Dalton: “It’s not too difficult. We started the ‘Y’ in the backfield and shifted him up to the edge. Everybody is going vertical, four verticals. The back blocks and then runs his route.”

Lazor: “It was one of our Day One of camp installation plays. It’s a play that, over time, we’ve had good success with. The guys knew it really well, one of your basic plays, the core of what you do. When it comes down to crunch time, you’d like to think those are the plays guys can execute the best.”

Sure enough, the Ravens advertised a blitz. When the Bengals came to the line, middle linebacker C.J. Mosley lurked among the defensive linemen. Weddle prowled where inside linebackers usually rove.

Dalton: “Defenses try to show one thing and do another. If you see the big picture of it, you knew they weren’t max blitzing us.”

Dalton had Uzomah and Bernard stand down. Uzomah shifted out of the backfield and to the right, near Boyd. Then Bernard settled behind the right guard.

Why didn’t Dalton buy Baltimore’s bluff?

Lazor: “Andy is a smart player and has the ability at the line to get us in those protections. We practice those things. That’s all I’m going to say.”

At the shotgun snap, Mosley and Weddle retreated into coverage. Dalton dropped back three steps.

Bodine: “I was sitting back there, trying to clean the pocket up, making sure we could hold onto this sucker for a little bit.”

Green and LaFell streaked the sidelines. Boyd went up the right seam. Uzomah turned up the hash marks.

Baltimore sent four defenders after the quarterback. Boling pushed fearsome pass-rusher Terrell Suggs off to the side and out of the equation.

In a soft Cover 2 zone, defensive back Maurice Canady overcommitted to LaFell.

Boyd: “They had a cover bust. The safety that was supposed to play the seam, where I’m headed, went too far outside and tried to stay overtop the outside go route. That gave me my lane.”

Dalton: “I knew there would be a window. That’s where my read took me. That allowed the seam runner, Tyler, to get past him.”

Wood: “At a time like that, I’m watching like a fan. I’m watching the ball. Ultimately, what matters in that moment is they are going to need a big play through the air. The protection was good enough to get it done.”

Dalton: “As the coverage played out like it did, I thought, ‘Oh, we got a shot at this.’ ”

He shuffled forward into the pocket, then shuffled forward once more. He unleashed the pass.

Lazor: “Andy was decisive.”

Dalton: “As soon as the ball left my hand, I thought it was exactly what we wanted.”

Hyde: “He had time to just sit in the pocket and get the ball off. When the ball was in the air, our locker room got dead quiet.”

Boyd: “I knew once I turned my head, the ball should be right on me.”

Bodine: “I turned around when the ball was gone and thought, ‘This has got a chance.’ ”

Lazor: “When the ball was in the air and I saw Tyler open, my thoughts were, ‘What do I call next?’ because the clock was going to be running.”

Boyd: “Then I saw Mosley running to depth, to where my alignment was supposed to go.”

Hyde: “You could see the middle linebacker jump. I thought, ‘There’s no way that’s complete,’ but he did miss the ball by that much.”

Boyd: “Mosley couldn’t affect the play unless he made a tremendous jump, which he almost did.”

Lazor: “Because he was faking blitz, he jumped up and it just got over his fingertips. Trying to be cute, it probably put them in a situation where they never really got back for pass coverage.”

Boyd: “When I saw the ball coming, my eyes got real wide, like, ‘Oh, shit!’ I wanted to make sure I made the catch to keep the drive alive.”

Hyde: “When he caught it, we were just excited for the first down.”

Boyd snagged Dalton’s throw near the 24-yard line and realized there wasn’t a tackler nearby.

With plenty of time to spike the ball and stop the clock, Boyd dashed for as many yards as he could gather instead of running out of bounds. Dead ahead, an orange “Who Dey?” banner was draped over M&T Bank Stadium’s end zone railing.

Boyd: “Once I caught it, I felt a naked presence. I knew nobody was around.”

Dalton: “I didn’t think he was going to score. I just thought it was going to be a big gain, and we were going to get down there for more opportunities.”

Lazor: “When Tyler caught it, a couple guys weren’t in position to make a play, and he took off. As I see he got past the first defender, I thought, ‘Wow, he’s got a shot.’ ”

Bodine: “I started running down there and thought, ‘Holy geez.’ He was gone.”

Boyd: “I wanted to get as vertical as quickly as possible. I knew the safety carried too far over the field. The safety caught the bait. I had a straight seam to hopefully score.”

Dalton: “Then he did.”

Only three times last year did a quarterback convert a fourth down longer than 10 yards inside the final two minutes of a game and win. Dalton-to-Boyd was the lone touchdown strike.

Bodine: “Call it a break. Call it execution. Call it whatever you want. We pulled that one out. Everybody was juiced to end the season the right way.”

Hyde: “As he was running into the end zone, our locker room just erupted. The rest is history.”

Wood: “Throughout my career, that might have been one of the most fun times I’ve ever had, just being in that locker room and watching that game. The way it happened was so improbable.”

Boyd scored with 44 seconds remaining. Baltimore held all three timeouts, but could use only one, losing the ball on downs.

Dalton finished the game in victory formation.

Bodine: “Then I had to deal with my old roommate after the game. He texted, ‘I love you,’ or something stupid.”

Lazor: “Some of the Bills coaches sent me a very nice bottle of cabernet sauvignon.”

Hyde: “Coach McDermott asked us the other day to think about how many wins we’ve been a part of. I’ve been a part of 100-some wins, and that was, by far, the most special. That whole day counts as one incredible experience.”

From Miami, to Buffalo, to New York City…

That playoff moment! #GoBills pic.twitter.com/67p8tn0XEe

— Buffalo Bills (@buffalobills) January 1, 2018

A droplet becomes a tsunami

The Bills’ 2017 marketing theme was “It Starts With One.” Marketing director Shaena Kershner shaped the concept around McDermott’s first year and the building blocks for a new culture.

McDermott’s season was a 21st century rarity. The Bills went 9-7, only their third winning season since 2000. The previous two, also 9-7 efforts, weren’t good enough for the playoffs. Without the Bengals’ help, this campaign wouldn’t have been, either.

Kevin Forrest grew up a Bills fan in Nebraska because they were featured on national television every week during their Super Bowl heyday. He has traveled to Orchard Park three times for games. He named his pug Ralph after the Bills’ founder.

With the playoffs a possibility, he and his wife Sunny watched the Bills beat the Dolphins at Balz Sports Bar in their hometown of Grand Island, Neb. Then they zipped over to her parents’ house to pick up their three daughters —ages 7, 6, and 3 — and catch the end of the decisive Bengals-Ravens game.

“I wanted to be optimistic,” Forrest said. “But, like a lot of Bills fans, my hope tank was pretty low. It wasn’t looking good.”

Forrest since has had a birthday, but he was 34 when Boyd loped into the end zone and put Buffalo in the tournament. That meant Forrest had gone half his life since the Bills’ previous berth.

“When they put up the graphic with the playoff matchups,” Forrest said, “I thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

“As a kid who grew up playing Madden, that’s the only place I saw the Bills in the playoffs.”

Forrest was overcome with emotion and sought an outlet. Central Nebraska isn’t populated by a Bills horde. So he went online for a place to rejoice.

His initial thought was to tag Dalton in a thank-you tweet, but deleted that note. Forrest figured a three-time Pro Bowl quarterback would be too important to see it.

Forrest entered Dalton’s name into Google. One of the results was a link to the Andy & Jordan Dalton Foundation.

“It just hit me: Man, I don’t think they realize how much it means to us, how much negativity and frustration has built up over the years,” Forrest said.

“I couldn’t think of a better way to give back.”

Forrest sent the foundation $30 because his employer, Union Pacific, matches donations of at least that amount. He tweeted out a photo of his gift with a call to action.

“C’mon Bills fans, lets show Andy Dalton some love, I just did.”

@ChrisBrownBills @buffalobills @mikerodak @richeisen @andydalton14 @SteveTasker89 @viccarucci @JoeBuscaglia @JohnMurphyShow C’mon Bills fans, lets show Andy Dalton some love, I just did. https://t.co/FkXxJDswhI pic.twitter.com/xedR7e4IXJ

— Kevin Forrest (@kevboats) January 1, 2018

Similar to what Amy Floyd experienced, an insane volume of notifications detonated Forrest’s phone. His tweet went viral.

Much of what transpired for him next is gauzy. Forrest was ailing and needed to have his gallbladder removed. He’s unsure precisely when the foundation called to identify him as the original Bills-related donor.

It does, indeed, start with one. Forrest was the initiator.

The foundation sent Forrest an email to let him know Andy and JJ wanted to video chat with him, but Forrest didn’t see the email until his post-surgery haze lifted two weeks later.

As a consolation for the missed opportunity, Forrest thought to add a piece of Dalton memorabilia to hang near the framed, autographed Jim Kelly jersey in his office.

Sparked by a photo of a Bills fan who scrawled Dalton’s name on duct tape and slapped it across the back of a Sammy Watkins No. 14 Bills jersey, Forrest surfed eBay for a Watkins jersey and bought a blue one for $14.99 from a guy in Alaska.

“A stellar deal,” Forrest laughed.

Forrest’s mother-in-law is a quilter. She carefully removed Watkins’ name. Forrest replaced it with a customized Dalton nameplate.

Dalton signed the No. 14 Bills jersey and mailed it back, but Forrest still hasn’t met him.

That will change this weekend. The foundation is flying him and Sunny to Buffalo for the weekend. The Forrests haven’t been to a Bills home game in eight years.

“It’s going to be surreal,” Forrest said. “It’s a humbling thing. I’m excited about seeing the reaction he’s going to get from the fans.

“I just set up the first domino. I’m surprised where it’s gone, but I’m not one bit surprised it was our fan base that made it happen.”

Deeper than a game

Donations didn’t trickle in from Bills fans. They gushed so swiftly they compelled Andy and JJ Dalton to purchase ads on five digital highway billboards before Buffalo played Jacksonville in the first round.

The Daltons have been eager to express their thanks personally since the preseason schedule was announced in April.

“It’s going to be so overwhelming, meeting all these people,” JJ Dalton said. “To go to a community that has given so much to us and give back to them is going to be really cool.

“They’ve become such a part of our lives; we want to share our appreciation with them.”

Andy Dalton first became aware of an athlete’s power at TCU. Quarterbacks coach Dick Winder asked Dalton if he would reach out to his granddaughter, hospitalized with leukemia.

Dalton struck up a friendship with Presley Ann Boydstun while she underwent inpatient treatment for 18 months. He didn’t contemplate anything deeper until Winder explained the connection with a college football star had lifted her spirits.

“I felt like I was doing very little,” Dalton said, “but it was a big thing.”

Boydstun, now a student at Texas Tech, is cancer-free.

When the Daltons began to formulate plans for their foundation seven years ago, Andy’s relationship with Boydstun and JJ’s interaction with two college friends who worked with special-needs children directed their mission.

Yet not until the Daltons became intertwined with Bills fans did they learn an eye-opening lesson about the power of sports.

“Yeah, there’s some silliness from our fans,” said Forrest, referring to the questionable antics, (many involving tables), that generate controversial headlines and videos. “When you don’t make the playoffs for 17 years, you need to find something else to keep you coming to the games.

“But this whole thing shows the kind of people that are behind the team. It’s just a game, but there’s more to it. This is bigger than football.”

Imagine how the experience has impacted Boyd’s perspective. The 2016 second-round draft choice has started only three NFL games in his career.

Although Boyd is making an average of $1.06 million on his four-year contract, his base salary two seasons ago was $450,000.

“I’m linked to Buffalo now,” Boyd said last week at his locker stall in Paul Brown Stadium. “It sinks into their minds that the Tyler Boyd-Andy Dalton play struck their miracle.

“It’s about two guys connecting with a great play and everything that was set into motion after that.”

Their fourth-and-12 lightning strike allowed the Bengals to end an otherwise disappointing season with jubilation, sent the Bills to the playoffs and underwrote priceless relief to distressed families.

The foundation already was known for a significant impact. Dalton was the Bengals’ 2016 nominee for the prestigious Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, given to players for remarkable efforts on and off the field.

“I cannot wait to shake just one person’s hand and say, ‘Thank you’ because they need to know what they’ve done.”

Bills fans added serious philanthropic capital that’s already paying for physical therapy, prolonged hospital stays, funerals, medications, cancer treatments, counseling or simply sweet distractions from reality.

Amy Floyd, the Andy & Jordan Dalton Foundation’s executive director, once was confused by the relentless, unsolicited $17 donations.

As she and the Daltons pack for this weekend’s trip to Buffalo, they understand.

“We cannot wait to come up there,” Floyd said. “I cannot wait to shake just one person’s hand and say, ‘Thank you’ because they need to know what they’ve done.”

Floyd tried to keep talking, but she couldn’t. She fought to contain a grateful sob.

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Elina Uphoff

Update: 2024-05-06

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