Wide Right (Buffalo Bills)
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Wide Right is the term for Scott Norwood's missed 47-yard field goal attempt that would have most likely won Super Bowl XXV for the Buffalo Bills. There were 8 seconds left and the Bills were behind by only a single point. Instead, the New York Giants took possession with 4 seconds left and ran out the clock for a 20-19 victory, the closest margin of victory ever in a Super Bowl.
To Bills' fans, the phrase evokes not only the loss in that game but the entire era in which the Bills qualified for an unprecedented (and yet unmatched) four straight Super Bowls only to lose them all. In a larger sense, it evokes the missed economic opportunities in Western New York at that time, and has become a cultural touchstone, used in two different movies.
Prior to Super Bowl XXV, Norwood had never hit a field goal from that distance on a grass field, and that season was in fact just 1-for-5 from over 40 yards on grass.
[edit] Aftermath
Scott Norwood returned to the City of Buffalo for a rally after the Super Bowl, where 30,000 fans chanted "We Want Scott" to show that they still respected and cared for him. Some felt that without Norwood the Bills might not have even been so successful as to reach the Super Bowl.
Also, Scott had successfully kicked a field goal in the first quarter of the game. Without that, Buffalo would have been down by 4 points on their final drive, and would not have even been able to attempt a last second field goal.
However, he was not as accurate in the 1991 season, and was cut thereafter. Ironically, his replacement as Bills kicker, Steve Christie, kicked an overtime game-winner for the Bills in their 1992 season playoff win over the Houston Oilers in the greatest comeback in NFL history, and then, in Super Bowl XXVIII in the 1993-94 season, kicked the longest field goal in Super Bowl history, 54 yards, although the Bills lost anyway, their fourth consecutive season losing the Super Bowl.
Bills fans cheered Norwood on his return home with the team. The reaction to the miss, as shown in Buffalo '66, is not characteristic of most Bills fans' perception. The fact that the game was the first of four straight Super Bowl losses for the Bills, and Norwood wasn't even in the latter two, leads many Bills fans to suggest that something larger might have been at work.
[edit] References in popular culture
The field goal miss was spoofed in the film Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, in which fictional Miami Dolphins place kicker Ray Finkle misses a key field goal during a Super Bowl game, which eventually leads to his kidnapping both Dan Marino and the Dolphins mascot for revenge.
There is also a spoof in a skit on the series Robot Chicken where he misses a person with a "kick me" sign posted on his back.
The field goal miss was also the central feature of the popular indie film Buffalo ’66, where Billy Brown (played by the film's writer and director, Vincent Gallo), just released from prison, seeks to kill a Bills kicker named "Scott Wood" for missing a field goal that would have won the Super Bowl, causing him to lose a major bet that he could not pay for. The bookie forced Billy to confess to a friend's crime and be sent to prison to settle the debt.
