Five-Foot-Ten
Buffalo's 1998 Season and the Little Quarterback Who Made a City Believe
In 1998, Buffalo's football team started 0-3, and a city braced for a long winter.
Then a 35-year-old backup who had spent eight years in Canada came off the bench. He was five-foot-ten in his cleats, and he scrambled, spun and improvised his way to ten wins, a playoff berth and a fever that swept Western New York, right down to the breakfast table.
Five-Foot-Ten tells the 1998 season game by game, from a rough September to the fourth-down run that beat the unbeaten Jaguars and a record-setting afternoon in Miami. Along the way: the quarterback argument that split every bar in town, a young receiver becoming a star, the old guard taking one more lap, a defense that never got its own cereal, and the cereal itself.
Every game chapter has the score, the crowd, the weather and the story, plus Ray's Take, a few lines of opinion from a lifelong fan from Buffalo's Old First Ward. At the back you'll find fifty bar-trivia questions (four quarters and an overtime) and a complete stats appendix.
A warm, funny, fact-checked holiday gift for anyone who remembers the fall of 1998, or wishes they did.
