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November 10: O.J.'s Bustout Mostly a Matter of Time Everybody knows how good a football player O.J. Simpson is. His teammates know it. The opposition knows it, too. What everybody also knows, including Simpson, is that it will take some time before he is the great bustout runner in the pros that he was in college. Simpson's debut in New York City with the Buffalo Bills was a losing one. The Jets beat the Bills, 16-6, yet there was evidence anew that Simpson has the flash and the dash to be a sensation — a touchdown whizbang anytime he carries the ball — if things ever work into place for these ragtag Shuffalos. Simpson carried 14 times for 70 yards. His longest run was 18 yards. He also had a costly fumble which fritted away Buffalao's last chance to catch the Jets. There is always that sense of excitement about him, the possibility that his power and shiftiness might spring him all the way.
Simpson hasn't chalked up a long touchdown run yet. He said, "I was a bit naïve. When I came to training camp, I thought we had a helluva team and that it would not take too long an adjustment for me to work into things. I didn't realize it would take me so long to learn the system or it would take so long for the guys to adjust to me." A big run by Simpson would have enlivened the afternoon's entertainment — and football, win or lose, is an entertainment — but frustration was more the order of the day for those who would have liked to see Simpson do his stuff. A man who saw it as something other than frustration was Joe O'Donnell, an offensive guard for Buffalo, whose job it is to block and make running room for Simpson. O'Donnell said, "I feel badly that I was not able to do a better job of blocking for him so that he could have been sprung loose." O'Donnell said, "A team that wins has a few superstars and a lot of average players. O.J. is a superstar. I consider myself an average player." Nobody knows better than Simpson that it is a big-time runner's job to butter up his linemen. A master of it was Jim Brown, who coaxed and cuddled the Cleveland Browns' front four. With their help he earned fame and fortune, and they happily settled for a sizeable-enough piece of the fortune. Simpson is like Brown in more ways than the fact of his wearing the same No. 32. Simpson is learning to talk about team effort and the family of man among backs and linemen. He said, "We had a team meeting after the Miami loss two weeks ago. We had been doing things as individuals up till then. But we're becoming a team now. That's what the Jets have. The other day when I called Joe Namath at his apartment (Namath and Simpson have a common interest: big money), there were some other Jets over there and they were looking at game films together." Simpson had been complaining about not carrying the ball enough. "My frustration has not been that I haven't able to run over people. Rather, it was not getting the ball when I thought I could run over them. But, of course, you can't just run over people in the pros. The linebackers can be handled if you have an angle on them, but you just can't blow over them." When Simpson was told that one of his linemen felt badly about not being able to make the blocks he needed, O.J. turned the compliment aside. He said, "It's what I was saying. We're beginning to get to know and care for each other." O.J. Simpson knows where he is going. It is just a question now, not only of trying, but of which Bills will be good enough to be going along with him.
Simpson rates, in my opinion, alongside Gale Sayers and Barry Sanders behind Jim Brown as the four greatest running backs in pro football history. Though Simpson and Brown both wore No. 32, they did not particularly enjoy a lovefest between them. Brown, who worked to rehabilitate street gang members and prison inmates, criticized Simpson for being an establishment Negro, not wishing to be involved in bettering underclass blacks. Simpson told Brown, "You do it your way, I'll go my own way."
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Can Simpson Save Buffalo from Buffalo? 
