When it comes to naming the Buffalo Bills’ greatest head coach, few would argue with Marv Levy.

Levy held a record of 112-70 in 11-plus seasons with the Bills and coached the team to four consecutive Super Bowls. His resume in Buffalo ultimately landed him in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The story of how the Bills landed Levy was recently discussed on the Moran-Alytics podcast when host Patrick Moran talked with former Bills offensive tackle Will Wolford. Wolford, a first round pick in the 1986 NFL Draft, told the story of how his teammates decided to throw a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to get their head coach at the time, Hank Bullough, fired.

Buffalo entered the game 2-6 and figured that a loss to the lowly Buccaneers would ultimately get Bullough fired. The Bills fell behind 20-0 at halftime and would go on to lose the game 34-28. The loss gave Tampa Bay their second and last win of the 1986 season. As for the Bills players, they guessed right.

“There were a lot of older players who didn’t care for Coach Bullough at all,” Wolford told Moran. "And literally, you know, we were playing Tampa my first year and they knew that if we lost to Tampa he was getting fired. Again, I’m just a young kid who’s naive and taking this all in second, third hand. But we literally had players before the game and at half time saying, “If you make a tackle, if you catch the ball, if you play any good I’ll kill you.” And we went out and lost the game. We lost the game on purpose and sure enough Coach Bullough was fired and Marv Levy was hired. And really that was all she wrote. You put the combo of Bill Polian and Marv Levy together and magic happened.”

Wolford’s story is not the first time a team has quit on its coach, but it’s probably a rare case of a team finding a Hall of Fame coach in-season.