Sal Maiorana

@salmaiorana

In the first common AFL-NFL draft, the Bills picked only one player who ever saw regular playing time.

Safety John Pitts was the 22nd overall player selected, and he played parts of seven seasons in Buffalo.

ORCHARD PARK — When Billy Shaw trudged off the brown muck that passed as the football field at Buffalo’s decrepit War Memorial Stadium on New Years’ Day 1967, he had never felt — nor would he ever feel again — such an overwhelming sense of athletic disappointment.

In today’s parlance, what happened on that cold afternoon would be called a “tipping point” for the Buffalo Bills, and Shaw recognized it as such when the upstart Kansas City Chiefs crushed the Bills 31-7 in the American Football League championship game.

“That was the passing of the torch,” Shaw recalled.

One of the greatest players in team history as evidenced by his bronzed bust that resides in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Shaw knew that when the gun sounded, Buffalo’s glory days were gone, and they probably weren’t coming back anytime soon.

“We took the torch from San Diego in '64 and '65, and then Kansas City took it from us,” Shaw said. “That one hurt. I wanted to win that football game more than any football game I ever played. The '64 championship and '65 championship were great highlights, but the one I remember the most was the one we lost to Kansas City. If there is a shadow of anything in my football career, it was not winning that game because I would dearly have loved to play in the first Super Bowl.”

When the Chiefs dethroned the two-time defending AFL champion Bills, what was even worse than missing out on representing the AFL in the first world championship game was that this loss illuminated the fact that Ralph Wilson’s team was in clear decline. Age had begun to creep in, but the three straight trips to the AFL championship game created a false sense of security that ultimately doomed the team for years of failure to come.

“The youngest starter on that defense was (cornerback) Butch Byrd and everybody else was a little older,” said backup linebacker Marty Schottenheimer. “There wasn’t an infusion of younger players, but when you’re winning and going well it’s not real easy to change the mix. This thing wasn’t broke, so we didn’t have to fix it.”

Recalling the aftermath of the loss to Kansas City, starting linebacker Mike Stratton said, “We just couldn’t get things to come back the way that they were. We couldn’t capture the chemistry and the magic of the teams that we remembered in '64, '65 and '66 and it was a disappointment.”

Of course, the Bills could have prevented the impending free fall (a hideous record of 17-64-3 between 1967 and 1972), but a succession of pathetic drafts made it impossible. And the root of it all can be traced to two miserable days in March 1967 when the Bills made a series of disastrous personnel decisions that punched their ticket on a downward-bound train where the first stop was mediocrity, and the second stop was laughingstock.

As part of the landmark 1966 merger agreement between the NFL and AFL that would take effect starting with the 1970 season, it was agreed that two events would begin immediately. At the end of the 1966 season, the champions of the two leagues would meet in the de facto Super Bowl (NFL champ Green Bay routed the AFL’s Chiefs, 35-10 on Jan. 15, 1967). And both leagues would participate in one draft of college players instead of the separate drafts that had been held since the formation of the AFL in 1959.

That inaugural common draft 50 years ago was held March 14-15 at the Gotham Hotel in New York City with commissioner Pete Rozelle charting each pick on a chalkboard. It was during those 48 hours that the Bills sealed their fate as a soon-to-be irrelevant franchise.

The first domino to fall occurred before the Baltimore Colts made Michigan State defensive tackle Bubba Smith the No. 1 overall pick. In a trade that made zero sense, Wilson signed off on a deal that sent quarterback Daryle Lamonica and wide receiver Glenn Bass to the Oakland Raiders in exchange for quarterback Tom Flores and wide receiver Art Powell.

Flores and Powell were both 30 and basically washed up. Flores would complete 27 passes in parts of three seasons with the Bills, while Powell played only 1967 with the Bills and made 20 of his 479 career receptions. The 28-year-old Bass had been a decent player for the Bills and had a couple nice years (147 catches over six seasons), but he never even played for the Raiders and retired after two middling seasons with Houston.

The 25-year-old Lamonica was the central figure in the trade, and everyone — except Wilson and his minions — knew the Bills made a huge mistake letting him go. Buffalo’s veteran starting quarterback, Jack Kemp, was already in obvious regression and would be 32 at the start of the 1967 season. Lamonica had been his backup since 1963, and he should have been the heir apparent.

Instead, he went to Oakland and in the last three years of the AFL’s existence, he went 36-4-1 as the starter, twice led the league in TD passes and yards passing per game, was twice named league MVP, and the Raiders won the '67 title and played in Super Bowl II. Running back Bobby Burnett spoke for many when he called it “the dumbest move” and “the biggest mistake the Bills ever made.”

Lamonica stayed with the Raiders until 1974 and his Oakland career record was 62-16-6, including a perfect 6-0 against the Bills. While Lamonica was wearing silver and black, Buffalo’s starting quarterbacks included the likes of the fading Kemp, Dan Darragh, Kay Stephenson, Dennis Shaw, and James Harris before the Bills finally found a useful player when they drafted Joe Ferguson in 1973.

With Bills fans still stewing about the Lamonica trade, the folly of the draft commenced, and when it was done, the Bills picked 19 players over the course of 17 rounds. Only three would ever wear a Buffalo uniform, and only one — first-round defensive back John Pitts — would contribute in a somewhat meaningful way. The other two players who made the team as rookies in 1967, second-round lineman/tight end Jim Lemoine and fourth-round offensive lineman Gary Bugenhagen from Syracuse, played sparingly and were gone before the 1968 season began.

Pitts would stay in Buffalo until being traded to Denver in 1973, and in that time he started 44 of the 115 games he played, compiling 10 interceptions and three fumble recoveries. Not much from the No. 22 overall pick.

It was the kind of draft that would get general managers fired today. Instead, the Bills’ braintrust — led by Wilson, general manager Bob Lustig and chief scout Harvey Johnson — continued to make a mess in the area of roster replenishment.

In 1968, the Bills picked 18 players and the only ones who lasted at least three seasons with the team were first-round wide receiver Haven Moses, fourth-round linebacker Edgar Chandler, fifth-round defensive lineman Mike McBath, seventh-round defensive back Pete Richardson, and 10th-round quarterback Dan Darragh.

Coming off a 1-12-1 season, the Bills were awarded the No. 1 pick in 1969 and used it to select running back O.J. Simpson, though a 5-year-old would have had enough sense to pick the Heisman Trophy winner from USC. After Simpson, 15 players were picked and only one was on the Buffalo roster at least three years — eighth-round quarterback James Harris.

Finally, in 1970, of the 19 players chosen, only first-round defensive end Al Cowlings and second-round quarterback Dennis Shaw were in town three years.

So, to summarize: In the first four common drafts, the Bills chose 70 players, only 10 were on the team three years or more, and of those 10, only Pitts, Moses, Cowlings, Shaw and Simpson were regular starters at least three years.

It’s a draft record so spectacularly horrendous, it’s almost impossible to comprehend, but it certainly explains why the Bills were the worst team in professional football from 1968-71 when their cumulative record was 9-45-2.

“You still enjoyed going to work, playing, the competition out there,” Stratton said, “but when they started keeping score on Sunday, it wasn’t a lot of fun. The fans wanted the best for the team, they wanted things to happen that would get Buffalo back to when we were the pride of the league.”

There were pockets of success in the mid-70s when Simpson was at his peak, and then a couple playoff years in the early 1980s, but it wasn’t until the late 1980s before the Bills re-emerged as a consistently strong team, a 12-year run that included 10 playoff seasons, six AFC East titles, and four straight AFC championships.

MAIORANA@Gannett.com