Lou Piccone remembers his first trip to Orchard Park, in 1974, when he was a rookie kick returner for the New York Jets. Monsoon rains slashed sideways. High winds obliterated game plans. The Buffalo Bills threw two passes, completed neither – and won anyway.
“Oh, man, it was miserable out there,” Piccone says. “We were ankle-deep in water. I was stone-cold to the bone. And I remember thinking, ‘God, I hope I never get traded to Buffalo.’ ”
"Teams this good are usually hated by everyone except their own fans. That could come someday if the Bills stay good enough for long enough, which would be a nice problem to have. But for now, it seems that football fans here, there and everywhere really like the way the Bills play," writes Erik Brady.
And here he pauses to laugh at himself.
“Got to be careful what you say, right?” he says. “You never know what life has in store.”
In his case, what life had in store was a lifetime in Buffalo following his trade to the Bills in 1977. He lives to this day in Williamsville with his wife, JoAnne, who grew up in Niagara Falls. They met decades ago at a local golf tournament.
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"For me, the game was a sort of out-of-body experience: I was seated in the press box at Rich Stadium, but my mind was several miles away," Brady writes.
“I liked her swing,” he says.
Here’s what life has in store this week: Thursday will be “Lou Piccone Day” in Vineland, N.J., his hometown. Then, on Saturday, he’ll be inducted into the hall of the All Sports Museum of Southern New Jersey, in Bridgeton.
“I’m honored and humbled,” Piccone says. “It feels marvelous. When you’re 73, it’s nice to be remembered.”
To which Bills fans of a certain age might add: “Looooou!”
He was often serenaded that way during his six seasons as a wide receiver and special-teams specialist for the Bills. Nine NFL seasons, including three with the Jets, is a remarkable career for a man who barely played high school football, played college ball at an NAIA school and stood just 5-feet-8 1/2.
The men who played on those teams are mostly in their 80s now. And on Thursday night, when the Bills open the NFL season at the defending champion Los Angeles Rams, they’ll be watching.
Piccone’s unlikely NFL odyssey began in Vineland. He did not play high school football until his senior year and missed half of that season with broken fingers. He played college ball at West Liberty State, in West Virginia, where he earned a degree in education.
He had dreams of playing in the NFL, but was undrafted and unwanted, so he began teaching instead. He was sitting at the kitchen table with his father one day when the phone rang.
“This guy says, ‘I’m George Rodak. Is this the Lou Piccone who played for West Liberty State?’ I say, ‘Yeah.’ And he says, ‘I’m head coach of the Youngstown Hardhats.’ And I say, ‘Who is this really?’ ”
Rodak told Piccone he could make 50 bucks a game playing for the semipro team in Ohio. And he added these two magic words: “We’re scouted.”
The Cleveland Browns, Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers sometimes scouted Hardhats games, or so Rodak said.
“Be not afraid of greatness,” Shakespeare wrote, and we’re pretty sure he was talking about Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
“Right then, my heart started to beat,” Piccone says. “I loved playing football, and I wanted a chance to make the NFL.”
This seemed like a long shot among long shots, and his father told him so.
“He said, ‘Time to use your brains instead of your brawn. And besides, you’re too small.’ ”
That stung coming from his old man, who was 5-foot-7 but had been a boxer in the 1920s and 1930s, compiling a career record of 84-3.
“I said, ‘Is that what you really think? Well, we’ll have to see about that.’ He challenged my heart and my soul.”
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Piccone played one season for the Hardhats and, in 1973, joined a mass tryout with the Jets. He stood out amid hundreds of hopefuls with a 40-yard dash of 4.4 seconds. Timekeepers asked him to do it again, and again, because they thought they must have mistimed it.
“I told them, ‘What’s the matter, fellas, can’t you tell time?’ ”
Piccone did not make the team, but the Jets said they would keep an eye on him. He played that season for the Bridgeport Jets, in Connecticut, and got another tryout with New York’s Jets in 1974. This time, he made the team.
Jets fans appreciated his all-out play. One time he forced a fumble covering a kickoff and heard what he thought, at first, were boos. Then he realized they were really chanting, “Looooou!”
“I came over to the sidelines and Joe Namath says to me, ‘Well, ain’t that the damnedest thing I ever heard.’ ”
Air Force Lt. Col. Jon Kruze, serving at a base in Japan, struck up an unlikely friendship with Keita Nakagawa over their mutual love for the Buffalo Bills.
Piccone led the NFL in kickoff returns in 1974. Three years later, during training camp, the Jets traded him to the Bills for a draft choice.
“Tell them I always gave 100 percent,” Piccone told the New York Times that day. “If I can last another four years in Buffalo, I’ll be happy.”
He lasted six seasons in Buffalo – and many happy years since, of course. He was, if anything, even more of a fan favorite here than in New York. The chants of “Looooou” at Rich Stadium sounded a lot like the calls of “Juuuuice” for O.J. Simpson, his teammate for one season.
Piccone caught 81 passes for 1,154 yards and six touchdowns in his time with the Bills, while also playing special teams. Sometimes his father and mother came up from New Jersey to see him play. Piccone says his late father, the old fighter, was in his corner all the way after that one moment of doubt at the kitchen table in Vineland, the old hometown that will honor him this week.
“They’re going to give me the key to the city, and they’re naming a street for me, too. They didn’t say exactly what they’re going to call it. They’re keeping it a bit of a secret, so I don’t know, but maybe Lou Piccone Way.”
Many Buffalo fans think this is the season for their Bills, just as many San Diego baseball fans think this is the season for their Padres.
The Lou Piccone way is all out – always. That’s how he played nine NFL seasons while weighing, as he puts it, “168 pounds soaking wet.”
Soaking wet is what he was on that day when he hoped never to be traded to Buffalo. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.
And the same goes for what you wish not.
Looooou!