Now You See Him, Now You Don't

Jason Simpson, age 3�, is hanging out with some pretty fast company these days. Many of his running mates are twice his age, and there even seems to be a 10-year-old or two in the crowd. Recently, when Jason's acting up won him a shot in the mouth from another little kid, several of the senior members of the gang retaliated. "Don't you know what you did?" they yelled at the perpetrator while Jason himself, unaware of the cosmic significance of the attack on his person, nodded in vigorous support from behind the legs of a larger companion. "You hit O.J. Simpson's son!"

That indeed is sacrilege in Buffalo where O. J. Simpson (see cover), the once and future greatest running back in the history of football, has led the lowly Bills to unimagined heights. Eighty thousand strong, Buffalonians have been thronging on Sundays to the city's new house of worship, Rich Stadium, to witness Simpson's miracles and chant "Juice, Juice, Juice." Their prayers have been answered. In successive home games against the Jets, the Eagles and the Colts, O.J. rushed for 123, 171 and 166 yards to lead the Bills to three straight wins, a feat Buffalo had not accomplished in the four previous years that the Juice labored there. Add to this the yards he gained in a victory over the Patriots (250) and in a loss to the Chargers (103) in the Bills' first two road games, and O.J. was 26 yards ahead of the pace that Jim Brown set in 1963 when he rushed for 1,863 yards, the NFL season record.

Moreover, the Bills suddenly found themselves in the dizzying company of the Miami Dolphins at the top of their division. The Dolphins put things in perspective when they gained sole possession of first place with a 27-6 win over Buffalo in Miami last Sunday while holding Simpson to under 100 yards for the first time this season. Hampered by a wet, slippery Poly-Turf field and throttled by a stalwart Miami defense, O.J. gained 55 yards in 14 carries before sitting out the final 11 minutes with a sprained ankle. This gave him a total of 868 yards in 138 carries, 63 yards behind Brown's pace.

Buffalo returns home this week for its first Monday night appearance ever—further proof of Simpson's second coming—still very much in contention for a playoff spot. The Bills, now 4 and 2, have already won as many games as in any season since 1966, while Simpson has a shot at regaining the ground he lost at Miami. Jim Brown's weakest effort of 1963 came in the seventh game, when he got 40 yards against the Giants.

"He'll get Brown's record," says Buffalo Guard Reggie McKenzie, "but 2,000 yards, well, that's a nice round figure." In truth Simpson's biggest handicap in his race against Jim Brown may be that he can't play against Buffalo's defense, which gave up a whopping 275 yards rushing to the Eagles.

What a difference a coach makes. Less than two years ago Orenthal James Simpson was rapidly fading from public view. His first pro coach, John Rauch, scoffed at the notion that his No. 1 draft choice could carry the load he had in college. "That's not my style," said Rauch. "I couldn't build my offense around one back, no matter how good he is. It's too easy for the pros to set up defensive keys. O.J. can be a terrific pass receiver and we expect him to block, too."

O.J. did O.K. Although failing to live up to his notices, he led the Bills in rushing in each of his first three years. Buffalo won four games his first season, then three, then one, while Simpson gained 697, 488 and 742 yards, respectively. "I was playing the game but not enjoying it," he says now. "By the middle of the season I couldn't wait to get back to California." The lucrative business contracts he had signed after graduation began to expire without renewal. Early in his third year, 1971, a fan sent him a steamship ticket to Africa. By the end of that season he announced that five years would be all he would play as a pro.

Enter Coach Lou Saban, who had led the Bills to two straight AFL championships in the mid-'60s. "I knew his track record," says O.J. "His backs gain a lot of yards. I had had over 700 yards the year before and Floyd Little [who had played for Saban at Denver] had led the league. We had about the same average, but Floyd had 100 more carries, and I think the more you carry, the better your average gets."

When O.J. got a look at Saban's play-book in the 1972 training camp he promptly signed a new multiple-year contract, although his old one still had a year to run. "I've cried with these guys," he said. "Now I want to drink champagne with them."

Saban planned to rehabilitate Buffalo around Simpson. "Offenses and defenses have to tie themselves around certain players," Saban said last week. "They have to have a hub and then one by one the other players become spokes. It makes the unit better because others want to reach heights, too. We have a very young, impressionable team. All the talking in the world is of no consequence; you need examples and you want to use a man to set high standards who's capable of reaching them. If you continue to hope that a player with potential might reach a certain level, he probably never will. But O.J. had been there once. The better he got, the better the team got."