HERNDON, Va. — Scott Norwood has some advice for Tyler Bass:
• Take personal responsibility, but do not blame yourself alone.
• Don’t listen to the haters. They are fewer than you think.
• Learn from the miss, then move on.
All easier said than done, of course. Norwood knows that better than most.
“Let’s acknowledge the reason we’re talking here,” he tells me the other day. “It’s playoff time, and the ball goes right, and I understand fully that my name comes back up.”
It emerged in the split second after Bass missed that 44-yard field goal try near the end of Sunday’s 27-24 playoff loss by the Buffalo Bills to the Kansas City Chiefs. CBS’ Jim Nantz made the call for some 50 million viewers:
“No! He doesn’t make it. Wide right — the two most dreaded words in Buffalo.”
(The reference, as you know, is to Norwood’s 47-yard miss in the closing seconds of Super Bowl XXV, on Jan. 27, 1991.)
Norwood did not hear Nantz’s call on Sunday. He was at a table of 20 family members and friends to watch at Jimmy’s Old Town Tavern, a raucous Bills bar in Northern Virginia. The DJ quickly cut the sound when the kick went awry. Bar owner Jimmy Cirrito, who grew up in Arcade, is fiercely protective of his dear friend.
Norwood doesn’t really need protection, though. His name is synonymous with an infamous miss, and he lives with that. Which brings us to another pearl of advice for Tyler Bass — and, really, for all of us:
History can’t be changed, so don’t dwell on it.
As it happens, Norwood loves “It’s a Wonderful Life,” the 1946 Frank Capra…
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