Scott Norwood kick haunts Buffalo Bills again with Wide Right (Tyler’s Version)

Wide right: Tyler’s version? Almost exactly 33 years after Scott Norwood’s famous “wide right” kick, Tyler Bass missed a field goal attempt that ended the Buffalo Bills’ dreams of winning a Super Bowl.

The Bills were down by 3 points late in the fourth quarter of the AFC Divisional Round of the NFL playoffs Sunday when Bass attempted a 44-yard-field goal. The kick was no good, twisting to the right of the goal posts, and the Kansas City Chiefs won, 27-24.

“Wide right,” CBS commentator Jim Nantz said. “The two most dreaded words in Buffalo have surfaced again.”

Bass told reporters after the game that the hold and snap were both good.

“Ultimately you can put it on me,” Bass said. “I got to do a better job of keeping my target. I got to do a better job of playing it a little bit more left to right. I’ve been playing here long enough to know you got to do that... It just didn’t work out. I feel terrible. I love this team and this one hurts bad.”

It reopened a wound Bills Mafia first suffered on Jan. 27, 1991, when Norwood missed a 47-yard kick — “wide right” — in the closing seconds of Super Bowl XXV. The Bills lost to the New York Giants, 20-19, in the only game in Super Bowl history decided by a one-point margin.

“I remember it clear as day,” Bills fan Liam Delaney, who saw the game at a bar in Fulton, N.Y., told Bleacher Report on the 25th anniversary in 2016. “I was watching on a projector TV above a jukebox, leaning against a wall. And when the ball went up, it took forever. And he missed, and I went, ‘No, that’s not what’s supposed to happen’... I just remember bursting into tears and sobbing, and sobbing, and sobbing. And I remember people coming over and saying, ‘C’mon, man, it’s just a game.’ And I remember saying, ‘No, it’s not.’”

The Bills returned to the Super Bowl the following three years, but lost all four years in a row. Buffalo has still never won a Super Bowl and, perhaps even more haunting, the Bills have now been eliminated by the Chiefs in three of the past four postseasons.

Some fans feeling “deja vu” actually tortured themselves by rewatching Norwood’s missed kick on YouTube.

“Who’s here after Tyler Bass kick?” one commenter wrote late Sunday night on the clip, originally posted by the NFL in 2016.

“Every Bills fan just now had this nightmare replayed in their head. Some of us even came here to watch it,” another comment Sunday said.

“Tyler Bass took this to heart... so inspirational,” a third wrote.

“We’re all back here for the same reason,” a fourth said. “’That is a long way to kick a football’ came to mind immediately.”

Social media users had similar reactions.

“Just when Scott Norwood thought it was all behind him, he’s still trending on Twitter,” one X user wrote Monday morning.

“Scott Norwood 2.0,” another said.

“Wide Right (Taylor’s Version),” a tweet popular with Swifties said.

“Wide Right (Tyler’s Version),” a similar tweet joked.

Taylor Swift attended the game at Orchard Park’s Highmark Stadium Sunday, watching her boyfriend Travis Kelce score two touchdowns for the Chiefs. The music superstar has been recently reliving her “eras” by re-recording her old albums as “Taylor’s Version.”

Others posted memes, including two Spider-Man characters pointing at each other and Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the TV in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Some fans shared photos of misprinted jerseys, with Bass and Norwood’s names and numbers appearing off-center and to the right on the back.

But Bass may take comfort in knowing that Norwood didn’t become a pariah like the fictional Ray Finkle (1994′s “Ace Ventura” was partly inspired by Norwood’s missed FG) or Bill Buckner did for the Boston Red Sox in the 1986 World Series. Norwood retired after one more season with the Bills and moved to Virginia, but still participates in autograph shows and will even sign “wide right” on a photo of the missed kick if a fan asks for it.

“I’d be lying if I said that’s an enjoyable experience, but it’s part of the history of my career, and it’s clearly a historic moment in Bills history, so I’ve learned to cope with it as best I can,” he told the Rochester Business Journal in 2020. “I can’t deny that kick happened. And most people are good about it, not confrontational. So, I sign the photo and keep moving on.”