By Anthony Holden
CBS SportsLine Historian

This time was supposed to be different, so said the San Diego Chargers.

After getting physically shredded in the 1964 title game in cold and snowy Buffalo, the Chargers were primed to get revenge on the Bills in their home park -- warm and cozy Balboa Stadium -- in the championship game rematch which came one year to the day from Buffalo's 20-7 victory.

San Diego RB Paul Lowe and his teammates were stifled by Buffalo. (AP)

That day in Buffalo the Chargers had been without their two primary offensive weapons -- wide receiver Lance Alworth who didn't play due to an injury, and running back Keith Lincoln who was knocked out of the game early in the first quarter with broken ribs. Without them, the Chargers were no match for the Bills.

This time, it would be Buffalo without two of its main offensive weapons from that day. Fullback Cookie Gilchrist had been traded to Denver before the 1965 season began, and wide receiver Elbert Dubenion had gone down early in the year with a knee injury.

However, what the Chargers failed to consider was that it hadn't been the Buffalo offense that had carried the Bills to a 10-3-1 record and a five-game romp in the weak Eastern Division. It had been the league's most stingy defense, which allowed opponents to run an average of just 79 yards per game.

With Tom Sestak, Mike Stratton, Ron McDole and company shutting down the Chargers ace duo of Paul Lowe and Lincoln, the Bills dominated the Chargers for the second year in a row and rolled to an easy 23-0 victory, successfully defending their title and dropping the hard-luck Chargers to 1-4 in AFL championship games.

"We lost to an excellent football team, that's all," said Chargers coach Sid Gillman. "I have no alibis. There was no single factor; they just beat us. They are a beautiful team and beautifully coached. I don't know why, it was just their day and they beat the hell out of us."

The shutout was the first in AFL Championship Game history and it was the first time the Chargers had been held scoreless since a 41-0 loss to Boston on Dec. 17, 1961. San Diego never penetrated inside the Buffalo 24, and after ripping off a 47-yard run in the first quarter, Lowe gained 10 yards on 11 carries the rest of the day.

"When I got that long run, I felt like we were winning," said Lowe. "But mistakes killed us. We just couldn't get the ball rolling. I hate to say look to next year, but that's what it is."

After Lowe's breakaway, San Diego reached the Bills 28. Then Herb Travenio’s 35-yard field goal attempt was blocked by Jim Dunaway and that was as close as the Chargers would come to scoring.

Buffalo opened the scoring in the second quarter when Kemp directed a 60-yard drive that culminated with an 18-yard touchdown pass to Ernie Warlick. Kemp, the league MVP, passed for 155 yards and was voted the game’s MVP.

The Chargers failed to move on their next possession and Butch Byrd fielded John Hadl's punt at his own 26, started up the right sideline and needed only Paul Maguire's final clearing block at the Charger 20 before getting into the end zone for a 14-0 advantage with 2:29 left in the first half.

Each team missed a field goal before the half ended, and then in the second half, Pete Gogolak atoned for his miss threefold as he made kicks of 11, 39 and 32 yards to put the Chargers away.

The first field goal was set up by a 49-yard Kemp to Bo Roberson pass; the second on a 24-yard Byrd interception return of a Hadl pass, the third after the defense stuffed Lowe on a fourth-down run at the San Diego 30.

"I've seen the Bills play some great games, but this one tops them all," said team owner Ralph Wilson.

Kemp lauded coach Lou Saban for the way he prepared the Bills, and for the way he compensated when All-Pro guard Billy Shaw was lost for the day on the opening kickoff due to an injury.

"Congratulations to Lou on a great job today," Kemp said. "That was the greatest game plan we've ever had. Look at this (spotless) uniform. I can't say enough about our line."

GAME PLAYER PROFILES

Tom Sestak, Bills
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Len Dawson sat in the dingy visiting locker room at War Memorial Stadium with his head down, trying to forget the horror show he had just witnessed.

The Buffalo Bills had scored 31 points in the first quarter -- still a team record for scoring in one period -- on their way to a 34-17 victory to open the 1964 season.

Twenty-eight of the points had come in an amazing span of just 2:33, and the final seven were courtesy of an interception Dawson threw to defensive tackle Tom Sestak, which the lineman returned 15 yards for a touchdown.

Dawson was asked what he thought of the play Sestak - a 275-pound behemoth who combined ungodly strength with surprising quickness - had made.

"That f------ Sestak," was all Dawson, an intelligent man who would normally expound in great detail, could say.

Before Bruce Smith took up residence in Orchard Park and began rendering opposing quarterbacks virtually speechless, Sestak perfected the art in downtown Buffalo at the old Rockpile.

"I played for a long time, in three decades," said Dawson, a Hall of Famer and current co-host of HBO's Inside the NFL. "I played in two Super Bowls and I saw a lot of very good players, but Sestak was one of the greatest defensive players I ever played against."

Harvey Johnson, who was a one-man scouting department for the Bills in the 1960s, got a tip on Sestak from a friend who said, "Go take a look at this big horse over at McNeese State."

Sestak was a 235-pound tight end who Johnson thought would be an excellent blocker. But when Sestak reported for training camp in 1962, he showed up with 40 more pounds of bulk. Lou Saban took one look at him and said "You go down there with the defensive tackles."

Sestak went on to become a three-time All-Pro who earned a spot on the AFL's all-time team.

"He had great physical attributes, he was very strong, especially in his lower body," said Mike Stratton. "He developed excellent technique on the pass rush. He would run under a shoulder or throw his arm around a defender. And the third thing was that he learned to read. He didn't allow himself to be trapped.

"Most of the things you're getting today, the outstanding athletes, you're getting it from the defensive ends. You don't have that many tackles who are coming free and getting that pressure up the middle. But Tom had that ability to put that pressure on."

Elbert Dubenion, who has spent the past 30 years scouting for NFL teams, said Sestak was a man among boys.

"We all know the guys today are bigger and faster than they were then, but Tom Sestak, in my estimation, was ahead of his time," said Dubenion. "He would have been a star in this, or any era."

Tom Day, who played end on those great Bills defensive lines in the mid-60s, said "Sestak allowed the rest of us to just fly at people. Sestak actually was the hub of the whole defense. The guy was one of the best, without a doubt."

Sestak's career was cut short by a bothersome knee injury that forced him to retire after 1968. Had he continued on and played after the AFL and NFL merged, that extra exposure probably would have been enough to get him elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

A couple years after Sestak joined the Bills, Johnson was breaking in a new college scout one summer at training camp. Johnson walked the young man over to Sestak's cubicle in the cramped locker room and said: "This is what you're looking for."

Sestak was enshrined on the Bills' Wall of Fame in 1987. Sadly, he died of a heart attack at the age of 51, two months before the ceremony.

Pete Gogolak, Bills
Back in the 1960s, there was no such thing as a kicking specialist. Teams in the NFL and AFL didn't draft kickers or punters because rosters just weren't big enough to accommodate players who could do nothing but kick or punt.

Instead, coaches spent a good deal of training camp watching running backs, linebackers, defensive backs, or whoever, kick balls all over the place, hoping to find anyone who was at least reasonably adept at those fine skills.

So when Harvey Johnson, the Buffalo Bills personnel director, told head coach Lou Saban in the spring of 1964 that he should draft a place-kicker, Saban had to bite his lip to keep from laughing. Actually, what was laughable wasn't Johnson's scouting tip, but the Bills placekicking history during their first four years in the AFL.

During that period, with men such as safety Billy Atkins, running back Cookie Gilchrist and linebacker Mack Yoho handling placements, the Bills made only 26 of 62 field goal attempts and also missed 16 extra points. Undaunted by Saban's unwillingness to listen to reason, Johnson drove down to Ithaca, N.Y. to watch Cornell's Pete Gogolak kick.

He had heard about Gogolak's strange side winding soccer-style motion and wanted to see it first-hand. When he returned to Buffalo, Johnson told Saban that Gogolak "is the greatest kicker I have ever seen."

Saban trusted Johnson and realizing Johnson's assessment of the weak Buffalo kicking game was right on the mark, Saban drafted Gogolak in the 13th round, enabling the Hungarian to revolutionize the art of kicking. He became the first soccer-style kicker in pro football, a style that every NFL kicker uses today.

"I should have gotten a patent lawyer and patented this kick," Gogolak said with a laugh. "I wouldn't be talking to you right now, I'd be on an island someplace, a millionaire several times over. It's really amazing. It was a big change in a fairly short period of time, not only in the pros but in college."

But if not for Johnson's trek to Ithaca, Gogolak may not have gotten a shot in the pros.

"Going to an Ivy League school, the scouts didn't knock the doors down to see you," Gogolak said. "But the main reason (why he lasted until the 13th round and was not drafted by an NFL team) was I think they were skeptical of someone kicking from the side. It had never been done before, and in the pros there was no kicking tee.

"I was very disappointed because I wanted to play and I knew I could do it. Harvey came down to Ithaca in the spring and I got a bag of balls and did some kicking for him. That was the reason why he said 'Let's give it a shot.'"

In Gogolak's first game, an exhibition in Tampa against the New York Jets, he made a 57-yard field goal, the longest to date in pro football history. Now Saban really had a reason to laugh.

Gogolak -- who was born in Hungary and defected with his family to Austria in 1956 during the bloody Hungarian freedom revolution -- left the Bills after the 1965 season when the NFL's New York Giants offered him a lofty $35,000 contract.

His departure -- which was perfectly legal because his Buffalo contract had expired -- opened the floodgates to player bidding wars between the rival leagues. A few months later, in June of 1966, realizing that both leagues would be hurt if they raided each other's rosters, the merger of the AFL and NFL was announced.

"I've done two firsts, so I guess I was a trailblazer," Gogolak said, laughing again.