Super Bowl XXVII — 1992 Season

Result

Super Bowl MVP

Troy Aikman (QB, Dallas Cowboys)

Starting lineups

Starting offense

Starting defense

Note: Jim Kelly started at quarterback for Buffalo but left the game with an injury; backup Frank Reich played the bulk of the game and threw most of Buffalo's passing yardage - both quarterbacks' lines are recorded above. Buffalo's defensive line is reported using the source's own "DL" labels rather than force-mapped to specific DE/DT slots the source did not distinguish.

Box score

Passing

Rushing

Receiving

Game context

Super Bowl XXVII announced the arrival of the Dallas Cowboys' 1990s dynasty and delivered Buffalo its third straight championship-game defeat, a 52-17 rout defined above all by a historic barrage of Buffalo turnovers. The Bills, appearing in their third consecutive Super Bowl as they tried to avoid becoming the first team ever to lose three straight, turned the ball over a Super Bowl-record nine times, and Dallas converted those mistakes into 35 points. Buffalo actually led 7-0 briefly and stayed within a score for much of the first quarter, but Dallas's relentless pressure on quarterback Jim Kelly, who left the game early with a knee injury, and later on backup Frank Reich, turned the contest into a rout by the second half. Troy Aikman was named MVP after completing 22 of 30 passes for 273 yards and four touchdowns, posting a sparkling 140.6 passer rating in a near-flawless performance that announced him as one of the league's premier young quarterbacks. Michael Irvin caught six passes for 114 yards and two touchdowns, while Emmitt Smith, in just his third NFL season, rushed for 108 yards and a touchdown to go with six catches, giving Dallas a dominant triple threat that would anchor the franchise's success for the rest of the decade. Buffalo's Thurman Thomas and Andre Reed each had moments of individual success, with Reed catching eight passes for 152 yards, but it was not nearly enough to offset the turnover avalanche; among the most memorable plays was a fumble return touchdown by Dallas defensive tackle Leon Lett that was controversially stripped just short of the goal line by Buffalo's Don Beebe, a hustle play that remains one of the most replayed moments in Super Bowl history despite not affecting the final outcome. The game had originally been awarded to Arizona before the NFL relocated it to Pasadena's Rose Bowl in response to Arizona voters' rejection of a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., a rare instance of a Super Bowl site being stripped for political reasons. Michael Jackson's halftime performance, one of the first major pop-star headline acts at the Super Bowl, drew a reported 133.4 million viewers and helped set a new template for future halftime shows built around top-tier musical talent rather than traditional marching-band or theatrical productions. The victory delivered Dallas its first championship in fifteen years and validated the rebuilding effort led by head coach Jimmy Johnson and owner Jerry Jones, whose controversial 1989 decision to fire legendary coach Tom Landry and remake the roster around young talent like Aikman, Irvin, and Smith had finally paid off spectacularly. For Buffalo, the defeat was the third of an eventual four consecutive Super Bowl losses, a record of championship-game futility that has never been matched, even as the core of Kelly, Thomas, Reed, and Bruce Smith remained one of the most talented rosters of the era. Dallas, by contrast, was just getting started, with two more championships to follow within the next three seasons.

Sources

• Pro-Football-Reference: Super Bowl Index
• Wikipedia: Super Bowl XXVII