Buffalo's defensive coordinator Joe Collier recalled: "Sid Gillman was fit to be tied because our field was in terrible shape. That was the only practice field we had. We just wore it out. ... So the field was not very conducive to the Chargers, who were based on speed. Gillman threatened to call the game off. He called the commissioner. We had bigger guys on the defensive line in those days than most teams. ... And our linebackers were big. We played in the mud and the snow a lot, and big guys have a little bit of an advantage.

Coach Saban said afterward that he was happy that the Chargers scored first. "It jarred us to our senses. It woke us up. He admitted, though, that the early touchdown scared him. I thought immediately–could it be another 51-10 rout?" He was referring to the score by which San Diego clobbered the Boston Patriots in the 1963 championship tilt.

Stratton in the locker room after the game: "I thought Lincoln had nothing more than the breath knocked out of him. I never realized I had broken a rib."
Years later, Mike recounted the play. "They always ran kind of a curl pattern to the wide receiver and would run a flare with the back. It seemed as if the quarterback would take his cue from the linebacker. If the linebacker was in the line of fire and far enough back, they would dump it off to the running back. They'd already run that once or twice, so I decided, 'I'll try something new.' When I saw the pattern develop, I just turned my back to the quarterback and took several steps to the wide receiver, then stopped and turned back and went back toward the quarterback. If they caught me, the most they could do was throw to the wide receiver. I started back for Lincoln, and I saw they were throwing to him. It was just, put your head down and try to dig the dirt because, golly, if Lincoln caught the ball in time to give me a juke, hell, he could have been gone.'"
Lincoln recalled: "We were pretty confident about how we had just scored. But we decided we were going to show Buffalo a new look on offense. We called it a delayed double-flare action to the left side. I went out of the backfield for a flare pass. ... The first time Tobin looked at me, Stratton was about 20 yards downfield. He saw me out there, knew I was his man. So he started coming. In the meantime, Rote decided he was coming to me; the rush was in on him; he threw the Goddamn ball to me like you'd throw a snowball down a chimney. It seemed as though it would never get to me. And just as the ball got to me, Stratton hit me. It was a solid hit, a clean one, nothing dirty about it. When I went up for the ball, I exposed the sides of my chest and stomach area. That's where Stratton hit me. He separated my sternum, rib case."
Stratton: "You just kind of get up and go back to the huddle. I didn't have any idea what was happening. When we got back to the huddle, all of us looked over there. I think Harry Jacobs, the middle linebacker, went ahead and called the defense that we were going to run for the next play. We were getting ready to break the huddle, and Lincoln was still down."
Joe Collier: "I later told a writer from Sports Illustrated that a thrill went up and down the bench. When that was in the magazine, I got 10 or 15 letters from people saying I was a sadist: 'How could you say that after he got hurt?'"