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Levy was far from burned out, just full of burning desire to keep improving the Chiefs until they returned to elite status. The residue of the strike did not make it easy for the coach since the Chiefs were one of the squads most resolute in their support of the Players' Association. Feelings along the picket line at the team offices became so heated that a fistfight broke out between scout Otis Taylor, one of the team's all-team great alumni, and linebacker Jack Del Rio, now the head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Many of the striking teams informally kept together for workouts, with the idea of being as ready as possible when the strike ended. The Chiefs weren't among them. When the games were cancelled, the Kansas City players dispersed. Once play resumed, the Chiefs lost their first three games. They won two of their last three, knocking the New York Jets out of the playoffs with a 37-13 victory in the final game of the season. The next day Levy was fired. He felt his firing was unjust, the result of constant disagreements over interference by Steadman, a non-football man. Levy met the media 48 hours later and got his feelings off his chest, reading a three-page, single-spaced statement in defense of his term in Kansas City. The response from the public was overwhelmingly pro-Levy, but that didn't save him from spending the next three and a half years in football limbo. Still highly respected in the NFL, he came close to being hired to fill head-coaching vacancies in Seattle and, ironically, Buffalo, but those jobs went to others. Marv went from coaching football games to broadcasting them, but he soon returned to coaching when he succeeded George Allen as coach of the rag-tag Chicago Blitz in the USFL, an NFL rival league which was then on life-support.  When your career lows include four trips to the Super Bowl, you've earned your way into Canton. When the USFL folded, he returned to Montreal in 1986, not to coach again, but to serve as general manager of a sinking franchise in a sinking league. Meanwhile an interesting development had occurred in Buffalo despite the Bills' woeful won-lost record. Buffalo had a new general manager, a man who had just one season of NFL experience as a scout. His name was Bill Polian. When Levy became the Montreal coach in 1973, he began poring over reports sent to the Alouettes by part-time scouts, virtually volunteers, who were paid meager rates and did the work almost as a hobby with the hope they might someday be hired by a pro team. Levy was fascinated by Polian's reports because of their meticulous, knowledgeable and comprehensive information. Polian's day job was selling advertising for a magazine called "American Farmer." His operated out of New York, his hometown, until a pro team, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the CFL, finally hired him. When Levy signed to coach the USFL's Chicago team, he asked Polian to join him. Since Polian had spent years pressing his nose to the window of pro football teams without gaining entrance, Levy didn't have to do much convincing. In Polian's first year as general manager, the Bills had become so moribund that the new GM was convinced a mid-season coaching change was the only path left open to him. His choice of coaches wasn't unexpected, because one thing NFL people knew about Polian was that "he's a creature of Marv Levy." In an ironic role reversal, it didn't take much convincing for Polian to get Levy to take the Bills' job. One of Marv's broadcasting jobs was as an analyst of Buffalo's preseason games. The first Bills' game he ever worked was the previous August when they played a game against the Bears in Notre Dame stadium. The game marked the debut of the Buffalo quarterback, Jim Kelly, after he became free following the demise of the USFL. Levy knew that with Kelly, Buffalo had a chance to become a good team. Buffalo won just two games in Levy's half season of coaching in 1986, but Polian was compiling such a strong roster full of talent that the Levy/Polian collaboration could hardly wait for the 1987 season to start. Their enthusiasm was dampened early. A three-point loss to the Jets was followed by an encouraging 34-30 victory over Houston, but then the players went on strike once again. This strike was different. One game was cancelled, but then the owners fought back by announcing the season would go on with their teams' uniforms filled by "replacement" players. The games bore small resemblance to bonafide NFL games, but it gave the owners a negotiating club. This time there was no coaching burnout; they had plenty to do, quickly molding street players into reasonable facsimiles of football teams. There were just three sets of "replacement" games before the strike ended. One of the most interesting coaching matchups was a game between Bill Parcells' ersatz Giants vs. Levy's pretend Bills in Buffalo. The great Lawrence Taylor had crossed the Giants' picket line, and Parcells played him at tight end on offense, and on defense lined him up over center with orders to blitz on every play. The Bills' center was Will Grant, who actually played center for the Bills in the ‘70s and came out of retirement for another try. By halftime, Grant had committed six holding penalties, and Levy chided him in the dressing room. "But Marv," protested Grant. "Six penalties aren't bad since I've been holding him on every play." Buffalo won the battle of boredom, 6-3. With the pall of the strike lifted, the Levy-Polian collaboration proceeded. One day Polian approached Levy excitedly. "How would you like Cornelius Bennett in your lineup," asked Polian. Bennett was the best defensive player who came out of college in 1987, and the Indianapolis Colts made him the second selection in the entire draft. The problem was that the Colts and Bennett's agent were at an impasse, and it was already halfway through the season. "How would we get him," asked Levy. Polian had the answer: "Trade."
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