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 And you thought that the 49ers last second victory was the most exciting ending to an exciting NFL week 1....

That the 49ers' improbable victory -- their offense finally came to life after sputtering, wheezing and backfiring the rest of the game -- was not the weekend's most exciting conclusion speaks volumes to the trend of so many fantastic finishes.

And most came down to special teams and that most specialized of specialists -- the kicker.

Not since 2003 had three opening-week games been decided by field goals in the final seconds or overtime.

Shaun Suisham's 39-yarder gave the Washington Redskins a 16-13 overtime victory over the Miami Dolphins at FedEx Field.

Mason Crosby's 42-yarder with two seconds to play gave the Green Bay Packers a 16-13 win at Lambeau Field against the Philadelphia Eagles.

But many will speak for years to come of what went down at Buffalo's Ralph Wilson Stadium.

Trailing 14-12 with 18 seconds to play, the ball resting at the Bills' 35-yard line on third and 10 and with no timeouts remaining, Denver Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler hit receiver Javon Walker for an 11-yard gain near the left hash marks.

That's when the Broncos employed a strategy that looked part fire drill, part jailbreak, all Keystone Cops.

On Denver's sideline, "Toro!" the Broncos' code word for getting their kicking team on the field in such time-constrained situations, had been called. The offensive unit rushed off the field at the same time the field-goal team raced on. And with three seconds remaining on the running clock, the ball was snapped to surprisingly set holder Todd Sauerbrun.

With one second to go, a rushed Jason Elam's foot connected with the pigskin.

And as the clock turned to zeroes, the ball was in flight, moments before splitting both the rain and the uprights to silence the hostile crowd and give the Broncos a memorable white-knuckle victory.

Yet it only seemed chaos had been trumped by Elam's 42-yard boot.

Turns out there was a method to the Broncos' seeming madness. Steve Tasker, a former special teams standout who spent most of his career with the Bills and now works as a game analyst for CBS Sports, was not all that shocked the Broncos successfully pulled off "Toro!" without being gouged.

"Oh, yeah, it's something you prepare for," Tasker, a seven-time Pro Bowl player who was inducted into the Bills' Wall of Fame at the game, said Tuesday in a telephone interview from his Buffalo-area home.

"It's not that difficult if you're ready for it. All it takes to get it done is to see it coming. These are trained guys out there. It says a lot about their preparedness."

Tasker said the Bills' call for such last-second field-goal attempts during his playing days was "Mayday!" and they would work on it "three or four times in the preseason and once every two or three weeks in the regular season, Fridays or Saturdays.

"The hardest thing about it," Tasker added, "is seeing (the situation) coming a couple of plays ahead."

Which is exactly what Broncos coach Mike Shanahan did.

Still wondering, then, why Denver did not simply spike the ball after Walker's catch gave the Broncos a first down to stop the clock, easing the mayhem and giving the Broncos ample time to set up for the field-goal try? Simply put, "Toro!" was put into effect before the ball was snapped on third down.

"From where I was standing, I thought it was still fourth and inches," Shanahan said in his Monday media conference.

"But it didn't matter because you're going to anticipate that before the ball is snapped; so our (field-goal unit), as soon as (Walker) was down, they were taking off to the field. So that option of the quarterback spiking it was out."

And that was what impressed Tasker.

"To try to change it on the fly, that's when confusion ensues," Tasker said. "Just stay with the plan and trust in the guys that have practiced it."

And while Tasker said every team employs such emergency plays, the 49ers obviously did not need it.

The Raiders, though, need to work on simply making a field goal, as Sebastian Janikowski still is trying to validate to many his standing as a first-round selection in the 2000 draft.

After all, he missed three field-goal attempts in the Raiders' disheartening 36-21 home defeat to the Detroit Lions on Sunday, and the left-footed kicker with the purportedly ridiculously strong leg is but 10 of 25 on attempts of 50 yards or longer as a pro.

Meanwhile, the Raiders' rivals have worked on "Toro!" quite a bit in the thin Mile High air.

"We do it all the time," Shanahan said with a grin. "Usually we work on it in 17 seconds."

On opening weekend, the Broncos needed only about 12 seconds to give their fans a thrill to last a lifetime.