On January 30, 1994, Super Bowl XXVIII opened at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta with the Buffalo Bills receiving the kickoff. On the first return, Bills running back Thurman Thomas fielded the ball and was hit in the process of securing the return; his helmet came off during the play. Thomas briefly continued with the ball after the helmet was dislodged before officials stopped play. The return was ultimately wiped out by a holding penalty called on Buffalo, and the Bills were penalized, negating whatever yardage Thomas had gained. The moment was notable because it occurred on the game's opening play and involved one of Buffalo's most important offensive players. Thomas was the Bills' primary back and a key figure in the team's string of four consecutive Super Bowl appearances. Losing a helmet in live play is unusual at any level, and the incident drew attention from fans and commentators at the time, both for the abruptness of the start and for the unusual visual of a star player momentarily without his helmet. Rules enforced by the National Football League require that a player who loses his helmet during a play must immediately cease participating in that play; if he continues, officials may stop the play for safety reasons. In this case, the officials halted the sequence and the holding penalty rendered the play's yardage moot. The Bills went on to play the rest of the game as planned; Buffalo ultimately lost Super Bowl XXVIII to the Dallas Cowboys, 30–13. Contemporary coverage noted the helmet incident as an odd start to the championship game but focused primarily on the course of the contest and the Cowboys' victory. Histories of the Bills' early 1990s teams and accounts of Super Bowl XXVIII routinely mention the opening-play helmet loss as a memorable, if brief, moment in the game's opening sequence. It remains a small but often-cited anecdote in retrospectives of Buffalo's Super Bowl runs. This summary is based on contemporaneous game accounts and later retrospectives of Super Bowl XXVIII. Specific details such as the enforcement of the holding penalty and the sequence of events on the opening kickoff are matters recorded in game reports and box scores from that date.