The Buffalo Bills: Love Despite The Heartbreak
AN ARTICLE BY MATTY
<The city of Buffalo, full disclosure, isn’t the greatest city you’ve ever seen. A lot of the infrastructure went down the toilet when we lost the steel industry in the 1980s, we’ve never truly recovered from that. Our heyday was when we had the 1901 World Fair and got electricity out of Niagara Falls, one of the seven wonders of the world merely an hour from my driveway. I grew up in a little rural town called Springville, but I was born in Buffalo and consider myself a Buffalo guy. I even work and go to school in the city, making my pay on the waterfront of beautiful Lake Erie. Buffalo doesn’t have and has rarely ever had much. But Buffalo has its people, their hockey team, the Sabres, and their beloved Buffalo Bills.
Buffalo’s nickname is the City of Good Neighbors, and trust me when I say we’ve earned that name. Buffalo people are just different gravy compared to a lot of Americans. We treat each other with acceptance and care, we will always greet you with a beer and a cheer, regardless of who you are. Many athletes have loved Buffalo for both its tranquility and its people. In lives where they’re constantly given a pedestal, Buffalo’s people treat their athletes like one of the boys, we give them an outlet to express their personalities outside of what the media and press try to portray. This isn’t to say the athletes don’t give back to the community either. Buffalo is unique in that almost every one of our players is intimately a part of the community. From charity softball games to meet-and-greets to hospital visits, Buffalo is oftentimes a haven for athlete-hosted events.
That being said, Buffalo always gives back to their athletes too. After star quarterback Josh Allen’s grandmother passed away in 2020, Bills fans, affectionately dubbed “Bills Mafia”, donated over ONE MILLION dollars in her name to the John Oishei Children’s Hospital downtown. An entire new wing of the hospital was constructed with that money, named the Patricia Allen wing after Josh’s grandmother. When the Bills finally made the playoffs through another team’s QB making a miracle happen, we donated over $250,000 to his charity that helps disabled children. Even recently, with one of our best players undergoing neck surgery, we’ve donated money already to Micah Hyde’s charity. Bills Mafia supports those who do good by them and find great causes to fight for.
One last paragraph about Buffalo’s people and then we’ll move on. A lot of the people that stayed in Buffalo after the crash in the ‘80s don’t have high-paying jobs, a lot of it is dirty work like construction, working in the grain mills, and working extremely long hours. While the city has seen some youth and higher class jobs open up in the past, that was mainly imported into the city, not necessarily developed. The culture in Buffalo is one of hard work and determination: no matter how hard the job, how long the odds, you will get it done. Even in my relatively posh job setting up and working events on the waterfront, I still work in the pouring rain or stay up until the wee hours of the morning to get events properly sorted. I’ve even got some wind burn on my face from Friday. Because of the size of the city relative to other much bigger cities across the States, you also won’t see many corporations outside of the state-owned areas. Lots of mom-and-pop restaurants, including the Anchor Bar that invented the popular Buffalo chicken wing. Any type of food you want, you can get it here. Buffalo is the melting pot America wishes it was.
So now that you’ve heard a bit about the city of Buffalo and what type of people we are, let’s talk about the Bills themselves. But before that, let’s talk about the NFL’s structure so everybody knows what I’m talking about from this point forward. The National Football League is comprised of 32 teams, split into 2 conferences loosely based on the AFL-NFL merger of 1970, which combined two competing football leagues into the shield you see today. The Bills reside in the AFC conference, along with storied franchises such as the Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots (obligatory “Fuck Tom Brady”), and the Oakland Raiders (now in Las Vegas because capitalism). The top 7 teams in each conference qualify for the playoffs (used to be 6), participating in a single-game elimination format until one team is left standing in each conference. Those two teams play for the championship, the Super Bowl.
The Buffalo Bills, from 1989-93, became the first and only team in NFL history to make four consecutive Super Bowls. They are also the only team to lose every single one of those. 4 years in a row making the championship game, only to lose every time. Led by legendary head coach (manager) Marv Levy, that team had legends such as Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, Andre Reed, Bruce Smith, Kent Hull, James Lofton, Cornelius Bennett and Darryl Talley. It was the only time of true success the Bills have had, and it’s still considered failure. The Bills were founded in 1960 by Ralph Wilson as an AFL team, joining the NFL in 1970. They didn’t really do anything of note other than have a star named OJ Simpson. I think you know who that dude is. To add to the heartbreak of losing four straight championship games, we also lost one in the dying seconds by a single point. If kicker Scott Norwood’s kick in 1990 was just a few inches left, the Bills would’ve been champions. Another heartbreaker essentially ended that era of Bills football, when the Music City Miracle happened in 1999. With 14 seconds left, the Tennessee Titans scored a 101-yard touchdown off of a kickoff, specifically off a lateral pass similar to rugby. Those Titans went on to the Super Bowl, where they were stopped at the one yard line as time expired in that game.
After that era of Bills greatness followed a 17-year period where the Bills didn’t make the playoffs. We weren’t even bad, just mediocre. Never good enough to attract the top players, never bad enough to get the opportunity to select the best young talent. We wallowed through mud, going through coach after coach, GM (our version of a sporting director) after GM. And then the founder Wilson died in 2014, meaning we could’ve easily lost the team. Bon Jovi attempted to buy the team and move it to Toronto, but eventually Terry Pegula bought the Bills and kept them here. He’s now funding a new stadium.
With the hiring of Sean McDermott and Brandon Beane in 2017, Buffalo began to build their next great era of football. Led by Josh Allen, Stefon Diggs, now Von Miller, Jordan Poyer, Micah Hyde, Tre’Davious White, Dion Dawkins, Tremaine Edmunds, Ed Oliver, I could go on and on and on. This team is seriously loaded this year, they could easily go all the way. Unfortunately injuries are already wreaking havoc but we should hopefully have almost everyone back for the playoffs if we get there. But this era isn’t without its own heartbreak. Last season, the Bills led the Chiefs 36-33 with 13 seconds left, with an easy road to a Super Bowl awaiting the victor. Alas, the Bills failed to beat Kansas City. Which led to Von Miller, one of the greatest defensive players of all time, deciding to join Buffalo to push the Bills over the top.
So how do Bills fans feel about the constant heartbreaks brought up endlessly by rival fans? We embrace them. After Scott Norwood missed that kick in 1990, the Bills held a press conference outside City Hall. Bills fans cheered for Norwood, begged him to give a speech. At his lowest point, we told him everything was alright. We cheered for him harder than any of the legends at City Hall that day. The Bills have been lucky to have guys that are easy to root for, guys that understand this city and its core values. They’re a bunch of workers like Buffalo is, and the city has embraced that wholeheartedly. Watching the Bills is like watching our dreams come true, watching our hard work pay off in front of the entire nation. No matter how good or bad the Bills are, we almost always pack the stadium full. And now that they’re really good again, we’re having a hell of a lot of fun doing so. The Bills and Buffalo are forever intertwined in love and appreciation for what they give to each other. The Bills give us great joy, we give them respect and undying appreciation. They’re imperfect, they may fail, but that doesn’t mean we ever lose hope. Just like how this city itself never lost hope for better days.
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