Buffalo Bills · History

The Buffalo Bills are a professional football franchise based in Buffalo, New York, founded in 1959 and playing since 1960. They compete in the AFC East and host their home games at Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, which opened in 1973 and seats about 71,600. They are the only team to have played in four straight Super Bowls.

The AFL years and the 1964 and 1965 titles

On 28 October 1959 businessman Ralph Wilson paid 25,000 dollars for one of the eight original American Football League franchises. Wilson wanted to put the team in Miami, could not get a stadium lease and took up the suggestion of moving it to Buffalo. The name was taken from the Buffalo Bills of the old AAFC, who played from 1947 to 1949. The team spent its early seasons at War Memorial Stadium, a 1937 venue fans called the Rockpile. With Lou Saban as head coach, Jack Kemp at quarterback and Cookie Gilchrist at fullback, the first AFL runner to pass 1,000 yards in a season, Buffalo won the league championship on 26 December 1964, beating the San Diego Chargers 20-7 at home. It repeated exactly a year later, 23-0 over the same opponent in San Diego. In 1966 it lost the AFL title game at home 31-7 to the Kansas City Chiefs and missed out on the first Super Bowl. Kemp later became a United States congressman and a candidate for vice-president in 1996.

O.J. Simpson and 2,003 yards

Buffalo drafted running back O.J. Simpson first overall in 1969. On 16 December 1973, at Shea Stadium against the New York Jets, Simpson became the first player to pass 2,000 rushing yards in a season. He finished the year with 2,003 in fourteen games and was voted league MVP. His offensive line was known as the Electric Company, the unit that turned on the Juice. On Thanksgiving Day, 25 November 1976, he ran for 273 yards at Detroit, then an NFL single-game record.

The ground at Orchard Park

In 1973 the club moved into Rich Stadium in Orchard Park, with 80,020 seats and one of the league's first naming-rights deals, signed with a local food company. The building became Ralph Wilson Stadium in 1998, New Era Field in 2016, Bills Stadium in 2020 and Highmark Stadium in 2021. In March 2022 the club and the state of New York agreed to build a new stadium across the street. Between 2008 and 2013 the Bills played a series of regular season games at the Rogers Centre in Toronto. In November 2022 a snowstorm forced the home game against Cleveland to be moved to Detroit.

Jim Kelly, Marv Levy and the K-Gun

The Bills drafted Jim Kelly in 1983, but the quarterback signed with the USFL and did not arrive in Buffalo until 1986. The team was built around him: Bruce Smith, first overall in 1985 and later the NFL career sack leader with 200; receiver Andre Reed, also from the 1985 draft; and running back Thurman Thomas in 1988, league MVP in 1991. Marv Levy took over as head coach in November 1986 and installed the no-huddle attack known as the K-Gun, which played fast and kept opponents from substituting. Under him Buffalo reached four consecutive Super Bowls and lost them all. The first went on 27 January 1991 against the New York Giants, 20-19, when Scott Norwood pushed a 47-yard field goal wide right on the last play. The last two were against the Dallas Cowboys.

Eleven title games

Buffalo has played three AFL championship games, four AFC championship games and four Super Bowls. The two titles it holds are from 1964 and 1965, both in the AFL and before the merger with the NFL.

The Comeback

On 3 January 1993, in a wild card game against the Houston Oilers, Buffalo trailed 35-3 in the third quarter. Kelly was injured and backup Frank Reich was playing. The Bills won 41-38 in overtime on a Steve Christie field goal. It is still the largest comeback in NFL history, and in Buffalo it is known simply as The Comeback. Three weeks later the same team won the AFC Championship Game at Miami and reached its third straight Super Bowl.

Seventeen years without the playoffs

On 8 January 2000 in Tennessee, a kickoff return with a lateral from Frank Wycheck to Kevin Dyson knocked the Bills out 22-16. The play is remembered as the Music City Miracle, and in Buffalo the argument about whether the pass went forward has never stopped. The Tennessee Titans went on to the Super Bowl that season. The defeat opened a seventeen-season playoff drought, the longest in the league at the time. Ralph Wilson died on 25 March 2014 at the age of 95, after 54 seasons as owner. That October, Terry and Kim Pegula, who also own the Sabres of the NHL, bought the franchise for about 1.4 billion dollars and ruled out any move away from the city.

Sean McDermott and Josh Allen

Sean McDermott was hired as head coach in 2017 and Brandon Beane as general manager. The drought ended on 31 December 2017 on a result elsewhere, when a late Cincinnati touchdown eliminated Baltimore. In 2018 Buffalo traded up to the seventh pick to take quarterback Josh Allen, who was voted NFL MVP for the 2024 season. The team won five straight division titles from 2020. On 23 January 2022 it lost 42-36 in overtime at Kansas City, in a game the Chiefs tied with thirteen seconds on the clock. On 2 January 2023 the game at Cincinnati was suspended and never resumed after safety Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest on the field.

Retired numbers and the Hall of Fame

Buffalo has retired three numbers: Jim Kelly's 12, Thurman Thomas's 34 and Bruce Smith's 78. Thomas is the club's career rushing leader, Reed its leading receiver and Smith its sack leader. Four players from the 1990s side are in the Hall of Fame, along with head coach Marv Levy, elected in 2001, and owner Ralph Wilson in 2009. Guard Billy Shaw, the only Hall of Famer who played his whole career in the AFL, receiver James Lofton and O.J. Simpson are also enshrined. Steve Tasker, a special teams specialist from 1986 to 1997, is the player Buffalo fans most often argue should join them.

Bills Mafia and the cold at Orchard Park

The supporters have called themselves Bills Mafia since 2010 and keep up the tailgate custom of jumping through folding tables in the car parks before kickoff, snow or no snow. The stadium has no roof and the wind off Lake Erie is part of every visiting team's planning. When Andy Dalton threw the touchdown that put Buffalo back in the playoffs in 2017, fans donated more than 400,000 dollars to the Cincinnati quarterback's foundation. In January 2023, after Damar Hamlin's cardiac arrest, the charity drive the player had open passed eight million dollars in a matter of days. The division rivalry with the Miami Dolphins dates back to 1966.