Growing up, what I knew about the Bills was embodied by ‘The Shrine.’ Every game day, my dad placed his assorted Bills memorabilia above our family’s boxy television set, each in their own place. Besides a Bills mini helmet, there was the Jim Kelly talking action figure – Kelly in the home blues, about to throw a pass, and if you hit a button on the stand, an announcer said: “Joe Robbie Stadium Miami, 1989, Dolphins lead by three, only seconds left on the clock. The Bills’ Jim Kelly makes the call –“ and Jimbo described how he ran the ball up the middle for the winning touchdown as a tinny crowd cheered – this game. There was a Thurman Thomas figure, and Dad made sure he was running whichever way the Bills were driving, left to right, or right to left. One joke I didn’t understand at first: why Dad sometimes took Thurman’s helmet off and hid it somewhere in the room.
Looking around Buffalo twitter, the newspapers, the blogs, most of the writers lived through the glory days of the Bills, saw them rise into a perennial contender, and have spent their time since holding on to those memories, and I enjoy those perspectives, even though I share none of those memories. All I had was ‘The Shrine,’ my dad’s ode to the past. My view of the Bills is different: the Bills have never been good in my lifetime. There, I said it. It feels kind of good to resign myself to that.
I was born ten days after the 1993 Super Bowl, which saw the Bills lose 52-17, their worst Super Bowl loss. When my parents were deciding on a name, my dad quickly kiboshed the suggestion of Emmitt – it was too soon to be reminded of Emmitt Smith. And sure, I was technically alive during the 1994 Super Bowl run, but probably asleep for the game, or crying, which I guess is what some Bills fans were doing at that time too, but in any case I was not conscious of the Bills when I was less than a year old. My first memories of football start around the Music City Miracle. I’m sure I watched games before that, though my memories as a 6 year old are limited. I do remember, however, watching the Wild Card game, probably not fully understanding what the playoffs meant, but still watching. I remember having to leave for a birthday party just as the game was ending, my mom making me leave the room as the replay review was starting. My dad was sure that the play would be overturned, and so I left the house thinking that too. It might not have been the first time the Bills disappointed me, but it certainly sticks out as the first I remember.
And since then, as I’ve grown and become more and more of a football fan, I’ve watched the same team all Buffalo fans have – the occasionally above-average team that has sniffed the playoffs maybe twice since then, years of disappointments. Over the course of what we’ll define as the time I’ve been a real Bills fan, 2000 to the present, the Bills have finished with a record between 3-13 and 9-7 every single season. They’ve never, ever been better than a potential wild card team, and I’ve never seen them crack even 10 wins in a season. The best win I’ve ever seen was the Fitzpatrick-led Bills beating the Patriots in Week 3 of what turned into a lost season. The best quarterbacking I’ve seen was done by Drew Bledsoe or Tyrod Taylor, with honorable mentions to “first 6 games of 2008 Trent Edwards” and “first 7 games of 2011 Ryan Fitzpatrick.” Yes, one of the best stretches of Bills’ quarterbacking I’ve ever seen is Trent Edwards’ 5 touchdown, 2 interception run over six games.
It’s only now, really, that the weight of so much losing is catching up to me. I fully believed that the ’02-’04 teams had real chances at winning the division, if not the Super Bowl. I mean, they had Bledsoe, Eric Moulds and Willis McGahee, how could they not? And then through the years, there were the hopes I pinned on JP Losman and Lee Evans; on Trent Edwards and Marshawn Lynch; on Chan Gailey, CJ Spiller, and Ryan Fitzpatrick, and finally, even buying into EJ Manuel and “offensive mastermind” Doug Marrone hype. (I will say, however, that even 13 year old me knew that hiring Dick Jauron was a terrible idea.) Being young means being unrealistic and optimistic, and even if all the news I read said the Bills would be bad, I thought otherwise. And now, a little older, more cynical, bitter, I have nothing to look back on besides, at best, mediocrity.
The ‘old-timers’ have a memory of achievement, even if it ended with 4 Super Bowl losses, which I think means that they can actually picture the team being good. There’s the memory of Jim, Thurman, Andre and Bruce starring in regular season games, the thumping of the Raiders in the ’91 playoffs, the Comeback Game, heck, my dad can even remember the 60s teams, the OJ years. Everything from the past, to me, is a received myth, ‘The Shrine,’ highlights, something you know happened but doesn’t feel real unless you lived through it. There’s a vast difference between watching highlights of the Comeback game, knowing the eventual outcome, and actually having lived through it, to have seen your team unbelievably pull out the win.
All I have, tangibly, are two Eric Moulds jerseys and, regrettably, a Trent Edwards jersey. The 2004 team is the best I’ve ever seen, and they’re the team best known for failing to beat the Steelers’ backups to miss the playoffs. I can’t draw from any past successes, just the rare fun moments I’ve had while watching the team, as well as the now comical amount of failures.
This is the state of the younger generation of Bills fans: we’ve never known a winner, at all, only some teams that came close to a wild card berth. And yet there are still tons of us, watching at Bills bars across the country, at the tailgates, in the stands at the Ralph. It’s a weird phenomenon; with 16 years of no playoffs, and hardly a team in that span that built excitement, one could expect the young fan base to dwindle a little bit. But I think our continued support speaks to the community power of a team, the power to make it not about the results, or at least commiserate in a shared misery. It’s not unique to Buffalo, but I certainly think Buffalo exemplifies the notion of a team with nearly no success in its history building a passionate group of fans, with a huge part of the appeal being that they’ve never won, and if they do, it’ll be all the sweeter. The other key factor of the support is family. I was born in Chicago and inherited my love of sports from my Dad; I never considered rooting for any other team than the Bills, mostly because Dad was watching them, and who at a young age doesn’t want to be like Dad? Bills fans my age all have a parent or family who love the Bills, who crucially did live through the Super Bowl teams, and the familial bond usually supersedes the quality of the team. Without a history of winning, community and family are all teams have left, but it still brings in new fans.
Should we be worried about the future of Bills fans if the team’s playoff drought keeps going, stretches out to 20 years? Naw. The Bills are staying in Buffalo, and will always be Buffalo’s obsession, for better or worse. I mean, some kid around my age just got a Bills 2016-2017 Super Bowl Champions tattoo on his chest, so willful, blind, and probably drunk optimism is still alive and well. For all of us born after the early 90s Bills, it’s not a question of if the Bills will get back to their lofty heights, it’s if we’ll see them ever be great. As always, here’s hoping.
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