How the Buffalo Bills’ underdog story made them America’s team: ‘The people around us rally with it’

Park Park, New York – During Buffalo Bills Drought in the playoffs, ESPN anchor Kevin Connors used to have a running joke on the air. Connors, a lifelong Bills fan from Long Island, refers to the Bills as America’s team. It will elicit laughter from its co-hosts, one of whom baked in sympathy for Connors, and other fans who have carried the show through 6-10 and 7-9 seasons.

Now, though? Connors looked like he was on to something.

“They’ve already become America’s team,” Connors said this week before Buffalo. Last playoff game with Kansas City Chiefs.

“America loves the story of that. America loves an underdog, but I think they really respect a team that’s been there, been bad forever, built it, got really good, and they keep getting up. There’s a level of respect for that.”

It is not easy to determine the country’s root interest in any given season. Betonline attempts to do this based on Geotagged data from X posts to see how many posts with official hashtags come from each state. Earlier in the playoffs, their data showed that half the states in the country were rooting for Detroit LionsAnother franchise that hasn’t reached the top of the mountain. but Washington leadersa feel-good story in itself, was canceled by Black last week. The other remaining NFC team is Philadelphia Eaglesa team that recently won the Super Bowl and has a fan base that doesn’t have the best reputation. Then there are the Chiefs, who have won consecutive Super Bowls and have been in three of the last four. The Bills are the only team left in the field without a Super Bowl win.

When Betonline replayed the data after the conference tournament was set, it showed two-thirds of the country pulling the Bills. It’s not an exact science, but it makes sense.

Bills guard Connor McGovern, who played for… Dallas Cowboysthe team is traditionally referred to as America’s Team. Maybe that’s why people root for us. They see us as the sweetest underdog.”

The Bills aren’t exactly David versus Goliath. They have gone to the playoffs six straight seasons, won a playoff game in five straight seasons and have a career-high three 13-win seasons in their last six. Josh Allen She is one of the best running backs in the league, and arguably the most exciting to watch.

But this is also a team and fan base that has been repeatedly kicked into the boats. Forget the four straight Super Bowl losses in the 1990s or even the 17-season playoff drought, both of which wander their own ways. Throw in the fact that this region, one of the smallest markets in professional sports, has never featured a Super Bowl or a Stanley Cup championship. Even without that history as a background, this version of the Bills has built scar tissue of its own. As the Bills have become a fixture on nationally televised games in recent years, their lowest moments have been on display for the football-watching public. The football world felt the fan base’s collective anguish during Buffalo’s 13-second loss to Kansas City. Home playoff losses to Cincinnati Bengals And the leaders in the division over the last two seasons have made it easy for people outside of Buffalo to wonder how the fans keep coming back.

And all that grief on the field seems trivial when you consider the adversity the team and community have endured. In 2022, the country rallied around the bills when Dahmer Hamelin He collapsed in the field and almost died. That same year, Buffalo endured tragedy when a racist shooter killed 10 people and wounded three others at a supermarket on the city’s east side. The devastating Christmas storm left 47 people dead in 2022. Often times, the country’s window to Buffalo is centered around struggle.

The Bills have a chance to change that as they did for three hours Sunday during a thrilling divisional round win against Baltimore Ravens. More than 42 million people tuned in to what turned into a party at Highmark Stadium. Fans who have been in the parking lots since the early morning hours end their night with an old-fashioned Buffalo celebration first in the stadium and then in the same parking lots.

Earlier that week, a Baltimore radio personality called Buffalo, “The City of Losers.” After the game, Bills coach Sean McDermott gritted his teeth at the mention and offered an impassioned defense of his adopted hometown.

“It’s a city of winners, it really is,” he said. These people in this city are winners. I’ve only been here eight years but I consider this my hometown. This place is different and the people here are different. They deserve more than whoever said that about them.”

“Buffalo is a city of winners and the people here are different.” ❤#gobills | #billsmafia pic.twitter.com/lny6llll70s

-Buffalo Bills (buffalobills) January 20, 2025

Invoicing integrity Micah Hyde He started this season on the outside looking in while contemplating his playing future. Sitting at home in San Diego gave him a different perspective on how much people outside of Buffalo are pulling for bills.

“I think it’s been like that for a while now,” Hyde said. “We were almost over the hump.”

Hyde also watched this story. He arrived in 2017 as one of the first signings of Sean McDermott’s tenure as head coach. He has been through every high and low with this system. He has made his career and home away from home here. And this season, he decided to return as a member of the team’s practice squad to do everything he can to help this team get to the finish line. Hyde’s son loves watching his father’s highlighter videos before he goes to bed. And those videos drive it home for Hyde how far the bills have come.

“There were some highlights from 2017, it was a home game and there was no one in the stands,” Hyde said. “To see the organization from where it was now, it’s two completely different things and it’s honestly cool to see. That’s why I felt like coming back wasn’t rational. I wanted to be a part of this. I was able to see it from when it was, frankly, a dumpster fire. It was terrible when We got here for the first time, to where it is now we are one of the top places in the league to be a part of.”

Buffalo is one of the top places in NFL It’s more than lip service to players in the locker room. The word love is frequent in players’ vocabulary. Love each other. Love the game. And love of community.

“We are literally like the core of the community,” McGovern said. “Everything is intertwined here. I don’t think there is anything better in football than that.”

Or as Hyde said, “It’s a homegrown team. Everyone sees it as an organization run by good people with good people in the organization, a very good quarterback, and a young feel. That’s America in a nutshell if you want to talk about that.”

Defensive tackle Jordan Phillips In his third stint with the Bills. His first was in 2018 and 2019. He returned in 2022 for two seasons. Most recently, he started this season with the Cowboys and was released in November. Picked up by the Bills. Every time it was a no brainer to come back.

“It’s everything,” Phillips said. “All this appreciation you get. I can do what I want to do. I can put my coat on there. It’s just fun. The people around us gathered with it. Why wouldn’t you want to come back? Why wouldn’t you want to be a part of this? The destination wasn’t a big destination.” But now I think that’s the best way to say it. It speaks to the team and the community around it, you’re like, ‘” But when you’re here, you’re like, “Oh yeah, that’s it.”

Phillips knew about destination cities. He has played in some of the league’s biggest markets like Arizona, Miami, New York, and Dallas. The more he bounced, the more Phillips realized how different Buffalo was. The weather and nightlife don’t make the destination. In those larger places, Phillips said there were a lot of other things to do and the teammates didn’t all live together. Loitering away from the facility was rare. In Buffalo, there are things to do but you usually do them together as a team.

“You have a greater bond,” Phillips said. “It’s a college vibe. It takes special people and special management to be able to build something like that. Because even before Sean got here it wasn’t like that. It takes people but once you get the right people and the right staff to buy into what you’ve got, Then you have an MVP quarterback, that’s what you can get.”

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This week, as Allen spoke to reporters, mounds of snow left by a blizzard on the other lake were behind him on the practice field. The temperature dropped and headed toward zero. This weather may deter some players from entertaining in Buffalo, but it has helped this group of players find their identity individually and collectively.

“It’s hard to put into words but usually when people think of Buffalo, they think of what’s going on right now with the snow and the cold,” Allen said. “You have to be pretty tough in a place like that. We feel like we have guys in this locker room that maybe don’t get all the credit they deserve, coming here on the last leg of their career and coming here just trying to prove something not only to the world but to themselves. “

That’s part of what makes it reasonable to think two-thirds of the country could pull for bills the rest of the way. But even if a lot of people are behind them, that doesn’t change the underdog feeling that the bills are trying to harness. Phillips was quick to point out the lack of billing on the All-Pro and Pro Bowl teams. In his eyes, Buffalo will never get the recognition it deserves.

“That’s not what this is about here,” he said. “It sucks because guys don’t get the national attention they deserve. But society gives you so much more than that. You’re loved here, you know what I’m saying? It’s like you’re damn legends. At the end of the day, that’s all you really need.”

A lot of players state on the bills that they have deleted social media. So they don’t necessarily notice how full the cart is. They also know that it has a lot to do with the simple fact that the Chiefs won. repeatedly. Some fans may complain about the perception that the Chiefs are getting favorable calls or Taylor Swift is appearing on the stream too often. But the root of it all was that the tribes were standing in the way of the entire league.

Tight end bills Dawson Knox He’s a Star Wars fan, so he smiled by comparing the bosses to the evil Empire.

“We’ll take the extra fans but our fan base because we don’t need to add anyone else to make us feel good,” Knox said. “I always see us as the good guys and them as the bad guys, whoever we play.”

During a huddle before the Bills’ game against the Ravens, the coaches showed a video of Talking Heads responding to the Bills for one reason or another. He leaned hard into the underdog role. No external motivation should be needed this time. Despite a 4-1 record against the Chiefs in the regular season since Allen and Patrick Mahomes Taking over, Buffalo is 0-3 in the playoffs against Kansas City. That, and a potential trip to the Super Bowl, is motivation enough.

“It’s like when you’re a little kid and you’re tired of your big brother beating your ass all the time,” Phillips said. “If you want to be the king, you have to bring out the kings.”

No matter how it ends, the Bills are clearly not the same team Connors used to jokingly call America’s Team on SportsCenter. This version is the real deal.

“It’s hard to get around,” Phillips said. “In the coming years, especially when the new stadium is built, it will be like, ‘Here we are.’”

(Top image: Katherine Reilly, Stephen King, Timothy T. Ludwig/Getty Images)