Former player or fan? As Fitz says goodbye to the stadium, the lines have 'blurred'
Ryan Fitzpatrick – who played for nine NFL teams – reflected on why he fell in love with the Bills fan base. “We are gritty and have been knocked down at times and have a true love and passion for the Bills and football, and we take a lot of pride in it.”
At 13 minutes past midnight, Ryan Fitzpatrick was lingering on the Highmark Stadium field. He didn’t need to be. The clock had ticked out on the Buffalo Bills’ 31-21 defeat of the Miami Dolphins almost an hour earlier. Fitzpatrick’s postgame duties as an analyst on Prime Video’s “Thursday Night Football” wrapped several minutes earlier, and most of his on-air colleagues had already headed up the tunnel toward their bus.
Former Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick greets friends in the tunnel before the Miami Dolphins game at Highmark Stadium on Thursday.
He played for both the Bills and the Dolphins during his 17-year career. Derek Gee, Buffalo News
But Fitzpatrick wasn’t in a hurry. He hung back, chatting. This is a field he knew well. He was an NFL quarterback for 17 seasons, including four (2009-12) with the Bills. He started 53 games as a Bill, roughly half of them on this field, and played here a handful more times as a visitor. Fitzpatrick had ripped his shirt off in this place at least four times already, too, and one of them was tonight. So here he was, shirt barely buttoned and hanging untucked under his sport coat, walking with a couple of friends, slowly making his way toward the exit.
He seemed to be absorbing the moment. After this season, 53-year-old Highmark Stadium is closing and the Bills are moving to a new facility across the street. Fitzpatrick lives in Arizona and travels the country weekly for his “Thursday Night Football” gig, so it seemed likely that this visit could be his last.
Forty-six minutes later, my phone rang. Fitzpatrick was on the line, so I posed the question: Was this likely your final visit?
“I wouldn’t say this is definitely the last time,” he said. “But I would say this is probably the last time I’ll be back in the stadium.”
That small opening likely hinges on the postseason. Fitzpatrick has been to Buffalo a couple of times for playoff games in recent years, and those visits have become part of Bills fandom lore.
In January 2022, when he was still with the Washington Football Team but was recovering from an injury and knew his career was over, Fitzpatrick came for a Bills-Patriots playoff game. It was 6 degrees that night, and though he earned many millions as a quarterback, Fitz isn’t ritzy. No suite life for this guy: He had tickets in the Highmark’s wide-open seating bowl, with his 13- and 14-year-old sons and friend from Florida who also brought his two boys. The Bills scored touchdowns on their first six possessions. “If they score another touchdown,” Fitzpatrick told his sons, “we’ve got to take our shirts off.”
The Bills scored a seventh time. The boys ripped their tops off. Fitzpatrick pulled off his. Fans nearby followed suit by de-suiting themselves. At a frigid football game, it was a father-son moment fit for wrestling, and the images went viral.
Former Bills quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick’s breath can be seen as he fires up the crowd after taking off his shirt – again –
before the start of the AFC Divisional Round game against the Baltimore Ravens on Jan. 19 at Highmark Stadium. Derek Gee, News file photo
Two years later, Fitzpatrick was back for a Bills-Baltimore Ravens playoff game. This time, he was the “Legend of the Game,” the Bills alum who returns to rev up the crowd before kickoff by shouting Hall of Fame coach Marv Levy’s famous words, “Where else would you rather be than right here, right now?”
With cameras trained on him and microphone in hand, Fitzpatrick pulled off his jersey and did the deed bare-chested, his breath forming clouds in the icy air. That day, the Bills’ social media team posted a video of the moment with the caption, “THE LEGEND OF FITZMAGIC!!”
The magic of Fitz – a moniker used far more often than his actual name – was sprinkled around Buffalo this week. He flew in Tuesday and grabbed dinner at Mulberry Italian Ristorante, an eatery tucked into a Lackawanna neighborhood about 15 minutes from where Fitzpatrick lived when he played for the Bills. On Wednesday night, Fitzpatrick and his broadcast colleague Andrew Whitworth held a live show for their podcast, Fitz & Whit, at Wayland Brewing Company a few minutes from the stadium in Orchard Park. The crowd was spilling off the brewery’s expansive outdoor plaza and onto the parking lot. A publicist for Prime noted that “close to 1,000 fans showed up” and Fitzpatrick stuck around for photos with everyone who wanted one.
The next day, as fans tailgated leading up to the 8:15 p.m. start of the Bills-Dolphins game, thick-bearded men competed in a series of Fitz look-alike contests, the most prominent of which was featured on the “Thursday Night Football” pregame show. Fitzpatrick selected the winner, in part based on beard length and chest hair – the more voluminous, the better.
Eric Jones works on a sand sculpture of Ryan Fitzpatrick outside the Big Tree Inn in Orchard Park on Wednesday,
just in time for the “Thursday Night Football” matchup between the Bills and Dolphins. Joed Viera, Buffalo News
Fans outside the Big Tree Inn, a bar that sits at an intersection near the stadium, posed for selfies with a larger-than-life Fitz sand sculpture, created the day earlier by artist Eric Jones. I had posted the photo on Instagram and Fitzpatrick, whom I hadn’t yet met, direct messaged me with the words “So good!”
The man talks and cheers and tears shirts off like a fan, and he’s not subduing himself. After the game, Fitzpatrick and broadcast colleagues interviewed Bills quarterback Josh Allen and lineman Dion Dawkins. The set was situated on the field, and hundreds of fans remained in the stands. At one point, they started chanting, “Take it off! Take it off!”
This had happened before. Two years ago, after the Bills beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Fitzpatrick pulled off his shirt on set during an Allen interview.
This time, Allen helped him out by undoing some buttons. Fitzpatrick played up the moment, drawing out the crowd’s cheers. Then, on live TV with his eyes wild and mouth agape, he pulled his shirt open.
“It was the fans,” Allen said to reporters later. “He’s a showman.”
When we spoke later, Fitzpatrick – who played for nine teams – reflected on why he fell in love with the Bills fan base. “We’re kind of the same,” Fitzpatrick told me. “We are gritty and have been knocked down at times and have a true love and passion for the Bills and football, and we take a lot of pride in it.
“I have, in probably the last five or six years, gone from that relationship [between] being a player and the fans, to me also being a fan. I’m one of them, and I feel like I’m truly just part of Bills Mafia rather than having that separation. Those lines have certainly blurred in the last few years.”
Buffalo Bills alumni Ryan Fitzpatrick revs up the crowd prior to the AFC divisional playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens in January.
Harry Scull Jr./News file photo
Which may be why he appeared to be soaking up every moment on that field after the game was over and the show was wrapped. But for Fitzpatrick, it seems to be more about people than the place. I asked him what is distinctive to him about Highmark Stadium, and his mind jumped immediately to the visitor locker room.
“It is brutal,” he said. “One of the worst – if not the worst – in the NFL.”
Fitzpatrick toured the stadium under construction while he was in town, and made sure to see the future visitors’ locker room. “It is going to be immaculate and amazing,” he said. “When people think about coming to Buffalo, they think about the small visitors locker room, the cold showers, and the two toilets for a team of 53 guys plus 20 coaches, which can be a little bit challenging at times.”
OK. Though Fitzpatrick has been retired for three years and isn’t using locker room toilets anymore, he clearly won’t be missing the facilities here.
“The other part of it,” he said, “is the cool part of it. The traditions are going to carry on.” He started listing them: The Bills’ “Shout!” song. The pregame ritual of a former Bill bellowing “Where else would you rather be …?” The turning of The Killers song “Mr. Brightside” into a Bills anthem.
“All these little traditions that have been gained over the years are going to make it feel like home right away because they’re going to continue into this new stadium with the fans,” he said, adding that the new stadium, which is strongly vertical, has “got the feel of the Colosseum. There’s not a bad seat in the place. You’re right on top of the field. It’s going to be so loud.”
Note to self: Don’t overinterpret Fitzpatrick’s slow roll off the Highmark field for the probable final time. That was likely about the people he was talking with, not the turf he was standing on.
“From this trip, there’s been some nostalgia and thinking back and the memories,” he said, “but I am about 10 times more excited about the new stadium now than I was before I got out here.”
Makes sense. It’ll be a tremendous place to rip off your shirt and shout.