‘Keep Billieving’: In Bills’ lifetime of heartbreak, a glimmer of hope shines in underdog season
The Bills' season hasn't gone the way many thought it would, but in a good way.
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The misery can be measured for as long or as little as you’d like. Any duration feels interminable.
Five generations. Four continuous silver-medal seasons. Seventeen years. Thirteen seconds.
All have added to prolonged anguish for the Buffalo Bills and their community. Unable to overcome various hurdles for six heartbreaking decades, scar tissue and a collective cynicism subsist. More often than not, the Bills have produced awful football since their inception, and at their most magnificent they’ve nonetheless heaped agony on their fans in the end.
The Bills are back on the cusp of possible glory in a season they were supposed to recede. They have returned to the AFC Championship Game and a Sunday night rematch with the exasperating Kansas City Chiefs in Arrowhead Stadium.
Yet again, Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid will be the gatekeepers to reaching the Super Bowl, as Tom Brady and Bill Belichick previously were to winning the AFC East and as four straight NFC challengers were to hoisting a Lombardi Trophy before that in the early 1990s.
The Bills never have gotten over in the Super Bowl era, but every world champ in the history of sports has needed to bust through a first time.
In some ways, Buffalo already has overachieved to get this far so emphatically.
Why not go all the way?
The mere sight of those red helmets with the white arrowhead logo and the interlocked KC dredges up ghosts of the 2020 AFC title game (when the Bills were on the come), of the 13 Seconds debacle in 2021 (when the Bills should’ve advanced and hosted the Cincinnati Bengals for that Super Bowl berth), of squandering home-field advantage a year ago and Tyler Bass’ missed field goal that might’ve sent the game into overtime.
Since 2018, when Buffalo drafted Josh Allen and Mahomes became Kansas City’s starting quarterback, the Bills lead the regular-season series 4-1. Two months ago, they won 30-21 in Highmark Stadium to snap the Chiefs’ 15-game win streak.
The Chiefs are 3-0 against them in the playoffs.
Sports history, however, is rife with examples of repeated frustrations finally giving way to glory. Inside the past two decades, the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs won their first World Series in 86 years and 108 years, the Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA Finals, giving that city its first title in 52 years, and the Chicago Blackhawks claimed their first Stanley Cup in 49 years.
As for the NFL, Oakland Raiders legend John Madden coached in five AFC Championship Games over his first seven seasons — one of the two times he didn’t, the Pittsburgh Steelers eliminated them on the Immaculate Reception in the division round — before advancing to his lone Super Bowl and winning.
John Elway was considered a postseason pretender when his Denver Broncos were annihilated in three Super Bowls over a four-year stretch, then finished his career by snagging the franchise’s first two championship rings.
Reid not long ago was considered, at best, the greatest coach never to win a Super Bowl and, at worst, an all-time postseason choker. With the Philadelphia Eagles, he suffered defeats in three straight NFC Championship Games, in the 2004-05 Super Bowl against the Patriots and in another NFC title game before getting fired. In 2018, he lost his first AFC title game as the Chiefs’ coach.
Reid now is bound for the Pro Football Hall of Fame on his first ballot, having guided the Chiefs to seven straight AFC Championship Games, their first title in half a century, three Lombardi Trophies in the past five years and a chance next month to win an unprecedented third Super Bowl in a row.
See? It happens.
Also-rans can emerge victorious from the NFL’s version of the “Shawshank Redemption” sludge pipe.
Several long-suffering teams in sports history finally got over the hump. Could it be the Bills’ turn this year? (David Eulitt / Getty Images)
“When I was in Buffalo,” said former Bills tight end Pete Metzelaars, who arrived in 1982, “I would hear, ‘Hey, if you guys aren’t going to win the Super Bowl, just don’t even go.’ Really? You’d rather us go 0-16 maybe? Would that be easier on you? What games do you want us to lose so we don’t have to put you through a Super Bowl loss?”
Metzelaars played in Buffalo’s four Super Bowls and was named to the club’s 50th anniversary team. After the 1997 season, when Metzelaars retired from a 16-year NFL career that included stops with the Carolina Panthers and Detroit Lions, he reconciled the notion his chances to win a Lombardi Trophy were exhausted.
Then he got into coaching and in 2004 became the Indianapolis Colts’ offensive line coach. They couldn’t get to the Super Bowl despite Peyton Manning already collecting two MVPs and three All-Pro honors.
As has been the case lately with the historically phenomenal Chiefs blocking the Bills, the Patriots at the time were a burgeoning dynasty the Colts couldn’t traverse.
Until a breakthrough happened.
Although the 2005 Colts were a superior team to their 2006 edition, they endured tragedy when coach Tony Dungy’s son died by suicide in late December and entered the postseason on emotional fumes — not unlike the 2022 Bills after watching safety Damar Hamlin almost die on the field — and were stunned by the Steelers in the divisional round.
The next year, New England also slid a bit, finishing as the AFC’s fourth seed. Indianapolis had beaten New England in the regular season to earn the higher seed and hosted the AFC Championship showdown. For the first time, after previously topping Brady twice in the regular season, Manning finally got him when it mattered most.
“All the pieces were falling into place, and it was our time,” Metzelaars said. “It was all set up for us. We just had to go take care of business.”
Two weeks later, against the Chicago Bears, Indianapolis won its first title since the ABA’s Indiana Pacers 34 years prior.
Metzelaars still gets choked up when he talks about the moment his sons, Anthony and Jonathon, dashed from the top rows of Dolphin Stadium’s lower bowl to join him on the field and celebrate together in the rain. They hugged and pointed to his wife, Barbara, still up in the stands.
“We finally did it,” Metzelaars said. “We accomplished the goal every professional football team has every year.
“It was probably the best moment of my football life.”
A vocal faction still wants coach Sean McDermott’s key card deactivated at One Bills Drive because he hasn’t reached the Super Bowl despite a roster that features a generational franchise quarterback. McDermott skeptics recite factoids that suggest if a coach and a talented QB can’t get the job done within a few years, then that coach will never succeed and should be replaced.
We’ve listed various anecdotes that show an epiphany can occur, regardless of accumulated agonies felt by younger fans who’ve never experienced a Super Bowl and great-grandparents still hoping to witness a victory in their lifetimes. As the Super Bowl era began, the Bills fell one win short of the inaugural game, losing at home to the Chiefs, in turn trounced by the Green Bay Packers. From that point until 1987, the Bills posted a .360 win percentage, better than only the New Orleans Saints and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Bad memories can lead to impatience. Toss in the Buffalo Sabres slogging toward a 14th straight season sans playoffs, which would tie the New York Jets for the longest active drought among the big four North American sports, and the mood corrodes further.
That said, if the Bills do lose Sunday, fans also could turn to rationalization to avoid the pain. The Bills weren’t expected to make it this far, after all, not after they traded top receiver Stefon Diggs and also moved on from second receiver Gabriel Davis, center Mitch Morse, cornerback Tre’Davious White and safeties Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer.
Many experts predicted the Jets or Dolphins would win the AFC East, but the Bills clinched with five games to play, their quickest crown yet. They also were home underdogs Sunday to the Baltimore Ravens and won 27-25.
“They heard all offseason, ‘They lost this guy. They lost that guy. They’re not going to be very good. They can’t do this or that,’” Metzelaars said. “When you get told by everybody what you can’t do, it bristles your back and you say, ‘Watch this.’”
As such, even an ugly defeat in Kansas City won’t influence McDermott’s job status. Except for how he managed uncharted territory near the end of that tumultuous 2022 campaign, the past 11 months have been his best work yet.
Few outside the Bills’ facility could have anticipated them being in this position Sunday, let alone giving off vibes this just might be their best opportunity to knock off the Chiefs and advance to sport’s grandest stage.
“Keep Billieving!” Metzelaars said, careful to emphasize the first syllable. “Sooner or later, you will come out the other side.”