ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — A month after Brandon Beane was hired as Buffalo Bills general manager, he looked out the window in an office at One Bills Drive with a perfect view of the stadium. The sun was shining, and a gentle breeze was whipping the flags. It was one of those perfect early summer days in Western New York that almost make the brutal winters worth it.
Beane hadn’t experienced one of those winters. He had yet to build the Bills into a perennial playoff contender or draft superstar quarterback Josh Allen. But he already pictured what it would be like in Orchard Park when the Bills could end their league-long playoff drought and host a playoff game.
“Seventeen years,” he said then. “These people are dying for a winner. … I want nothing more than to watch this community go ape nuts that the Bills are back in the playoffs. And I have no doubt.”
A little more than 6 1/2 years later, Beane witnessed an unruly scene beyond his wildest imagination. In the aftermath of a brutal winter storm, the Bills beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-17 in Monday’s wild-card round. The game, originally set for Sunday, had to be rescheduled because of a lake-effect snowstorm dumping more than 2 feet of snow in Orchard Park and its surrounding areas throughout the weekend. The Bills paid fans able to get to the stadium $20 per hour to shovel snow throughout the night and all day leading up to the game. Still, most of the seats in the stadium were buried in snow. Fans dressed in coveralls and other heavy winter gear trudged through the waist-high snow and shoveled their way to their seats. Some sat in snow banks. Others didn’t bother sitting. In the 300s section, fans slid on their butts down the stadium steps to avoid falling. Erie County executive Mark Poloncarz noted that leading up to the game, “The Bills were very desperate — we actually were in a situation that if we could not clear the aisles, we were not going to be able to allow people to go.”
Bills fans missed a home playoff game before. Only 6,600 fans were allowed in the stadium for each of the team’s two playoff games during the 2020 season because of COVID restrictions. They weren’t going to be denied again. A crew of shovelers — including one especially enthusiastic topless gentleman — did just enough to get the stadium ready. A lot of snow was left over. Enough for a party.
And when the Bills scored their first touchdown of the game, a 9-yard pass from Allen to Dawson Knox in the corner of the end zone, the fans who braved single-digit temperatures went ape nuts. Knox jumped into the first row of the stands knocking over a few beers. Fans all across the stadium tossed snow in the air like it was confetti.
“It’s something you can’t see but you can definitely feel when they give that to us,” Allen said of the energy in the stadium.
“It’s iconic,” Bills left tackle Dion Dawkins said.
Tony Pappagallo, an Amherst resident and lifelong Western New Yorker, has been to more than 300 Bills games in what is now known as Highmark Stadium. That started when he was 12 years old and the stadium first opened in 1973. That’s when his dad took him and his brother to their first game. Now more than 50 years later, Pappagallo is there every game day with his adult sons. He’s had season tickets for 23 straight seasons.
“It’s a way of life,” Pappagallo said. “It’s like your family. … I think about all of the different people I’ve gone to games with over the years. That’s why you go, because of the memories, right?”
Pappagallo has been feeling nostalgic this season. Construction began on a new stadium that is scheduled to open in 2026. It’s being built right across Abbott Road from the current stadium. Pappagallo likes to get to the stadium early when the bleachers are mostly empty. He’ll visit the different seats he’s sat in over the years to try to conjure the memories of past games. This season he’s gone up to the 300s to take pictures from that view. In the backdrop of those photos is the site of the new stadium.
A lot about the new stadium will be the same. It’s in the same neighborhood, smack dab in the middle of the snow belt. And it won’t have a retractable roof, either. It was cheaper to build it in this location without a roof. But owner Terry Pegula also loves outdoor football. He looked out at the crowd during the win over the Steelers with pride and later released a rare statement reading, “I know the stadium conditions weren’t the best because of the storm, but the playful attitude and energy you brought yesterday was electric and memorable. I’ll never forget your snow celebrations during the game and after our touchdowns.”
The new stadium Pegula is building with the state’s help will have some modern amenities that will make a scene like the one that occurred Monday unlikely if not impossible. There will be a canopy over most of the seating area, multiple tunnels instead of one to make snow removal easier, a larger barrier in between the field and the seating ring so you can push snow onto the sidelines if it happens during a game and concourses wide enough for vehicles to remove snow from the upper deck without a sluice. There will also be a heated field to make the actual football conditions better.
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That’s part of what made Monday a special moment for this community. Pappagallo can’t remember another game in his 300-plus trips to the stadium with that combination of stakes and weather. Who knows if or when there will be another day like that one? Why would 70,000 people brave the slick roads, freezing temperatures and snow banks the size of Greg Rousseau for a wild-card game they could have watched from home? Because they’ve done it for lesser teams than this one. These fans spent 17 years in the NFL’s wilderness, watching a revolving door of mediocre quarterbacks lead the team to a league-long playoff drought. Now they have one of the best quarterbacks on the planet, one whose 52-yard touchdown run sent the stadium into a frenzy on Monday afternoon. With Allen, anything feels possible, especially when Sean McDermott continues to make the most of spare parts on an injury-riddled defense that continues to overachieve.
“We have a seat at the table,” Pappagallo said. “There were a lot of years before Bruce Smith, Thurman Thomas and Jim Kelly where I was like, ‘We’re not even in the NFL we’re so bad. There’s a league we’re in, but we don’t have a chance.’ That’s how it felt for most of the drought. But now we have a seat at the table. This is our shot.”
Friday afternoon, snow was still falling in Orchard Park as snow removal crews worked to clear parking lots and surrounding streets near the stadium. The Bills again put out the call for help from the public to shovel snow starting at 2 p.m. Hundreds of fans lined up, shovels in hands, many wearing Bills jerseys, to help shovel the stands. Between 5 and 6 feet of snow accumulated in the stadium between the two storms. Bills vice president of operations and guest services Andy Major said the team was hopeful 200 people would show up, but by 3 p.m. the team had at least double that, and people continued to show up throughout the evening. Music played through the stadium’s sound system as some shovelers worked around the clock. For some, it was another paycheck. For others, it was a chance to be in the stadium where so many of their favorite moments have happened.
“The Bills and the NFL is Buffalo’s connection to the big time,” Pappagallo said.
Shovelers have arrived.
You’re the best, Bills Mafia!! 👊 #GoBills pic.twitter.com/AfaRVlJS5c
— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) January 19, 2024
More than anything, though, this was a chance for Bills fans to feel connected to their team. These are the fans who spend what some might consider to be unreasonable amounts of discretionary income to travel all over the country for Bills road games. These are the fans who show up at the airport to celebrate the team’s arrival after meaningful wins and even some meaningful losses.
The Bills aren’t just Buffalo’s connection to the big time, they are also the rest of the country’s window into Buffalo. People see the viral clips of the wild tailgate scenes or the massive amounts of snow filling the stadium. Those are the snapshots of Western New York that the rest of the country sees.
A fan sits in the snow during Monday’s AFC wild-card game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Buffalo Bills at Highmark Stadium. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)
But players get here and see there’s more than that. Bills guard David Edwards found that out this season. He remembers when he was being recruited to Wisconsin, athletic director Barry Alvarez said he should focus on the people he would be around everyday. That would make his college experience meaningful more than the locale or amenities.
“What people see from the outside looking in at Buffalo is one thing, but what makes this place special is the people,” Edwards said. “That may sound cliche, but it’s true.”
Edwards found that out firsthand last weekend. He and his wife, Karoline, went to the hospital that Friday for the birth of their third daughter. She was born healthy and ready to come home by Sunday afternoon. Since the Bills’ game was postponed, Edwards tried to make the trip from Orchard Park to Mercy Hospital in South Buffalo. He made it about halfway there before sliding into a snowbank. When he called Bills director of security Chris Clark, he got him in touch with Dennis Miller, who owns a local collision and auto shop. Miller picked Edwards up and got him to the hospital. He then came back with a front-end loader to guide Edwards and his family the few miles from the hospital back to their home in Orchard Park.
“I really feel like going through what I went through, it truly is like we’re all in it together,” Edwards said.
That’s why Edwards always tries to look around the stadium when the Bills score a touchdown to soak in the celebrations and appreciate every moment. He knows there will be more of them Sunday night when the Bills welcome Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs to Orchard Park for what is arguably the biggest Bills home game since the Bills beat the Chiefs in the 1993 season’s AFC Championship Game.
A few months ago, this Bills team wasn’t in any position to think about home playoff games. They were 6-6 and fighting for a playoff spot. Five straight wins, including one against the Chiefs, earned the Bills the No. 2 seed and now two home postseason games. That one of those comes against the Chiefs, Buffalo’s biggest playoff roadblock, is an opportunity nobody in Buffalo takes lightly.
The Chiefs have eliminated the Bills from the playoffs in two of the last three seasons. The sting of the “13 seconds” loss two seasons ago hasn’t quite worn off in Western New York. But both those games were in Kansas City. This will be the first time Mahomes has played a road playoff game. He’s played one game in Orchard Park, and that was during the COVID season without fans.
Dawkins has been there for every chapter of this rivalry. He expects this game to be “drastically different” because the Chiefs are coming to Buffalo. He feels this team has a special connection to its fans and feeds off their energy. That’s especially true in weeks like this one, when adversity in the community brings everyone together.
“I’m hoping that they bring it to the highest they’ve ever brought it because I’m excited to see them,” Dawkins said. “Driving into the game I can usually tell how they’re going to be. If they’re already drunk then it’s going to be one of those games. I’m hoping around 4 o’clock everyone is just about at their teeter. I’m hoping the (Bills) Mafia brings all of everything like it’s all or nothing. I’m expecting it to be the loudest I’ve ever heard.”
(Top photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)
