I Need the Bills to Win So I Can Finally Leave
This week marks the 37th time I’ve watched the Buffalo Bills start a football season. For you math experts out there, I was 9 when the Bills really came into my life. I’ve watched a lot of Bills football and I’m not better for it.
I’m not going to sit here and give you the usual clichés about family, nostalgia and what being a Bills fan means to me. There are going to be plenty of those columns and tweets this week. Hell, I’ve probably written half of them myself over the years.
I’m done with that.
I need the Bills to win the Super Bowl for a completely different reason.
I want out.
I know what you’re thinking.
Joe, what the hell are you talking about?
I’ve been telling my wife for years that at some point the Bills have to win the Super Bowl because I need some closure with this stupid team. Think of my last 37 years with the Bills as 37 long-ass dating relationships. Every game for the season is a date. Then another one. Then another one. Eventually you’re hoping to tie the knot.
And what happens when you finally tie the knot?
You stop dating.
Instead, every January we get dumped and then we start dating again the following season in hopes to get hitched to the Lombardi Trophy. Winning a Super Bowl means marriage and then I can throw my black book of one night stands of Bills memories in the garbage and have this be my main memory. If the Bills win it all, I’m done watching. Seriously. I won’t need it anymore and I’ll be like Charles Dutton in Rudy when he pumped his fist and walked out of the stadium for the final time. That’s me. 👋
That’s where I am with the Bills. Sixty percent of my stupid brain is occupied by this dumb-ass football team. I know the history. I know the roster. I know the salary cap…well, not really, because it’s fake. I know the draft picks. I know who played right guard in some completely meaningless game 15 years ago. I’m constantly thinking, reading, writing or talking about the Buffalo Bills.
Why?
I don’t know anymore.
It’s torture disguised as a hobby.
My wife is still in awe of what happens to me when the Bills lose in some incredibly stupid Bills way. It doesn’t just ruin Sunday. It ruins Monday. Sometimes Tuesday. Maybe Wednesday. I’ll wander around the house for three days randomly muttering, “Stupid Bills.”
That’s what they are.
They’re a stupid team.
And I love them.
That’s the problem.
I’m way past the point where I could simply decide I don’t care anymore. That bridge was crossed a long time ago and I’ve invested 37 years of my life into these idiots.
So here I am again.
Another September. Another season. Another completely unreasonable amount of emotional energy invested in whether 53 men from Buffalo can move a pigskin ball down a field better than 53 men from somewhere else.
There’s a term I’ve started thinking about when it comes to Bills fans:
Drought Brain.
To me, Drought Brain is when you’ve been bad for so long that once things finally get good, you’re terrified to rock the boat. Don’t criticize too much, don’t make the major change, and don’t go for the jugular. Because what if we screw this up? Do you remember the drought?
Of course I remember the fucking drought.
But I think people learned the wrong lesson from it because drought Brain shouldn’t be about being afraid of going back.
It should be about understanding how rare these opportunities are and refusing to waste one.
That’s what those 17 years taught me.
Windows close.
Great players get old, coaches leave, injuries happen and rosters get expensive. Eventually the quarterback isn’t the quarterback anymore. And then you’re sitting around talking about what you almost did. We already have one generation of that.
We can romanticize the ’90s Bills forever as they were amazing. Four straight Super Bowls, Hall of Famers everywhere and one of the greatest runs in NFL history.
Blah, blah, blah. You know what happened when it was over?
They didn’t have a trophy.
Eventually you start looking backward and asking questions you couldn’t comprehend while you were living through it.
Could they have done something differently?
Should they have gone for it more?
How the hell did a team that good get that many chances and never win the whole fucking thing?
It’s the one that got away.
There’s my dating metaphor again. Except I was a kid during the Super Bowl era and I didn’t understand windows or roster construction or how difficult it was to get there. I just assumed they’d come back next year.
Then next year eventually stopped coming.
I’m not 9 anymore. I’m old. I’m ugly. And I know better.
That’s what makes this Josh Allen era different for me.
If this thing ends without a Lombardi Trophy, I don’t know how I’m supposed to look back at it and just be happy about all the great memories.
“Remember how much fun that was?”
Sure.
I’ll also remember 13 Seconds. I’ll remember the playoff exits. I’ll remember having one of the greatest quarterbacks I’ve ever seen and wondering whether the Bills squeezed everything they possibly could out of it.
Maybe that’s my version of Drought Brain and I’m not afraid of the Bills becoming bad again.
I’m afraid they’re going to be great and somehow let the whole damn thing get away again.
And spare me the survival stories. I survived the drought, I survived the Music City Miracle, I survived four straight Super Bowls, I survived 13 Seconds, and I survived watching Nathan Peterman throw five interceptions in a half.
Congratulations to me.
Where’s my fucking trophy?
At this point, I don’t even want a dynasty.
Just give me one.
One Super Bowl.
That’s it.
And I’m sorry to all of you reading this, because I appreciate you. I really do. But if someone offered me a button right now and said:
“Joe, if you press this button, the Bills win the Super Bowl this season, but Joe from Queens disappears forever and nobody ever reads another word you write about the Bills…”
I’d break my fucking finger pressing it, I’d sacrifice the blog, I’d sacrifice the podcast appearances, I’d sacrifice all of you, and I’d sacrifice myself.
What the hell.
I’m old. I’m ugly. I want my trophy.
Then you can let me the fuck out of here. So if you need another reason for the Bills to win the Super Bowl so I can delete my entire social media, well, you are welcome to add me to your motivation.
Stathead of the week: 261 YPG
He’s topped 300 passing yards nine times in September since 2019.
2020 was the September explosion as Allen threw for 1,038 yards and 10 TDs in just three games that.
Allen’s overall passer rating went from 85.3 in 2019 to 107.2 in 2020, and he posted a 109.7 September passer rating in 2025.
September has produced some of Allen’s monster individual games. That includes his 415-yard, 4-TD passing game against Miami in 2020 and 358 yards with 4 passing TDs against Washington in 2021. And last year’s opener with a 394-yard opener against Baltimore in 2025.
Josh Allen has 19 wins as the starter in September which ranks 2nd best behind Mahomes. But he’s only 1-4 against teams that made the playoffs with his lone win against the Rams in 2020. Those loses came against Miami (2022), Pittsburgh (2021), New England (2019) and Baltimore (2024).
Buffalo Viral moment of the week
You are damn right I voted for red and if you voted for anything else I’ll just assume you are a cop. I’m a cynic and I wonder if they always knew it would be red and just decided to do this poll. I mean, why not poll fans for uniforms?
Furthermore, it took 24 hours for the team to announce red end zones won which doesn’t exactly feel thorough AND it came 40 minutes after Tim Graham released this story of every lawn expert from Forest Gump to Groundskeeper Willy hates this field.
So before it was Wawrow and TBN who got the counters to Graham’s story…and now it’s the breaking news of the red end zones on their social media. I guess they went with let’s get clicks over calling a TV guy to let them know a red end zone was picked.
With that…the red end zones are sick. What makes the Bills’ red end zones unique to me is obviously the nostalgia. You see that red and immediately think about the 90s Bills and those Super Bowl teams.
But even if you take the nostalgia out of it, I just think it makes the entire field pop more. There’s something about that bright red at both ends of the field against the green turf that makes the stadium look different. It gives the field some personality instead of just having another generic end zone.
Maybe I’m just an old man who wants everything to look like it did when I was a kid, but the red end zones feel like the Bills.
The best thing about the field is you can change them whenever you want. I’m sure for the rivalry game they’ll go to white or blue for the nickel city uniforms. If anything, I wish we they could do Buffalo in one end zone and Bills in the other.
Dad shots
—One of the more interesting pieces of Buffalo media news this week is that the Sabres are back on WGR after previously opting out of their radio deal. That’s notable because it’s different from what Alan Pergament had heard a few months ago, when the expectation was that the Sabres would land on a rock station under the Cumulus umbrella. So what changed between then and now? I’m not exactly sure, but the business behind these radio deals is worth explaining.
If you haven’t been following this closely, the Bills and Sabres leaving WGR was never simply about changing radio stations. The Bills wanted to bring their radio operation in-house, but perhaps more importantly, they wanted control of the money being generated around their broadcasts. Instead of a traditional rights deal where the radio company controls and sells much of the advertising inventory, the Bills can sell the advertising themselves and keep that revenue.
That’s essentially the arrangement with 97 Rock and 103.3 The Edge. The stations get something extremely valuable in return: the ability to associate themselves with the Bills, use the Bills branding and market themselves as the radio homes of the Buffalo Bills. But the Bills control the product and, more importantly, the money surrounding it.
From what I’ve been told, the Sabres are NOT getting that same arrangement in their return to WGR.
Maybe the Sabres tried getting that with other stations and they were turned down. And frankly, that makes sense. The Bills are a significantly bigger property than the Sabres right now. They have a much larger audience, generate considerably more attention and give a radio station far more leverage with advertisers. The economics aren’t really comparable.
Could that ever change? Sure. We’ve actually seen it happen before.
Go back to roughly 2005 through 2007 as the Bills were stuck in the middle of their playoff drought while the Sabres became one of the best teams in hockey. For a brief period, Buffalo became a Sabres-first town. That’s probably what it would take again: the Bills going into the toilet while the Sabres become a legitimate top-tier NHL team.
Until then, the Bills can walk into the Buffalo radio market and essentially dictate the terms. The Sabres can’t. And their return to WGR may be the clearest evidence of that.
—I’m not really sure what to make of the tours the Bills are offering at the new stadium. For starters, I’m not a huge stadium-tour guy. If I’m going to pay to walk around a football stadium, I want to see the stuff I can’t see when I already have a ticket . The locker room, the equipment areas, the broadcast booth, the player tunnel, and behind-the-scenes areas. I don’t need to pay somebody to show me Section 237.
That said, I’m not outraged that the Bills are charging people to tour the new Highmark Stadium. Pretty much every NFL stadium that can monetize tours does it, and if we’ve learned anything about the Bills’ new stadium, it’s that the building was designed to generate revenue well beyond the 10 or so football games played there every year.
What confused me was the number of different experiences being offered.
The Bills’ stadium site lists a regular Bills Mafia Tour, a 90-minute Bills Mafia Elevated Tour, private versions of those tours, a Game Day Tour, an educational tour and the newly announced Rally Day experience. The tours aren’t all the same, either. The regular guided tour includes the Bills locker room and field level, while the Elevated Tour adds premium areas such as the Founders Club and national broadcast booth.
Then there’s Rally Day.
For $45 plus taxes and fees, fans get a self-guided tour with stops at the player tunnel, interview room, west sideline, Field Club, Skyline Deck and other areas, plus a commemorative pennant. That’s not exactly the behind-the-scenes locker-room tour I would personally be looking for.
So rather than immediately scream, “THE BILLS ARE CHARGING $45 TO WALK AROUND THEIR STADIUM!” I became curious about something else:
How does $45 actually compare with the rest of the NFL?
I started looking around the league, and stadium tours are all over the place. Some teams charge around $20, others are $50, $60 or even more. Some don’t offer regular public tours at all. And comparing them isn’t as simple as putting 30 prices into a spreadsheet because some are guided, some are self-guided, some include locker rooms and other restricted areas, and some of the cheapest prices require you to bring an entire group.
The Bills also have something nobody else in the league has right now: the newest NFL stadium. Allegiant Stadium opened in Las Vegas in 2020. Six years later, Buffalo is the new stadium in town. That makes the Bills’ pricing more interesting to me than outrageous. They have a brand-new building people are curious to see, and they’re clearly going to monetize that curiosity.
The question is whether what you’re getting is worth the price.
—I’m shocked — actually, I shouldn’t be shocked — that there are people genuinely upset about OneRepublic being the halftime show for Bills-Lions on Thursday night.
As much as I would love to blame the Bills hierarchy, because trashing them is practically part of the mission statement of this site, I’m about 99.9% sure this had very little to do with the Bills.
This screams Amazon.
Amazon Prime has the game and Amazon has Amazon Music. They have a national television audience and of course they’re going to use the halftime show to promote an artist or music partnership that benefits the larger Amazon ecosystem.
So no, it probably wasn’t going to be the Goo Goo Dolls just because they’re from Buffalo. It wasn’t going to be The Killers so Kincaid and Knox can dance on stage after the Bills are up by 24. This isn’t a Bills tailgate where somebody handed Brandon Beane the aux cord.Maybe they’ll save the Goo Goo Dolls for halftime of an October home game against some mediocre team getting CBS’s third broadcast crew.
But for a nationally televised Amazon game? You’re getting the Amazon halftime show.
Sometimes corporate synergy wins.
—I don’t know if this makes the Hall of Fame voting process better or worse. I understand why they wanted to change it. The old system clearly wasn’t perfect, and having a voter essentially attached to each NFL market created its own potential biases. But going from that to 27 at-large voters raises a different question: Who are these people going to be?
If this ends up becoming a committee dominated by national NFL writers, I’m not sure that eliminates bias as much as it just changes where the bias comes from.
A local reporter who covers a team every day might naturally advocate harder for the players he watched for years. But there’s a flip side. National reporters often have much better relationships with star players because, frankly, players seem more willing to talk to ESPN, NFL Network, The Athletic or another national outlet than they are to somebody covering them every day in a smaller market.
And how closely can 28 people realistically follow the careers of every Hall of Fame candidate across 32 teams? I honestly would have tried to incorporate hall of fame players who actually work in the media right now in some capacity. (IE: Brady, Manning brothers, Shannon sharpe)
Maybe this creates a better process. The previous system certainly had problems and I’m just not convinced replacing geographic bias with the possibility of national-media bias automatically fixes anything.
It might just give us a different kind of bias.
—I was supposed to give away these Salt of the Earth brownies. That was the plan and Unfortunately, I conducted an extensive quality-control investigation and there are now no brownies left to give away. I ate them. All of them. So I guess the giveaway is now just me telling you to buy some. Also, the spicy brownie has a legit kick. I learned this several brownies into the investigation.
—Props to Pablo Torre, who has now been pretty thoroughly vindicated for his reporting on the Kawhi Leonard-Clippers salary-cap fiasco. When Torre first started digging into Kawhi’s mysterious endorsement deal with Aspiration and its connections to Steve Ballmer and the Clippers, there were plenty of people around the NBA who pushed back. Mark Cuban publicly challenged him, the Clippers denied wrongdoing, and even subsequent reporting from ESPN appeared to cast doubt on where the story was ultimately headed.
Well, the NBA has now dropped the hammer.
The league fined the Clippers $30 million, stripped them of five first-round picks and suspended Ballmer for a year after its investigation found multiple violations of the league’s salary-cap circumvention rules. Whatever you think of Torre’s style, give the guy his flowers. And I think there’s a bigger media lesson here. Torre has figured out something that is increasingly important for independent journalists:
you don’t have to choose between being entertaining and doing legitimate reporting.
Too much sports media falls into one of two categories. You’re either so serious and buttoned-up that consuming it feels like homework, or you’re producing disposable hot takes and fluff that nobody will remember 24 hours later. Torre lives somewhere in the middle. His show can be weird, funny and entertaining, but when he gets his teeth into an actual story, he reports the hell out of it. His original reporting on the Aspiration arrangement ultimately helped trigger the NBA investigation that produced these penalties.
That’s a pretty good blueprint for where independent sports media can go.
Don’t be stiff. But don’t be fluff.
—I have absolutely no idea why WWE is pushing Big Cass and Baron Corbin at the expense of two younger stars like Je’Von Evans and Trick Williams.
It’s stupid.
And watching it, I keep having the same thought: Is Vince McMahon secretly back ? Because this feels like the most Vince McMahon booking imaginable.
“We need giants! Where are the giants? Bring me giants!”
Big Cass comes back after eight years away and immediately gets thrown at Je’Von Evans, a 22-year-old who was getting over organically and feels like he could be a major part of WWE’s future. Instead of continuing to build Je’Von, WWE apparently decided the important thing was reminding everyone that Big Cass is seven feet tall.
Then you have Baron Corbin.
Trick Williams has charisma, a connection with the crowd and feels fresh. So naturally WWE brings back a 41-year-old Corbin, has him beat Trick for the United States Championship and then continues building the program around Corbin at Trick’s expense.
Why?
I’m not even against bringing these guys back. There is absolutely a place on a wrestling roster for veterans, monsters and recognizable names. But shouldn’t those guys ultimately be there to help make your next generation of stars?
If Je’Von eventually beats Cass and comes out of the feud stronger, great. If Trick gets his championship back and Corbin was simply the obstacle he needed to overcome, fine. But if the destination is simply Big Guy Beats Exciting Young Guy Because Big Guy Is Big, then congratulations: we’ve successfully recreated Monday Night Raw circa 2011.
— I did a double take when I heard Joe Buscaglia back on WGR for a spot on the morning show. Joe B made his name at WGR covering the Bills more than a decade ago, and hearing him back on those airwaves after all these years was a little full-circle moment.
It’s also good to see what looks like some broadcasting synergy between WGR and The Athletic. Buscaglia is one of the best Bills reporters out there, so getting his perspective back on Buffalo sports radio is a win for everyone. I wonder if this synergy would be a thing if the Bills were still on the station.
Joe B has also launched a new podcast, Joe B. Football. The old Buffalo Beat feed is no longer where his new episodes are dropping, so if you listened to him there, you’ll want to make the switch. I’m not sure of the switch, but I did notice that the old logo did have The Athletic on it while this one doesn’t. So maybe this is his side hustle like Tim Graham has it with his Tim Graham and Friends show. Plus, If you’ve gone to The Athletic podcast page, it is national podcasts and zero local ones. So I’m not sure if maybe they decided to scale back on local podcasts.
—Speaking of Tim Graham, he mentioned on TGAF that the new stadium’s “Charge Bar” apparently doesn’t have its liquor license yet because it requires plumbing that, well, I guess they don’t have. So let me get this straight: Fans paid for the right to access something literally called the Charge Bar, which was promoted as potentially the biggest bar in Western New York, and right now they can go in there and…get chips and try and pick up mafia babes or mafia dudes or both?
Nothing says $2.1 billion state-of-the-art stadium quite like paying premium prices for exclusive access to a bar where the most intoxicating thing available might be a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.
—I picture Tony Khan at gorilla that whenever Místico comes out, TK is like that one guy at a bar who hears his favorite song, jumps out of his seat and starts dancing by himself while everyone else just stares at him. Místico’s music hits and Tony is probably backstage losing his mind, expecting the entire building to explode and sing along.
Meanwhile, the American crowd is just sitting there like, “Yeah, man…we’re not in Mexico and we don’t know this song.” It is catchy though.
— I respect Bill Simmons to a certain extent. Here’s a guy who started as an independent sports blogger writing from the perspective of a fan and turned that into an enormous media career. In a lot of ways, he helped create the blueprint that thousands of independent sports writers and podcasters are trying to follow today.
But good lord, the guy can also come across as an arrogant dork.
The gambling story from this week is a perfect example of what happens when somebody becomes so comfortable in his own media universe that he forgets there are rules outside of it. Simmons admitted on his own podcast that while he was in California, he had his daughter’s boyfriend in Massachusetts log into Simmons’s FanDuel account and place bets for him.
Why would you tell everyone this?
I’m not anti-gambling and I don’t gamble, but if you want to bet on games, knock yourself out. But if gambling has become such a huge part of your content and you’re doing business with one of the biggest sportsbooks in America, maybe you should know the rules surrounding the thing you’re constantly promoting.
Instead, Simmons casually explained the entire arrangement on his podcast like he was telling a funny story about ordering DoorDash. FanDuel then voided the bets, took action on his account and reported the situation to Massachusetts regulators.
The guy who made his name as the independent outsider is now deeply embedded in the corporate sports-media ecosystem he once positioned himself against. There’s nothing inherently wrong with becoming successful or taking corporate money as I’d happily take some myself.
But don’t pretend you’re still sitting in your apartment writing the Sports Guy column.
Simmons’s success also seems to have produced an incredible amount of hubris. You can hear it in interviews when somebody is making an interesting point and Simmons seemingly can’t resist turning it into one of his own metaphors, a Celtics comparison or something involving The Wire. That’s why this gambling story is so fascinating to me. Simmons wasn’t busted by some investigative reporter digging through records. Bill Simmons screwed Bill Simmons.
—The family and I went to Cape May last weekend for our annual trip to meet up with my sister’s family, and I have some shocking news to report:
It was not a nightmare.
The kids actually slept pretty well in the hotel room. At this stage of parenting, I don’t even need “well.” Give me “nobody completely lost their mind at 4:30 in the morning” and I’m leaving a five-star review.
Honestly, if they slept at home the way they slept in Cape May, my wife and I would sign up for that every night of the week. So props to the kids for temporarily deciding not to destroy us.Cape May itself is pretty great. I love little beach towns like that where there’s a town with shops or you can go to the boardwalk in Ocean City. There’s plenty for kids to do, the food is good, you can walk around, go to the beach and generally convince yourself for a few days that your life is relaxing.
Our biggest problem right now is Andy and sweets.The kid eats way too many sweets, and I’m starting to realize my wife and I aren’t innocent victims here. We’re his enablers.
He wants ice cream? Sure.
Candy? Fine.
Another treat? Why not?
We’re basically the parents standing outside the casino handing the gambling addict another twenty. Andy and sweets is like Pat Moran and chicken fingers. At some point you stop asking how this happened and accept that this is simply the lifestyle they’ve chosen.
Andy is currently obsessed with wearing jeans. It’s 100 fucking degrees outside and this dude wants jeans. Not shorts, not, something light and breathable. Jeans. Every day. Yells I WANT JEANS!! after yelling about snacks.
If we try to put shorts on him, it’s meltdown galore.
The jeans obsession has apparently gotten so deep into his brain that I think he had a nightmare about not wearing jeans.
He woke up in the middle of the night freaking out because he thought he wasn’t wearing pants inside his sleep sack. I had to calm him down and basically conduct a middle-of-the-night pants investigation.
We took off the sleep sack. He looked down.
Pajama pants.
Crisis over.
So this is where I am in life right now. I have two kids, I’m exhausted, and I’ve developed a personal vendetta against Levi Strauss and Brett Favre’s Wranglers.
Fuck jeans.
—If you made it this far and you aren’t bored to tears, I thank you. I’m on Talking Buffalo on Monday and I’m sure Pat and I will find something to argue about.
Don’t forget to subscribe because you can win Bills-Jets tickets in New Jersey and, even better or worse depending on your perspective, you get to sit next to me. I’ve already told Pat I want to announce the winner on his podcast. I’m also positive he’s forgotten that conversation, so when I remind him Monday he’ll act like this is the first he’s hearing about it and immediately say no.
Have a good rest of the week. Enjoy the football, subscribe, and for the love of God, give your wife a foot massage. It’s football season and you are going to need some goodwill in the bank.
Yes, a Superbowl would be a fitting end to your fandom. But shouldn’t you at least wait to see if they repeat? If they don’t then you can stop watching. After the Jays won their first World Series I almost felt the same way. Except the next year they had an even better team and it was impossible not to watch. The year ended with Joe Carter’s World Series-winning home run so it was definitely worth it.
Great article as usual-