The Bills will play in the AFC Championship Game this Sunday.
The Buffalo Bills.
Excuse me for having a hard time wrapping my head around having one win separate Buffalo from the Super Bowl. For basically my entire life the only time that happened was in video games.
There’s a big part of our region that is looking back fondly on the early ‘90s, drawing comparisons to what it felt like then and the excitement we all have now. On the day of the Colts game, my Grandmother dropped off a picture of me taken days before the Comeback Game. I was three years old, dressed head to toe in a Jim Kelly uniform looking ready to run out of the tunnel. I look like I’m having fun. I do not remember this picture being taken.
Having just turned 31 a couple of weeks ago, I know that everyone my age and younger does not have those memories of Championship games in the past to look back on. I think what we do have makes it sweeter, though.
After Flutie-Mania closed out the 1990s (until a couple of years ago, my all-time favorite Bills memory was watching Doug Flutie score with seconds left to beat the Jacksonville Jaguars in a Week 7 game) the opportunities to feel good about the Bills were few and far between. Somehow the Bills became the worst-dressed team in football (SEVEN stripes on that helmet, not that I was counting) with endzones that were equally as unattractive. Luckily we didn't see them that often.
We were blocked from the playoffs by Pittsburgh's backups. Thought the drought would end in 2008 and again in 2011 before going up in flames in the second half of the season. The games we went to were cold and usually of little consequence. Thank God for good friends.
On December 22, 2013, I watched Thad Lewis lead the Bills to their sixth and final win of the season. The game was blacked out on local TV. The home game before that one was played in Toronto. A few months after that game Ralph Wilson passed away, and the future of the team staying in Western New York was in serious doubt.
It probably sounds like I'm needlessly wallowing in the scars of Bills past, but I swear I'm not. I just can't remove myself from those scenes when I think about the Bills playing on Championship Sunday. The Bills playing in the AFC Championship game never crossed my mind while being in the stadium for any home opener or cold December day. Never when watching any draft. Not even when stuffing a cooler full of beer and sausage at 6:00am on a Sunday morning.
So, I can't imagine this ever being sweeter for us, the millennials and younger who are seeing the Bills win in the playoffs for the first time. I don't think I'll find myself in such a state of disbelief again. We all now have positive playoff memories of our own to hold on to, thanks to Taron Johnson.
On the day of the Colts game I also took a picture of my son. He's nearly a year old, dressed head to toe in a Stefon Diggs uniform ready to use his baby walker and step out of the tunnel. I don't know if he'll have a similar experience watching the Bills as I did, or if he'll even care, but I do know that now I'll be able to tell him what so many people who remember the '90s have always told me. When they're good, it's unbelievable.