Buffalo Bills

Lore & Background

The Bills began competitive play in 1960 as a charter member of the American Football League led by head coach Buster Ramsey and joined the NFL as part of the AFL–NFL merger in 1970. In the first two seasons, the Bills went 5–8–1 and 6–8 under Ramsey. The Bills won two consecutive American Football League titles in 1964 and 1965 with quarterback Jack Kemp and coach Lou Saban, but the club has yet to win a league championship since. Once the AFL–NFL merger took effect, the Bills became the second NFL team to represent the city; they followed the Buffalo All-Americans, a charter member of the league. Buffalo had been left out of the league since the All-Americans (by that point renamed the Bisons) folded in 1929; the Bills were no less than the third professional non-NFL team to compete in the city before the merger, after the Indians/Tigers of the early 1940s and an earlier team named the Bills, originally the Bisons, in the late 1940s in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC). After the AFL–NFL merger, the Bills were generally mediocre in the 1970s but featured All-Pro running back O. J. Simpson. After being pushed to the brink of failure in the mid-1980s, the collapse of the United States Football League and a series of highly drafted players such as Jim Kelly (who initially played for the USFL instead of the Bills), Thurman Thomas, Bruce Smith and Darryl Talley allowed the Bills to rebuild into a perennial contender in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s under head coach Marv Levy, a period in which the team won four consecutive AFC Championships; the team nevertheless lost all four subsequent Super Bowls, records in both categories that still stand. The rise of the division rival New England Patriots under Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, along with numerous failed attempts at rebuilding in the 2000s and 2010s, helped prevent the Bills from reaching the playoffs in seventeen consecutive seasons between 2000 and 2016, a 17-year drought that was the longest active playoff drought in all major professional sports at the time. Mike Mularkey coached the Bills in the 2004 and 2005 seasons. He went 9–7 but missed the postseason in 2004 and 5–11 in 2005. He resigned from the team after the 2005 season. From 2006 to 2009, the Bills were coached by Dick Jauron. After three consecutive 7–9 seasons, Jauron was dismissed after a 3–6 start to his fourth season. Perry

In Their Own Story

The clock struck late December 2017 when Woodson-Luster arrived in Buffalo. Signed to the Bills' practice squad on December 26, he joined a roster looking for depth after his release from Oakland earlier that month. By January 10, 2018, he solidified his position with a reserve/future contract, signaling the team's intent to keep him around. However, the regular season brought changes; on September 1, 2018, the Bills made their cuts, and Woodson-Luster was waived. His time in Buffalo concluded exactly as the new season began, moving from a practice squad role to a reserve contract, and finally to release within nine months.

Reader's Guide

For their first two seasons, the Bills wore uniforms based on those of the Detroit Lions at the time. Ralph Wilson had been a minority owner of the Lions before founding the Bills, and the Bills' predecessors in the AAFC had also worn blue and silver uniforms. The team's original colors were Honolulu blue, silver, and white, and the helmets were silver with no striping. There was no logo on the helmet, which displayed the players' numbers on each side. In 1962, the standing red bison was designated as the logo and took its place on a white helmet. In 1962, the team's colors also changed to red, white, and blue. The team switched to blue jerseys with red and white shoulder stripes, similar to the Buffalo Bisons AHL hockey team of the same era. The helmets were white with a red center stripe. The jerseys again saw a change in 1964 when the

Did You Know?

• The Bills are the only NFL team that plays home games in the state of New York.
• The Bills appeared in a record four consecutive Super Bowls from 1990 to 1993 and lost each one.
• The Bills endured the longest playoff drought in the four major North American professional sports, a 17-year span from 2000 to 2016.
• In 2024, the Bills became one of the first NFL teams to sell part of their franchise to outside private equity investors, with 20.6% sold at a valuation of $5.6 billion.