A selection of anonymous NFL Pro Bowlers don’t want to play in Buffalo. It’s being taken as a bad thing by a lot of fans, hurt by the way players from outside are putting us down. Buffalo Bills fans can take things personally.
I think they should take this personally and wear it as a badge of honor.
Buffalo is a hard place to play. Other teams don’t like playing here. That’s because of us. We make playing at New Era Field hard for opponents.
Let’s break it down from the beginning. Writers from The Athletic asked a group of Pro Bowl players, “What is the best NFL city to travel to?” They followed it up by asking about the worst.
Buffalo led the worst category by multiple votes. They tallied ten of the 29 counted votes.
But let’s think about this for a second. The players fly into the airport and go to the team hotel. Then they stay at the team hotel until they go to the stadium. Then they go to their flight and fly home.
Most teams stay at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Buffalo, a 15-minute ride at a good time of day. Then it’s a 36-minute drive to the stadium in Orchard Park on game day. We can all agree that’s not a fun commute and that stretch of highway isn’t the most interesting or the prettiest, right?
On game day, they pass a ton of hostile fans flipping them off from the tailgating lots. Then, Bills Mafia screams at them for a few hours. Sometimes fans say things that aren’t nice. Then they get on the bus and drive down more not-so-pretty highway to get back to the airport.
“No charm, and all the negatives of Green Bay,” one player told the interviewer.
NFL players in town for a game aren’t checking out the restaurants or going out and enjoying the night life. They aren’t visiting Niagara Falls or Canalside. They aren’t grabbing a Paula’s donut and if they are eating a Stinger sub or wings, they’re ordering them in at the hotel. In short, they don’t get to experience actual Buffalo.
So let’s not take this one too personally, guys and gals. They are probably just saying that Bills fans are mean to us. And that’s okay, because they play for another team and we don’t like them.