Bills Mafia — #BillsMafia

What’s up my fellow Mafioso? In the past two weeks, I’ve been back in my hometown of Olean, went to a wedding in Cortland, and made several trips to Buffalo.

You’ll find signs like this all over Cortland, NY. (Photo courtesy YNN)

So where do I begin to wrap up the past two weeks? Well for one, Cortland, New York must have the highest population of Jets fan per square acre in the entire United States. I couldn’t get over how much Jets memorabilia was all over that city. Of course, the Jets hold their training camp there, but it was still very surprising to me to see so much Jets stuff all over the place there. They even had “Welcome Jets Fans!” painted across the exit ramp on 81 going into Cortland. Needless to say, I felt out of place.

This past Monday, I went to an Iron Maiden and Alice Cooper concert in Buffalo. For anyone who is into metal music, or even just enjoys spectacular performances, this concert was flat out incredible. While I was there, I had several people come up to me and give me a high five simply for wearing a Bills hat to the concert. I have to say, I love it every time that happens.

One of the thing I enjoyed the most about the concert was how Iron Maiden’s front man, Bruce Dickinson (Yes, THE Bruce Dickinson) made the crowd feel as though they were part of the show, and even part of the band. This really made me think about the Bills, and how we as fans can actually feel as though we are part of the team because of our devotion to the team and the way that the team, especially the players, embrace the fans. This got me thinking, so I did a little research on the most fan-friendly teams in the NFL. The results were quite surprising. I found a ranking done by ESPN, and was able to trace the NFL’s team rankings by fan relations for the past five seasons. To start, ESPN defines “Fan Relations” as “Openness an consideration shown to fans from players, coaches, and management.” So here are the Bills’ rankings for the past five seasons, as well as the team ranked highest in parenthesis.

2007: Bills Rank- 15th (Colts ranked #1)
2008: Bills Rank- 11th (Packers ranked #1)
2009: Bills Rank- 29 (Steelers #1)
2010: Bills Rank 30 (Saints #1)
2011: Bills Rank- 24 (Saints #1)

Hard to believe, right? It certainly was to me. Last year, according to ESPN, there were 23 teams in the NFL that had better relations with their fans than the Buffalo Bills. While the past several years have not been very kind to the Bills and their fans in terms of win-loss record, one thing that Bills fans have always been able to say is that our players have always been very fan-friendly. They are regularly making appearances around Western New York, and even outside of New York State. There is near constant conversation between the Bills players and the fans on Twitter.

Do other teams really have better relations with their fans? I guess I can’t really say, since I’ve never rooted for another team in the NFL. But what I can say is this: I’ll take the Bills Mafia over any day against another team’s fans in terms of dedication and sheer tenacity for the love of our team.

Until next time, Soundtrack out.

I realize it has been almost two weeks since I last wrote in this blog, which is a problem.

It took me forever to get to one of the Bills Backers bars in Brooklyn, called Bonnie’s Grill. It was a good time, I must say. Not quite as outwardly a Bills bar, as I had expected. The food, however, was pretty awesome. The wings were good, but still not as good as the wings I know and love back in WNY. However, let me get to the main idea of my blog this week: my bold predictions for the Bills this season.

I like how the ESPN people do this on NFL Live before every season (by the way, Chris Mortensen predicted the Bills to get to the playoffs this year), so I decided that I will follow suit, but specifically for the Bills, and only the Bills. Some of these will be less bold than others, but it’s all for fun. So here we go.

Soundtrack is boldy predicting Ryan Fitzpatrick throws for over 4000 yards in 2012.
(Photo by Jim Rogash/Getty Images)

Soundtrack’s Bold Bills Predictions for 2012:

5) Ryan Fitzpatrick will throw for over 4000 yards. He came pretty close to doing this last year. With a healthy offensive line, Fred Jackson, CJ’s emergence as a major weapon last year, and a new influx of receiving talent, this is the (first) year Fitz gets over 4,000 yards.

4) Shawne Merriman will get over 5 sacks. The reports from OTA’s and mini-camp are all pointing to Merriman being pretty darn close to “Lights Out” form. He is going to be a total wild card for opposing O-lines, since so much attention is going to be focused towards Mario Williams, Kyle Williams, Marcel Dareus, and Mark Anderson, that it’s not out of the question to think that Merriman will go unnoticed, or be a last thought. I think he takes advantage of that, and show up in a big way this year.

3) Stevie Johnson will post a third straight 1000 yard receiving season. Last year Stevie became the only receiver is Bills history to post back-to-back 1000 yard seasons (I still have a hard time believing that none of the other prolific receivers the Bills have had did that). We all have seen what he can do to the best corners in the league (see: Bills at Jets, Stevie gets the only touchdown against Revis all season), and he was nursing a groin injury throughout the whole season! There’s no reason to think he won’t do the same this year.

2) CJ Spiller and Fred Jackson will both have over 1500 yards from scrimmage. We don’t really know who the feature back is going to be, or even if there will be a true number one back this year. What we do know, is that both Jackson and Spiller are major weapons in both the running, and passing games. I think they combine for some serious yardage this year, much to the delight of Bills fans and fantasy owners.

1) The Bills go undefeated at home. Let’s take a look at their home schedule: the Chiefs, Patriots, Jets, Dolphins, Titans, Jaguars, and Rams. Does it really seem like an outlandish statement to say the Bills can’t win these eight games? I think not. En route to a winning season (and hopefully the playoffs), the Bills go undefeated at home for the first time in far too long.

Until next time, soundtrack out.

So, last week I talked a lot about how Bills fans really stay positive throughout all of the hard times our team goes through. The more I’ve been thinking about it, that really is somewhat of an amazing feat when you consider what our team and we as fans have been through over the past decade or so. What got me thinking about this so much? Well, in the past two weeks, I’ve actually met a few other Bills fans down here who have not been able to remain as upbeat about the team as I have.

The first one was actually a guy that was interviewing me for a job down here. I noticed that on his desk was a Buffalo Bills calendar. I asked him about it, and he said that he was originally from Rochester, and has stayed a Bills fan to some degree, but so many consecutive losing seasons had sapped his desire to really follow the team. It didn’t help that he so rarely got to see the team play on television. After that, I think we ended up talking about the Bills for half an hour, and barely talked about the job I was interviewing for. I was fine with that, but I didn’t get the job. As much as I love talking about the Bills, at this point I think I’d prefer the paycheck this job would have provided.

The second fan I met is actually a cast member in a production of “Sight Unseen” that my girlfriend is doing. I met them after rehearsal the other day, and was wearing one of my Bills shirts. He immediately got a big smile on his face, and told me he was originally from the Buffalo area, and only recently moved to the city himself. Also a die hard Bills fan, he tries to follow the team as much as he can, but his work schedule doesn’t allow him to get online much and keep up with the goings on of the team.
Here’s the thing. In both of these cases, I asked “Are you a Bills fan?” And while they both responded “yes,” there was a very noticeable sigh before they responded. And let’s be honest here, it is not always easy to be a Bills fan.

The most frustrating thing in the world is seeing a player leave the Bills and then see him go to another team and be outstanding. The examples are all over the league: Jabari Greer, London Fletcher, Nate Clements, Takeo Spikes, even look at Willis McGahee (even if he is a total jerk), Marshawn Lynch, and, dare I say it, Aaron freaking Maybin. Now, granted, many of those players are not the superstars they once were, but all are still in the league, and playing at a fairly high level. The personnel decisions from previous coaching/GM regimes have left a lot of us Bills fans very skeptical and untrusting of any personnel changes, or even draft moves.

For example, when the decision was made to draft CJ Spiller, my immediate reaction was “ANOTHER RUNNING BACK?” I could not wrap my head around it, especially when we had two 1000 yard backs on the roster already. Then last year, when the news came out that Lee Evans was being traded, I was furious. Evans was my favorite receiver on the team (I loved Stevie too, but wasn’t ready to call him our best receiver after one year for high playing). And this year, when I heard about Florence being CUT, not even TRADED, I nearly lost it. However, all that being said, it really seems like in the Gailey/Nix era, these decisions are finally being made for the right reasons. While we don’t know how Florence is going to play out in Denver yet, the other decisions I mentioned make a lot of sense in hindsight.

It's hard not to get the feeling that we are about to witness something really and truly special at One Bills Drive.
(Photo courtesy BuffaloBills.com)

It seems like we finally have a front office that gets it. It’s our jobs as fans to support our team no matter what, even if the decisions don’t immediately make sense to us. Really, it is hard not to get the feeling that we are about to witness something really and truly special at One Bills Drive. The pieces are in place to make a very serious statement this year. I’m not going to sit here and claim that we should be Super Bowl favorites, because that would be a premature and inaccurate statement. But winning our division, or making a wild card playoff spot is not out of the question. Those of us who have stayed faithful through the roller coaster that has been the last decade are poised to see the remarkable turnaround that we have been waiting for.

Good things come to those who wait, and In Buddy We Trust.

Until next time, Soundtrack out.

Please welcome Adam (@soundtrack716 on Twitter) to the stable of blog writers here at BillsMafia.com. Adam has recently moved to New York City and is sharing his experiences as a fresh “Straight Outta WNY” Bills fan in the Big Apple in a new regular column named, appropriately, “Bills Fan in Jets Land.”

Well, I’ve officially been in the city for a week. I think I could literally count the amount of Jets stuff I’ve seen on one hand. I have seen one Sanchez jersey, and that’s about it. I haven’t seen much in the way of Giants gear either, actually. Oddly enough, there is a bar down the road from my apartment that has a Packers flag flying out front. My initial thought is just that it isn’t football season, so maybe everyone here is just in full baseball mode.

That’s a stark contrast from WNY and Buffalo. Back home, it is a rare thing to go 24 hours without seeing some kind of Bills shirt, jersey, hat, bumper sticker, SOMETHING. Let alone any of that aforementioned stuff for the Sabres. It goes to show the kind of mentality that Buffalo sports fans have when it comes to showing support for our teams. Here in NYC, if the Yankees lose two games in a row, the population turns against them. If the Bills lose two games in a row, we’re all still packed in at the Ralph, screaming our lungs out cheering for our beloved team. The pessimists, trolls, and nay-sayers will say that’s because we are so used to losing, that it doesn’t bother us anymore. To them I say this: shut up. They don’t get it. This kind of devotion is what Bills Mafia is all about.

It is a rare thing to go 24 hours in WNY without seeing some kind of Bills shirt, jersey, hat, bumper sticker, SOMETHING.

I ran into a few guys from the Bleacher Report this weekend, and they called Bills Mafia the best fan organization in the NFL. Now, admittedly, they were drinking pretty heavily, and they might have just been saying that to make me happy, but the fact is they still said it. So now we can say that, regardless of the condition they were in when they said it, haha.

One last thing before I go, I need to give my two cents in the “Great Jersey Debate.” I have had such awful luck buying jerseys. During the 2008 campaign, when the Bills got off to that 5-2 start, and Trent Edwards looked like he could be our quarterback of the future, I went out and bought an Edwards jersey. It felt like the right thing to do. He was a political science major, so was I, it seemed like a sign from above. Then he got injured. He was never really the same.

So, I bought my next jersey. I wanted to go with someone who consistently performed and I had no worries about. My choice? Lee Evans. We all know that his 2009 and 2010 campaigns were not exactly stellar, and then he got traded. During the 2009 offseason, my sister bought me an Aaron Schobel jersey for my birthday. Then he retired. I bought a Fitzpatrick jersey to make a Fitzmagic costume for Halloween this year. The he had his second-half slump. AM I CURSED? Every time I get a jersey, the player either performs poorly, or leaves the team! I’m hoping the new Gailey/Nix era will change my jersey luck, because my newest jersey is Dareus.

That’s all for now. Until next time, Soundtrack out.

Please welcome Adam (@soundtrack716 on Twitter) to the stable of blog writers here at BillsMafia.com. Adam has recently moved to New York City and will be sharing his experiences as a fresh “Straight Outta WNY” Bills fan in the Big Apple in a new regular column named, appropriately, “Bills Fan in Jets Land.”

What’s up Bills Mafia! So my name is Adam, but some of you know me better as @soundtrack716, and this is my first blog for our glorious organization.

So a bit about myself. I’m originally from Western New York, specifically Olean. Just graduated with my master’s degree in adolescence education, with my concentration subject in social studies/history (I have a feeling I just lost a ton of readers right there).

Where did I get my Twitter handle you ask? Funny story. I was an Army ROTC cadet who was training for a month at Ft. Knox, Kentucky. Being a fairly musical person, I was often singing or humming parts of songs while we were training. Part of it was an effort to keep spirits up, but a lot of it was subconscious… I flat out didn’t even realize I was doing it. So one day, we were doing a particularly miserable training exercise, and we were all being very quite. The drill sergeant assigned to my squad yelled to me “Hey Soundtrack, where’s your song? Don’t feel like whistling while you work today?” It stuck, and pretty much everyone started calling me that.

Anyway, as a recent grad, I decided to move to someplace that actually has jobs, New York City. Since NYC is not known for being particularly fond of Bills fans, I mentioned to Del (@mrdeadlier) that we should do a documentary called “Bills Fan in Jets Land.” As it turns out, Bills Mafia does not have the budget for camera equipment and production costs, so blogging was his suggestion.

So here I am! The country boy Bills fan from the middle of nowhere living in the largest city in the country, and the heart of Wide-Right nation in Tebowmania. I’ll be doing at least one posting per week, and (of course) posting on Twitter about my experiences here.

So that’s that. Let’s get out there, my fellow Mafioso, and lead the charge!

Until next time, Soundtrack out.