What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

[BillsImpossible]

I miss the fun and excitement of waking up on a cold Sunday January morning knowing the Bills are going to crush Marino and the Fish.

I miss hanging out with my family in front of the fireplace watching the Bills roll over their opponents with a bucket of extra extra crispy hot wings, and a LCP at halftime. I miss the hot delivery girl.

That was so long ago.

If the Bills were 8-5 today, the last thing any of us here would be doing this Sunday is Christmas shopping, putting up lights or decorating a freaking tree with ornaments and tinsel. That's the wifey's job, not mine.

When the Bills are winning, everybody wants to be around each other and have a party. Unfortunately, the parties haven't lasted longer than a few weeks past Labor Day for way too long.

When they're losing, people don't want to hang out as much, and that so sucks balls. It's like getting your nose rubbed with a smelly sock that hasn't been washed in 14 years. Green Bay fans are thinking of making cheese from them at this point.

I miss hanging out with my closest friends and family when the Bills are in the playoffs.

Talk about missed opportunities.

[Meathead]

Re: What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

yeah the excitement and anticipation is great, like a buzz going around. and then it always crashes down to reality. lol

i like the bills regular season better than the sabres regular season and i like the sabres playoffs better than bills playoffs. missing either playoffs sucks but hockeys a little tougher. football is one game so its sort of on and then over in three hours, but a hockey series is like a repeating marathon of battles. football intensity is short bursts between somewhat long waits, while playoff hockey is intense pretty much the whole time between whistles

wow im making myself sad right now

[BuffaloRedleg]

Re: What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

It's amazing to say that I'm 29 ******* years old and I hardly remember what playoffs were like. I mean it's one thing if you are 18-22 and oh it's been a few unlucky years and you weren't as much into football in High School. But I'm almost 30 and I literally can't even remember the excitement of a playoff game.

My last memory was throwing my pizza at the TV after the music city miracle and thinking oh well maybe next year.

[BillsImpossible]

Re: What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

It's okay, Meat. Hang in there bub. Don't do anything drastic like suffocate yourself in Handi-Wrap.

[WagonCircler]

Re: What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

I miss being 36 years old.

Wow. I had to check the math on that.

[mightysimi]

Re: What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

I miss talking about relevant topics in December and not the draft

[Mace]

Re: What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

It's amazing to say that I'm 29 ******* years old and I hardly remember what playoffs were like. I mean it's one thing if you are 18-22 and oh it's been a few unlucky years and you weren't as much into football in High School. But I'm almost 30 and I literally can't even remember the excitement of a playoff game.

My last memory was throwing my pizza at the TV after the music city miracle and thinking oh well maybe next year.

Poor kid. I mean that too. I feel bad for people who missed out on the best of it. It sounds stupid, but it united the city and people with this shared festival experience. During the Bills run with a playoff game going, I remember going to work on a bus. The streets were dead silent on the West Side, but you could hear people cheering inside as you walked. Got on the bus, driver had the radio going. People on the bus cheered when they scored. Walked into the building, , heard the game, guard hit the intercom and gave me the score. Walked back into the computer center where I worked, the entire shifts during changeover, including managers, some 30 people or so, "emergency TV" on in the background, hum of changeover, if the announcers voice rose, dead silence, everyone all turned at once.

Fridays before the game, you didn't see anyone anywhere without some Bills talisman of luck, pins, pens, cups, hats, colors. No one wasn't a fan, it was a shared experience. If they won, the morning after, all the day shift people in the whole building would be glowing, no matter what their job was, everyone was equal and everyone was that much happier and that much more alive. If they lost, it would be solemn, idle comments about them, and then someone would say with certainty "next year, all we need is....", and people would get fierce again. Oh "next" year would be "THE" year. Shared experience, all of us united and in it together.

Because Buffalo was meaningful for a bit. A beaten up, endlessly rebuilding futile city of muckers and grinders eating up some national notice not from pity, but from seizing it. If it could happen, anything was possible, there would be magic in the air. Everyone wanted some of that magic, everyone was riveted.

I don't know if that could happen now, suspect it could. 2011, when we beat New England 34-31, I was amazed that my extremely ethnically and linguistically diverse neighborhood erupted in shouts, fireworks and cheers at the final gun. In a small, but close city like Buffalo, people unite improbably with shared purpose in shared experience to stick it to the world that always sticks it to them.

I miss the "anything is possible, there is magic in the air" feeling.

Having been through it, right here in the muck, I have little tolerance for people who got out of the muck of Buffalo and snark off about a team that no longer represents anything they give a crap about, forgetting why they used to give a crap in the first place, and that some of us are still stuck with crap or nothing while we hope for some magic. If you're starving, and crap is on the plate, you eat crap, is better than nothing on the plate. You pretend it's the best pizza.

And it's better than an empty plate.

Yeah, I miss the rush of possibility and magic that I didn't have to know anyone to share.

[BuffaloRedleg]

Re: What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

Poor kid. I mean that too. I feel bad for people who missed out on the best of it. It sounds stupid, but it united the city and people with this shared festival experience. During the Bills run with a playoff game going, I remember going to work on a bus. The streets were dead silent on the West Side, but you could hear people cheering inside as you walked. Got on the bus, driver had the radio going. People on the bus cheered when they scored. Walked into the building, , heard the game, guard hit the intercom and gave me the score. Walked back into the computer center where I worked, the entire shifts during changeover, including managers, some 30 people or so, "emergency TV" on in the background, hum of changeover, if the announcers voice rose, dead silence, everyone all turned at once.

Fridays before the game, you didn't see anyone anywhere without some Bills talisman of luck, pins, pens, cups, hats, colors. No one wasn't a fan, it was a shared experience. If they won, the morning after, all the day shift people in the whole building would be glowing, no matter what their job was, everyone was equal and everyone was that much happier and that much more alive. If they lost, it would be solemn, idle comments about them, and then someone would say with certainty "next year, all we need is....", and people would get fierce again. Oh "next" year would be "THE" year. Shared experience, all of us united and in it together.

Because Buffalo was meaningful for a bit. A beaten up, endlessly rebuilding futile city of muckers and grinders eating up some national notice not from pity, but from seizing it. If it could happen, anything was possible, there would be magic in the air. Everyone wanted some of that magic, everyone was riveted.

I don't know if that could happen now, suspect it could. 2011, when we beat New England 34-31, I was amazed that my extremely ethnically and linguistically diverse neighborhood erupted in shouts, fireworks and cheers at the final gun. In a small, but close city like Buffalo, people unite improbably with shared purpose in shared experience to stick it to the world that always sticks it to them.

I miss the "anything is possible, there is magic in the air" feeling.

Having been through it, right here in the muck, I have little tolerance for people who got out of the muck of Buffalo and snark off about a team that no longer represents anything they give a crap about, forgetting why they used to give a crap in the first place, and that some of us are still stuck with crap or nothing while we hope for some magic. If you're starving, and crap is on the plate, you eat crap, is better than nothing on the plate. You pretend it's the best pizza.

And it's better than an empty plate.

Yeah, I miss the rush of possibility and magic that I didn't have to know anyone to share.

Only thing close I can relate is the Sabres on 05-06 during my senior year of College. City was going nuts at the time and it being my last year of college it was absolutely a wild time during that playoffs.

I do however remember the Superbowl run. Zuba pants mondays and pizza parties every time we won **** yeah go bills. I actually remember watching wide right and my babysitter was trying to explain the Superbowl and I'm like whatever ***** time for some cereal. My parents are Bills nuts so I my entire wardrobe was basically Bills clothing so I had that going for me.

[Mace]

Re: What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

Only thing close I can relate is the Sabres on 05-06 during my senior year of College. City was going nuts at the time and it being my last year of college it was absolutely a wild time during that playoffs.

I do however remember the Superbowl run. Zuba pants mondays and pizza parties every time we won **** yeah go bills. I actually remember watching wide right and my babysitter was trying to explain the Superbowl and I'm like whatever ***** time for some cereal. My parents are Bills nuts so I my entire wardrobe was basically Bills clothing so I had that going for me.

True Buffalo people will ever live, laugh, love and die on the Bills and Sabres, wherever they go, until the casket closes on them with a Sabres pin, a Bills hat, or some junk Buffalo keychain in there with them.

Maybe we all get a chance to go nuts together again no matter where we are. You never know. Better than hoping we don't and loving the angst though.

[OpIv37]

Re: What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

Forget the playoffs. I miss 16 regular season games that matter. And if there were any that didn't matter, it was because our playoff position was locked up and something far more exciting than a regular season game was just around the corner.

And I miss the snow games. Even this past weekend, we got screwed. The entire east coast got pulverized and Pitt, Balt and Wash got snow bowls while we had an 80 degree out of conference game in ****ing Florida. Looks like the same thing is gonna happen this week.

Any bets it's miraculously 55 and sunny when the Fish come to the Ralph?

[OpIv37]

Re: What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

And yeah I miss the buzz that encapsulated the whole region. It was literally all anyone talked about.

I moved to Baltimore a little over two years ago, so I was here for their deep playoff run and their SB. I couldn't even enjoy the buzz because it reminded me of when we used to get that feeling in WNY.

Fortunately, the Skins largely spared me that misery for my 10+ years or so in northern VA. They only made the playoffs once or twice.

[Ingtar33]

Re: What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

I miss looking at the bills roster and thinking we had a hope at the playoffs. you know it's been over ten years since the last time i seriously thought we had a chance?!

Now I glance at the roster before the preseason starts and go on with my life because i know the Bills season will be a waste of time and effort. It is sad in a real meaningful way that all the joy of being a bills fan has been stripped from me by this organization.

[YardRat]

Re: What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

Being in the playoffs.

That was easy.

[Historian]

Re: What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

I miss seeing vendors on ever street corner selling AFC CHAMPIONS sweatshirts and tees!

[trapezeus]

Re: What Do You Miss Most About The Bills Being In The Playoffs?

i miss the whole week leading up to that game. you've watched every show. you have seen every play of the bills. you are trying to catch up with the opposing team's story. you spend two days convinced there is no way the bills can go on...then friday and saturday convincing yourself that they can't possibly lose.

once the game starts, each play gets that much more important to winning. and when they win, the sweet relief of surviving and watching the next game and thinking about the following week. Then comes the "forget next week, i think we are on to something. i think we are going to win the whole thing. Wait this is buffalo, we can't.....but maybe this time it's different"


as it stands now, the games are so meaningless. the wins are empty and mean very little. there is literally no excitement. even the fun of the jets win, you knew that was the result of geno just throwing pop ups to the outfield. Playoffs usually mean your team has the ability to be dominant for a game. i don't remember a post 2000 team that i trusted to be dominant at any phase of the game.