The story
History
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 Fewell finished out the season as interim with a 3–4 mark.
From 2010 to 2012, the Bills were coached by Chan Gailey. The team had Ryan Fitzpatrick as their quarterback in those seasons. Gailey was fired after three consecutive last place finishes in the AFC East.
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Doug Marrone was hired to be the Bills' head coach before the 2013 season. The Bills went 6–10 in the 2013 season and improved to 9–7 in the 2014 season. Marrone decided to step down as head coach after the season. On October 8, 2014, Buffalo Sabres owners Terry and Kim Pegula received unanimous approval to acquire the Bills during the NFL owners' meetings, becoming the second ownership group of the team after team founder Ralph Wilson.
Before the 2015 season, the team hired former Jets head coach Rex Ryan to become the next head coach of the Bills. The team went 8–8 in 2015 and 7–9 in 2016. Ryan was dismissed with one game remaining in the 2016 season, with Anthony Lynn finishing the season as interim.
Under head coach Sean McDermott, the Bills broke the playoff drought, appearing in the playoffs for seven of the next eight seasons. The team drafted Wyoming quarterback Josh Allen with the seventh overall pick in the first round of the 2018 NFL draft. The team earned its first division championship and playoff wins since 1995 during the 2020 season, attributed to the Bills' own development of a core talent including Allen, Stefon Diggs, Matt Milano, and Tre'Davious White. In the 2020 season, the Bills reached the AFC Championship for the first time since the 1993 season. However, their run ended with a 38–24 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. The Bills won the AFC East with a 11–6 record in the 2021 season. The Bills defeated the Patriots 47–17 in the Wild Card Round before falling to the Kansas City Chiefs 42–36 in overtime.
In the 2022 season, the Bills won the AFC East with a 13–3 record. The season saw a cancelled game against the Bengals due to a near-fatal medical episode with Damar Hamlin, who eventually recovered and returned to football activities the following season. The team defeated the Miami Dolphins in the Wild Card Round 34–31 before falling to the Cincinnati Bengals 27–10 in the Divisional Round. In the 2023 season, the Bills won the AFC East for the fourth consecutive season. In the Wild Card Round, they defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 31–17 before falling to the Kansas City Chiefs in the Divisional Round 27–24. In the 2024 season, the Bills finished with a 13–4 record and won another AFC East title. After wins over the Denver Broncos in the Wild Card Round and the Baltimore Ravens in the Divisional Round, the Bills lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship. The following season saw the team's streak of consecutive division titles end, as they finished with a 12–5 record. They defeated the Jacksonville Jaguars in the Wild Card Round before falling to the Broncos in the Divisional Round. Two days later, McDermott was fired after 9 seasons.
After Kim Pegula was incapacitated by a 2022 vascular brain injury, a portion of her stake in the team was transferred to her stepdaugher Laura, with a 20% stake in the team sold to a coalition of private equity investors and former Toronto athletes Jozy Altidore, Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady in December 2024. The Bills announced plans to build a new stadium to replace Highmark Stadium that opened in summer 2026.. On September 17, 2026, the Bills played their first game in the new stadium, winning against the Detroit Lions by a score of 31-41.
Historical
Jacksonville Jaguars
A rivalry emerged between the Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars after former Bills head coach Doug Marrone, who had quit the team after the 2014 season, was hired as a coaching assistant for Jacksonville and eventually rose to become the Jaguars' head coach from 2015 to 2020. The first game between the Marrone-led Jaguars was a London game in week 7 of the 2015 season, which saw the Jaguars' win 34–31. The most important game of this series was an ugly, low-scoring Wild Card game in 2017 that saw the Jaguars win 10–3. This game is notable as it was the first Bills playoff appearance in 17 seasons. Before this, Jacksonville had handed Buffalo its first playoff loss in Bills Stadium in 1996. The Bills and Jaguars have since met four times. The first was a "rematch" game in week 12 of the 2018 season; the Bills won 24–21. The teams brawled after trash talk from former Jaguars players such as Jalen Ramsey.
The second time was in week 9 of the 2021 season. By this point, Marrone's feud with the Bills organization and the personal drama between Bills and Jaguars players no longer applied, as Marrone had been fired and replaced by Urban Meyer and all the players from the 2017 Jaguars team have since moved on to other teams or retired. Regardless, this game was the seventh-largest upset at the time in NFL history: the 15.5-point favorite Bills lost 9–6. The Bills would narrowly beat the now Liam Coen led Jaguars 27-24 in the wildcard round of the 2025–26 NFL playoffs which saw the Bills claim the lead late in the 4th quarter with a tush push followed by a Trevor Lawrence interception to win.
Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans
The Tennessee Titans (formerly the Houston Oilers) also share an extended history with the Bills, with both teams being original AFL clubs and rivals in that league's East Division before the AFL-NFL merger. The two teams' owners, Ralph Wilson and Bud Adams, were the last owners from the inaugural AFL season still owning their teams at the time of Adams's 2013 death. Matchups were intense in the 1980s and 1990s, with quarterback Warren Moon leading the Oilers against Jim Kelly's Bills. Memorable playoff moments between the teams in the 1990s include The Comeback, in which the Frank Reich-led Bills overcame a 35–3 deficit to stun the Oilers 41–38 in 1992, and the Music City Miracle, in which the now-Titans scored on a near-last-minute kickoff return with a controversial lateral pass ruling to beat the Bills 22–16 in 1999. To add insult to injury, the Music City Miracle was Buffalo's last playoff appearance until 2017, leading to resentment by Bills fans towards the Titans. In 2009, after a particularly brutal Titans rout against the Bills, Adams infamously flipped off the Bills sideline from his suite.
After both teams failed to reach the same success in the late 2000s to early 2010s, they returned to consistent playoff contention starting in 2017, resulting in several high-profile games, in addition to a brief resurgence of the rivalry based on shared success and mutual respect between 2018 and 2022, when the Titans were led by head coach Mike Vrabel (a former Patriots player) and running back Derrick Henry. The Titans currently lead the series 30–21, but the Bills lead in postseason meetings 2–1.
From Wikipedia’s article on Buffalo Bills, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5