About 6:35 p.m., at a Buffalo Bills tailgate in the parking lot of Carnegie Science Center, a song rang out that wasn't “Renegade,” or “Here We Go Steelers,” or any kind of polka.
It was that old “Shout” ditty, but not the one by The Isley Brothers that you hear at every wedding. Instead, it was the one that ends triumphantly with, “Let’s go, Buffalo! Let’s go, Buffalo!”
And it’s anyone’s guess how many times that was played Sunday outside Heinz Field. You’d have just as good a chance trying to count how many Bills fans, how many members of “Bills Mafia,” descended on the North Shore for their first “Sunday Night Football” appearance since 2007.
It didn't matter that it wasn't in Buffalo, because Buffalo came to Pittsburgh for the team’s first prime-time game of 2019 and only their second that didn't kick off at 1 p.m. — and left with a 17-10 victory that sealed at least the No. 5 seed in the AFC, and ensured that it was this season’s home finale for the Steelers.
“The Mafia does that every week,” said left tackle Dion Dawkins. “They come, they support, they show up for us. It’s the consistency of the Mafia.”
Bill Stiner and Ray Miles walked down North Shore Drive before the game wearing personalized Bills jerseys with their names on the back, Stiner in a blue-and-red water buffalo hat with horns and Miles wearing Christmas lights around his neck.
“We go to an away game every year, and this is one of the higher percentages of Bills fans I’ve seen,” Stiner said.
The two Rochester, N.Y., natives have been Bills fans all their lives, and haven't relinquished that loyalty since moving to Pittsburgh. Miles credited the local chapter of the “Bills Backers” fan club for organizing events around town and encouraging those who were able to buy tickets and attend the game, whether you live in the area or could make the three-hour trip from upstate New York.
Steelers Nation was still plenty loud on third and fourth downs, but on a night that players called for a “black-out” from their home crowd to complement their all-black “color rush” jerseys, there was a very noticeable amount of blue parked in yellow seats. The announced attendance was 64,694, highest since the season opener against Seattle and the first time hitting 64,000 since Week 5 against Baltimore.
“Since the proximity is so close, once it got switched to a Sunday night game, that really made people want to come down,” said Miles, who went to see the Bills at Cleveland last month and has also gone to road games with Stiner in Atlanta and Detroit.
Sunday was the sixth night game this season for the Steelers, and third at home. But the last time the Bills played in prime time was a season ago against the Patriots on “Monday Night Football,” and this week, they had a chance to clinch a playoff berth for the second time in three seasons under head coach Sean McDermott.
They did just that, while also getting to double-digit wins for the first time since 1999, ending the NFL’s longest streak without a 10-win season.
“They did a good job. They travel well,” said Steelers captain Cam Heyward. “Steeler Nation did a great job, too. We just didn't get the job done for them.”
Buffalo also hadn't played in Pittsburgh since a 23-10 win for the Steelers in 2013, when the Bills finished 6-10 for the third consecutive season and fourth time in five years. But since then, as the franchise has inched toward relevancy, the “Bills Mafia” brand has grown exponentially.
That term first cropped up in 2010 via social media, the means by which the whole world was exposed to the segment of Bills fandom that relishes absurdist tailgate antics. Jumping off cars onto tables, lighting things on fire, generally following through on any bad idea that someone in a pair of Zubaz pants can think of while pregaming.
Stiner had season tickets for the Bills in 2007 and 2008 before he moved here, and has sensed a change of sorts in the fan base. It’s not necessarily better, but it is different since some ill-advised behavior — “it’s a couple idiots that do it and then it goes viral,” as Miles put it — has become the face of the younger generation.
“We’ve seen it kind of explode since then,” Stiner said. “Bills fans, [the team] sucked back then, and we were still really good. It’s more than just smashing tables. As many games as we’ve been through, we’ve never seen anybody go through a table. But it does make the away games seem more like home games ever since that happened.”
Surely, someone somewhere broke a piece of furniture Sunday night in the surrounding area. But on a night that Steeler Nation matched up with Bills Mafia, it was a chance for the visitors to prove their mettle on national television and in enemy territory — in a city where they last won in 1993, at Three Rivers Stadium.
“I think the fan base in general, the resilience, it all has to do with loyalty,” Miles said. “A lot of these fans have been fans for 20 years. They've been through the drought, and to have a team that’s doing well again is just something that you really can't explain as a fan. It’s awesome to experience, and then to have a game in Pittsburgh that means something, in Week 15, it’s huge.”
Perhaps the greatest sign that the Bills felt right at home? In the fourth quarter when the scoreboard played “Renegade” to pump up the crowd and the defense, their offense responded with a 40-yard completion from Josh Allen to John Brown, and five plays later Allen hit Tyler Kroft from 14 yards out for the winning score.
Kroft had been in this building three times before, when he played for the Bengals, who rarely win in it.
“I know what that song means, especially in this stadium, and what kind of energy that gives them,” Kroft said after just his fifth catch and first touchdown with his new team. “John and Josh being able to take the life out of them on that play was huge, obviously.”
And, in turn, to give life to their traveling posse.
“I mean, that was special,” Kroft said. “They were in full force tonight. That was awesome.”
First Published: December 16, 2019, 5:55 a.m.
