Kevin Siracuse takes a look at Bills fandom, both around Fredonia itself and in Western New York.
Siracuse’s sidebar (below) takes a look at the Bills’ (bickering) history during their Fredonia training camp years.
The Bickering Bills
By Kevin Siracuse
Everyone knows that when the Buffalo Bills had training camp here at Fredonia State in the 1980s and ’90s, it was some of their best years in franchise history. But what a lot of people don’t know is that the Bills had to go through a ton of growing pains in order to be successful.
For starters, Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly did not want to come to Buffalo. The Bills drafted Kelly 14th overall in the 1983 draft, only for Kelly to immediately try getting out of it. Between the Bills’ losing, the cold weather and the city of Buffalo struggling economically, Kelly wanted nothing to do with the Bills.
“I remember jumping up out of my seat and I hit my mother who was sitting on the right arm of the recliner and I knocked her right off the chair. I felt so bad, I quickly picked her up off the floor and I’m apologizing, ‘Sorry. mom, I’m just glad I’m not going to play for Buffalo,’” Kelly told Bills reporter Chris Brown in 2010. (The Bills drafted Notre Dame tight end Tony Hunter with the 12th overall pick, but what Kelly did not realize at the time was that the Bills also had the 14th selection.)
The Houston Gamblers of the USFL (a short-lived NFL competitor) were also going after Kelly strongly. Steve Cichon of blog.buffalostories.com said that in addition, Kelly liked the people within the Gamblers organization more than the people in the Bills organization. So he signed a contract with Houston, where he played three seasons before the USFL folded.
Once he arrived in Buffalo in 1986, there was a clash of big personalities. Eventual Hall of Fame defensive end Bruce Smith had been selected No. 1 one overall in 1985 while Hall of Fame wide receiver Andre Reed was drafted in the fourth round that year.
Fredonia resident Tim Borzilleri was just a toddler at the time so he doesn’t know too much about this era, but said that what he does know is that Kelly and Smith hated each other at first.
Bob Sievert, who has lived in Fredonia more than double the amount of years as Borzilleri, said that Smith was always complaining during his first few seasons in Buffalo.
“He was always whining about his contract and saying he was going to sit out and this and that,” Sievert said.
And then in 1988, the Bills threw another colorful personality into the mix, as they drafted Hall of Fame running back Thurman Thomas in the second round. Between Thomas, Kelly, Reed and Smith and then other eventual household names such as Darryl Talley, Cornelius Bennett and Steve Tasker, there was a lot of bickering.
“There were some good brawls out there at training camp,” Sievert said. “The coaches had to jump in and break them up a lot of the time.”
The players always argued; they had a bunch of internal conflicts with one another and they just flat out did not like each other. It was pretty much like they were all out for one another, the opposite of how good teams behave. They even threw each other under the bus rather than accepting blame and taking responsibility.
According to a 1989 Bills season page on Wikipedia, during a Monday night game versus the Denver Broncos in week two, Kelly was seen yelling at wide receiver Chris Burkett on the sidelines; Burkett was released the next day. After a week five loss to the Indianapolis Colts, Kelly blamed his offensive line, specifically Howard Ballard, as the reason why he was injured.
And then one of the biggest clashes came just weeks after.
“Starting running back Thurman Thomas, asking to address Jim Kelly’s criticism of the offense—and the pass-catching ability of running back Ronnie Harmon in particular—criticized Kelly himself on a Rochester, New York television show. When asked what position the Bills could upgrade at, Thomas replied, ‘Quarterback.’ Thomas claimed at first that it was a joke, but later, when appearing on Paul Maguire’s Budweiser Sportsline show, he stated that the team didn’t appreciate Kelly’s public criticism and that Kelly should elevate his level of play,” according to Wikipedia.
The Bills went 9-7 that year and won the AFC East, but lost in the divisional round of playoffs to the Cleveland Browns.
However, this was the start of something special, as the Bills went to four straight Super Bowls in the following years, with records of 13-3 in 1990 and ‘91, 11-5 in 1992 and 12-4 in 1993.
Right after that ‘89 season, something clicked. The guys started liking each other, they bonded, they hung out outside of football, and they started playing for each other. They not only became a tight-knit team, but went down as one of the best teams in NFL history.
Now, the current Bills are showing many similarities to those ’90s Bills between organizational structure and front office success, talent and depth on the roster, and the tight-knit relationship between the players. The current Bills have been pretty close to each other since day one and have never publicly argued, so who knows … maybe this will be the team to get over that hump and finally deliver a Super Bowl to the city of Buffalo.