Photo by Timothy T Ludwig/Getty Images
Bills Mafia is a very real thing and clearly ripples into the team’s locker room in terms of family vibes.
The Buffalo Bills had one of the more dramatic turns across the second half of the season.
Early on things looked par for the course before they got all kinds of bad. Buffalo was losing in the most silly ways and looked like they were going to completely and totally implode. Due to a lot of things, including great coaching and play on the field, they turned things around and won the AFC East while securing the #2 seed in the conference.
It is hard to survive firestorms when you are in them but there is value in experience in that sense and the Bills are one of the closest teams in the league. My colleague J.P. Acosta and I had a chance to talk to two Bills – Damar Hamlin and Dane Jackson – thanks to our friends at Bounty. Note: We talked with them ahead of the NFL Honors show on Thursday night, before the awards were announced.
With billions of saucy chicken wings being eaten during the Super Bowl alone, playoff season means more wings and more messy fingers. Enter Bounty, the wingman everyone needs to keep things clean when cheering on your favorite team.
This Super Bowl Sunday, Bounty will be your wingman, because you can’t have football without wings, and you can’t have wings without Bounty.
We came away understanding just how strong of a family they are.
Dane Jackson had his son with him and it was awesome
As we sat down to interview these two Bills there was a third member of the party… Dane Jackson’s son.
I’ve been in Las Vegas on Radio Row all week and am missing my family, including my 2-year old son, something terribly. I cannot wait to get back to them. I shared this with Dane and he and I had a cool moment where he said that he totally understood.
But then Damar got in on the action with Dane’s son and it was clear that there is a great overall family vibe. They both noted that things are like that all the time and that the impact of it is strong with the team.
— RJ Ochoa
Damar Hamlin said I knew ball
The Buffalo Bills’ defensive resurgence in the back half of the season was very impressive to watch. As the back half of the season unfolded, it was really impressive to see the Bills secondary pass off routes and communicate in a defense that does so much pattern matching while not being fully healthy.
So when I asked about how they practice passing off routes and communicating in their coverage, Hamlin got really excited and said I was smart and knew I studied the Bills defense. As someone who never really did player interviews, this was awesome to me. Hearing that my nerd question about pattern matching being validated by an actual NFL player is one of the coolest moments of my life.
So you heard it here first, folks. Damar Hamlin said I know ball.
— J.P. Acosta
