After the Buffalo Bills advanced to the AFC Championship Game for the first time in 27 years with a victory Saturday over the Baltimore Ravens, their fans, the proudly named "Bills Mafia," celebrated by extending some kindness to Lamar Jackson.
The fans, often the butt of jokes for diving onto collapsible tables at raucous tailgate parties, began sending donations in $8 amounts (and more) to the Louisville, Ky., chapter of Blessings in a Backpack on Saturday night, with $8 chosen by many because the Ravens' quarterback wears No. 8. The charity was created to ensure that children in underserved households go home for the weekend with food. Jackson, who played college football at the University of Louisville, has supported the charity for several years. He left Saturday's loss with a concussion.
"It started around 11:30 [Saturday] night, and our donation box just started flooding with donations from Bills fans for Lamar. It's just been overwhelming -- in the best possible way," Nikki Grizzle of Blessings in a Backpack told ESPN.
By 2 p.m. Sunday, more than 7,000 donations had totaled $150,000, she added.
This is becoming a habit for Bills fans. Three years ago, they celebrated their first playoff berth since the 1999 season by donating to a charity run by Andy Dalton, a Cincinnati Bengals' quarterback at the time, after his touchdown pass defeated the Ravens and secured Buffalo's wild-card berth.
The Andy and JJ Dalton Foundation quickly received more than $100,000 from more than 4,500 donors, with many in $17 increments because the Bills had gone 17 seasons without a playoff appearance. At one point, Dalton tweeted, "We're getting 10 donations a minute!" The organization ended up with more than $300,000.
"I think I'm the hottest guy in Buffalo right now," Dalton joked to reporters that week. "According to my Twitter, I think everybody's loving us right now. Obviously that's a crazy fan base, and they're all pretty excited."
Bills Mafia was named for a Twitter hashtag made popular in 2011, and fans who used it organized a nonprofit called Buffalo FAMbase, according to ESPN.
"It just says something about Buffalo," co-founder Del Reid told ESPN after the Dalton contributions. "Buffalo is the city of good neighbors, and we kind of have in some areas of social media, maybe a little bit of a bad rap in terms of the frustration and anxiety that's been shown on Twitter, especially over the past several years as we've come close to the playoffs and never made it, and couldn't get over the hump.
"But, really, Buffalo is a city of givers. I'm not surprised that the Andy Dalton [charity] has actually experienced this economic boom for them. Bills fans, Buffalonians in general, they're givers. It's been awesome to see it, but it's not surprising."
Bills Mafia has come through for Buffalo players, too. When the grandmother of quarterback Josh Allen died in November, the group donated more than $500,000 to Buffalo's John Oishei Children's Hospital in her name, and the Patricia Allen Fund topped $1 million by the end of 2020. Many of the first donations were in $17 increments in honor of Allen's jersey number.
The term "mafia" has not always been embraced by the NFL or the team, which would prefer not to reference organized crime. But Bills Mafia has changed that, and this fall the team applied to trademark the moniker.
"We felt like we needed to embrace this, because it had really turned into a community spirit," Ron Raccuia, executive vice president of the Bills' parent company, Pegula Sports and Entertainment, told The Associated Press. "Our players and our coaching staff have really been engaged with it, and it just became very natural... ."
"I don't like using the word godfather," Raccuia joked, "but [Reid] and his partners came up with this idea; they brought it to life. We wouldn't be here without them. And they're certainly going to be a big part of this ride going forward."