'The best day of my entire life' – A home playoff game like no other

Amid the revelry, a hoarse but happy Melissa Leone took a brief break from the celebration to call it what it was: "The best day of my entire life."

From his car leaving Bills Stadium in Orchard Park, Dan Voegtly of the Town of Tonawanda, one of the lucky 6,700 fans who got to see the game in person, summed it up this way: "Great game. Make your heart beat. Keeps you fit."

Those were some of the reactions as the Bills pulled off a nerve-wracking 27-24 win over the Colts, thrilling their long-suffering Bills Mafia fan base.

On their way into Bills Stadium on Saturday for the team's first home playoff game in nearly a quarter of a century and for the first time since Covid-19 hit, Tim Wangler, his son, his nephew and a close family friend had stopped by the brick laid in front of the stadium that honors his late father, Jim Wangler Sr.

He was a lifelong Bills fan who died months after the team’s final Super Bowl appearance in 1994. Tyler Wangler, Tim's son, poured a little Labatt Blue Light on his grandfather’s brick and rubbed the liquid in before he laid flat on the ground and gave it a kiss.

The limited attendance – less than a tenth of the normal crowd – wasn't going to make the game any less exciting to the Wanglers.

“As pumped as we are," Tim Wangler said of Bills Mafia, "we will absolutely make it feel like 70,000.”

They were right.

While only 6,700 or so fans were allowed at the game, they were spaced out in a way to make it feel and sound like a much bigger and much louder crowd.

“I still think it’s going to be energetic. We’ve been waiting all year,” said Patrick Fuller, who came out from the Watkins Glen area with his stepdad for the game and predicted a lengthy playoff run for the team. “It doesn’t end today.”

With bars and restaurants in Erie County still barred from serving customers indoors because of the state's Covid-19 restriction in "orange zones," Chippewa Street took the Bills-watching party outside.

Chippewa was blocked off to traffic from Delaware Avenue to Franklin Street and about 270 fans sat four to a table at 67 round tables spread out on the street and one sidewalk, although most were not wearing masks while they were seated and watching the game.

Soho Buffalo owner Jay Manno said the Bills watch party sold out within 12 hours.

"It's just a feel-good thing all the way around," Manno said. “This is Bills fans celebrating a great Bills team."

Rec Room and Soho were serving the food and drinks.

Soho was serving pizza, mozzarella sticks, beef on weck and chicken wing sliders. There were two large-screen TVs, one at either end, with speakers pumping out the game broadcast. Manno said he hopes, with the Bills taking care of business on the field Saturday, to do this again next week and to block off more of Chippewa to fit in additional fans.

Leone shared a $200 table and bottles of White Claw hard seltzer with three friends, while four other friends sat at a neighboring table.

“This is the first time being AFC East champions since I was 2 years old,” she said. “This is the perfect opportunity to support local businesses and do something we’ll remember when we’re older.”

Leone said she was confident about a Bills win because of the quarterback whose jersey she wore: "Josh Allen, he's my boy."

“It’s definitely been a lot of fun,” said Sarah Zulawski of South Buffalo, also wearing Zubaz pants and also too young to remember a Bills playoff win. “I’m sure when we get the first touchdown it’s going to go crazy.”

Zulawski was right. When Allen connected with Dawson Knox in the end zone in the first quarter, fans went nuts, leapt from their seats and boogied to the "Shout" song before it ended and an announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please be seated again now.”

Later in the game, some fans broke the tension of the last few minutes of the fourth quarter by honoring the Earl of Bud and getting up to shimmy to "Tequila" during a commercial break. Soon, groans over a Josh Allen fumble and the unfathomable non-fumble by a Colts player on the final drive were replaced by raucous cheers for the Bills' victory.

In Orchard Park, it was a game day like no other.

Sam Stipkovits of Lockport came to his first playoff game with his mother, Joni Armitage, who said she was “100%” convinced the Bills would win.

“Even though I love Frank Reich,” Joni said of the Colts head coach and ex-Bill.

“He can wait,” Sam added.

Getting vehicles into the parking lots at the stadium was going smoothly and, for example, there was no wait at all at 11:45 a.m. at Gate 5 for BillsMafia entering the stadium during their assigned time window.

Down the road, Prohibition 2020 at Abbott Road and Southwestern Boulevard served pregame brunch to 20 socially distanced fans on a side patio. The bar was slated to have the same number of patrons during the game, said owner Ben Bell.

“We sold out Monday,” Bell said. “We’re missing the tailgating. We’re missing the huge crowds.” But he added it’s nice to have a home playoff game after so many years.

A few hundred feet north of the Erie County line in Niagara County, there were 100 vehicles in the parking lot of the sprawling two-story New York Beer Project in the Town of Lockport.

Under Cuomo's executive order, which still applies in "yellow zones" such as the one Lockport is in, bars and restaurants are limited to 50% capacity, but indoor dining is allowed and the crowd is allowed to be unmasked when sitting at tables. Most of the fans fell into both categories.

"Don't forget, they have a second floor, which adds to seating capacity," Niagara County Public Health Commissioner Daniel J. Stapleton said. 

Co-owner Kelly Krupski said the tavern undergoes daily inspections from state and county officials and is doing its best in spite of the toll the pandemic has taken on business and their employees.

"We are down to four people per table. We are down to 50% capacity, and we have a large parking lot which leads a lot of folks to perceive we are above capacity," she wrote in an email. "But we’re following (state) mandates to the letter."

Other Lockport bars surveyed by The News had only minor turnouts: about six people at Davison Road Inn, perhaps 15 at Groff's Tavern, about a dozen cars outside the Niagara Hotel. Fireworks were heard in at least one Lockport neighborhood as the Colts' final pass fell incomplete.

With so many fans unable to attend in person, supermarkets were jammed with people holding game-watching parties at home.

There was a steady flow of customers at Tops Markets on McKinley Parkway in Hamburg doing last-minute shopping at about 12:30 p.m.

Jeannine Allen was there with her brother Jason Garra to pick up Labatt Blue for her beer-battered onion rings and because, “I forgot the ketchup for the sliders.”

Garra said: “This is the most pumped the city has been in 25 years.”

Allen said this season was tough because for the past 15 years she worked inside the stadium on the crew handing out giveaway items to fans as they entered, a role that gave her the chance to watch the action for free. “Never missed a game,” she said.

Allen, no relation to the Bills QB of the same last name – “I wish!” – said her family knows how psyched she is for the team. “Everything was Bills for Christmas this year," she said.

The coveted game tickets were late Christmas gifts of a sort for those fans, like Voegtly, who got their hands on them.

Voegtly said it was easy to get into Bills Stadium and to have his photo ID and negative Covid-19 test result checked by game-day staff.

He said stickers covered the numbers of seats the team had blocked off, and the closest fans to him were sitting three rows behind.

"I have end zone seats and they're pounding on the metal end zone seats making a lot of noise," he said by phone from the stadium at halftime. "Not the same as 70,000 people, but there's definitely noise."

After the game, Voegtly admitted there were some "worrisome" moments in the second half before the Bills pulled it out in the end in dramatic fashion.

"It was just satisfaction," he said on his ride back home of the moment when the clock struck zero. "Relief, under the circumstances."

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said in a tweet that the experiment with letting fans into the stadium appeared to go well.

"Fans followed rules beforehand, no tailgating was observed, and just minor issues inside stadium," Poloncarz wrote. "Thank you to all for doing a good job!"

Fans hope to do it again next week, but a team official told reporters Friday that the state has not yet formally approved in-person attendance for a divisional playoff game at Bills Stadium.

News Staff Reporter Thomas J. Prohaska contributed to this report.