Moments after the Buffalo Bills won the AFC East for the first time in 25 years Saturday, the team released a hype video on its social media channels to commemorate the occasion.
With more than a million combined views in the days that have followed, that 2-minute, 24-second video has been praised by fans and outside observers alike.
“When we realized that we were going to potentially clinch the division early this year, we started talking about it being 25 years since the last one, we have to make a big deal about this, what can we do?” asked Michelle Girardi Zumwalt, Pegula Sports and Entertainment’s supervising producer. “A video was high on the list of priorities, putting something out right away after the game to really celebrate the moment. It came down to, what's the video going to be?”
The plan revolved around picking up where last season left off – with the heartbreaking playoff loss to the Houston Texans, followed by a clip of coach Sean McDermott saying, “Winners know how to turn that pain into growth.”
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It's been a long time coming...Your Buffalo Bills are AFC East Champions. pic.twitter.com/YTaAZqzEXk
— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) December 20, 2020
From there, the plan was to buzz through all that’s happened from that point, including the offseason addition of wide receiver Stefon Diggs and highlights from the team’s 11-3 start to the season.
The last question was, who should narrate it?
J.J. Territo, a producer for PSE, suggested Steve Tasker, the special teams great and current co-host of the team’s daily radio program, "One Bills Live."
“It absolutely had to be Steve Tasker,” Girardi Zumwalt said. “There really was no other choice, between the acting skills and the personality, he just seemed like the perfect choice for it. The fact he was part of the team 25 years ago. It was a good connection.”
Tasker’s first line in the video – “Trust me, I get it. There’s a lot of pain in going home empty-handed” – comes from someone who has experienced the pain of losing four consecutive Super Bowls. It’s Tasker’s last line, however, that has resonated with fans.
An aeriel shot of a snow-dusted Bills Stadium cuts to Tasker in the empty stands. Wearing a black paper boy hat and red scarf and holding a lit cigar, the Wall of Famer says, “So we’ll see you in Buffalo in January. Be ready, it might be chilly.” After a wink to the camera, he turns his back to the camera as the shot fades to a screen of the Bills’ logo beneath a 2020 AFC East champions graphic.
The cigar, Girardi Zumwalt said Monday, was Tasker’s personal touch.
“When we asked Steve, he was totally on board and really excited,” she said. “He showed up to the shoot and said, ‘I got to have a cigar if I'm doing this.’ He had an array of scarves, for me to choose from. He was asking ‘Hat, no hat?' He was just totally into it, totally into character.”
The end result was so good that it’s going to be put on a T-shirt, to be released by Wednesday, with an image of Tasker winking and the closing line from the video.
“I've played in games where it was cold and snowy,” Tasker said Monday. “We practiced in it. The fans kind of revel in it. I know there is a large percentage of Bills fans who take great pride in being in that weather with their team, so I knew it would play pretty well. So when I wink at the camera, it’s true, I don't mind if it's chilly when the Bills play.”
Tasker got an advance copy of the video last Thursday and showed it to his family. He had a feeling then the reaction would be positive.
“Michelle really did a nice job writing it, so I knew it was going to come across pretty well,” he said. “After I read it and we started shooting it, yeah I knew it was going to be really neat. We couldn't release it, obviously, because of the game, but I showed my family, and they all loved it. I knew it was going to be really good. Michelle is an award-winning filmmaker, so I knew she was going to do a great job with it.”
The video makes a point to push back against the tired clichés that are usually used to describe the Bills, and Western New York.
“We didn’t want it to be the same-old, blue-collar Buffalo Bills,” Girardi Zumwalt said. “We wanted it to have some swagger. That was really important to us as a creative team.”
“They want to talk about our blue collars and our rust belts,” Tasker says in the video. “We’ll just keep faking guys out of our shoes.”
“We wanted to say, ‘We belong here,’ Girardi Zumwalt said. “We're not some grind-it-out team. We're really good. We have great skill positions. This is a new Buffalo Bills.”
To know that the video has been viewed more than a million times and counting has been gratifying for Girardi Zumwalt, a Western New York native who grew up a huge Bills fan and has won multiple Emmy awards for her work.
“Seeing the fans appreciate it and saying that it gave them chills or they're crying or they want to run through a wall, that's what we love,” she said. “That's what we crave. People are like, ‘Are you making this video as an emotional one or a hype video?’ I'm like, ‘Both.’ It's got to be everything. That's how you capture this moment, is by making people want to cry and get excited.
“Everything we do is for the fans, to make them feel more like part of the team or part of the player. And the players as well, it's a thank you to them, because we know how hard they're working. They are focused in. I don't want to say it was a top-secret project, but in the system, I called it the big clinch video, because you don't want to be talking about winning the AFC East before it happens and you definitely don't want coach McDermott thinking that we're making all these big plans to win the AFC East. They are so focused and zeroed in, so it's so cool to be able to celebrate them because he wants them really with their heads in the game – for obvious reasons.”
