Seventeen Years

From 2000 through 2016, Buffalo's football team did not make the playoffs. Seventeen straight seasons. By the end, no team in the four major North American sports leagues had gone longer.

In 2017 a new coach and a new general manager arrived. The team started 5-2, fell apart in November, won a game in a lake-effect snowstorm in December, and finished the season in Miami, waiting on a game in Cincinnati. When a Bengals quarterback threw a touchdown pass on fourth down in the last minute, the drought was over, and thousands of grateful fans sent $17 donations to his charity, one dollar for every year.

Seventeen Years tells the season game by game, with chapters on the drought, the new people in charge, a rookie cornerback from Shreveport, a veteran defensive tackle who waited twelve years, and the quarterback in Cincinnati who ended it all.

Every game chapter has the score, the crowd, the weather and the story, a full-page chart drawn from the box score, and Ray's Take, a few lines of opinion from a lifelong fan from Buffalo's Old First Ward. At the back you'll find fifty bar-trivia questions (four quarters and an overtime) and a complete stats appendix.

A warm, funny, fact-checked holiday gift for anyone who waited out the drought, or who still does playoff math every December.