Adam Dryfhout jokes that he was -2 the last time the Buffalo Bills won a playoff game.
The math adds up. Dryfhout is 23 and before last weekend’s AFC wild card win over the Colts, the Bills had not won a playoff game in 25 years. Maybe his wearing a Bills Pride shirt while watching the game played a role in their success.
“playoff saturday, but make it gay #gobills,” Dryfhout, who is gay, tweeted prior to the Bills’ 27-24 win over the Colts, wearing the Pride shirt with the distinctive Buffalo logo sent to him by one of his 32,000 Twitter followers.
The post went viral, garnering 2,000 likes and dozens of comments, many focused more on the lower part of the photo than the shirt, but I digress. For Dryfhout, being part of the often-insane fan base known as Bills Mafia made the win extra special.
“Bills Mafia is the best fan base because we are dedicated,” the Buffalo native told me. “I mean, we had 25 years of playoff drought, we know patience and how to believe when hope is slim. Plus, we have the tailgates. We are a drinking town with a football problem, so we would die for our Bills. We do it rain, shine, sleet or snow. We bleed blue and red!”
Dryfhout has never made it inside to watch a game, though he has tailgated with friends (there were no fans allowed this regular season in Buffalo due to COVID-19), and has also never partook of the Bills Mafia tradition of jumping belly first onto and usually through a folding table.
“I have never jumped through a table, especially since they are scarce in the football season here in Buffalo,” he said. “I would 100% jump on a table, maybe you will see me do it if the Bills win the Super Bowl!”
Dryfhout graduated from Canisius College in Buffalo, where he played club volleyball and also coached, so his Buffalo roots and fandom run deep.
“I have watched the Bills since I was a kid,” he said. “It wasn’t until I was in college when I began to appreciate the intricacy of the game and the amount of coordination it takes to play. It is easy to be a Bills fan because we have an extremely inclusive fan base. Playing in fantasy leagues has taught me more about the game and I appreciated the sport further.”
When I asked Dryfhout to name his favorite Bills player, his answer wasn’t a surprise.
“How could you not say [quarterback] Josh Allen? He’s a small-town guy that plays for his team and his city, not for fame or the stat sheet,” he said. “He focuses at the task at hand and stays humble. Since having him here, the whole team has demonstrated what Buffalo is all about: love for the city and love for our neighbors. Plus, I sat next to him on a plane one time. Best 70 minutes of my life, lol. All of his personality traits make him the hottest player to me as well.”
Dryfhout works as a medical assistant at an urgent care facility in Buffalo and is moving to Texas this fall for medical school. “I like the idea of doing emergency medicine or pediatric emergency medicine,” he said of his future plans. “It is a cool field because you get to exercise multiple parts of your brain every day and the days are always different in a high-intensity environment.”
Come Saturday at around 8:15 p.m., the only part of his brain Dryfhout will be exercising will be the one the stimulates yelling and screaming. That’s when the Bills’ divisional round playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens will start. Dryfhout will be cheering and hoping his lucky Bills Pride shirt goes 2-0 in the playoffs and that the team moves on to the AFC Championship Game.
