No franchise in the NFL gets snowed on at home like the Buffalo Bills. Their location along Lake Erie makes Highmark Stadium susceptible to massive snowfall. They routinely look for snow shovelers in times of need. This weekend’s contest versus the San Francisco 49ers, where there was an anticipated two feet of snow needing to be cleared before kickoff, qualified for the search.
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Zach and Steve Pryor, along with many other Bills fans, answered the team’s call. But their trek to Buffalo’s field was a bit longer than a roughly 20-minute drive to Orchard Park. The father-son duo covered nearly 350 miles on their 5.5-hour trip from Ohio despite not having tickets for the Sunday Night Football affair. They considered the gesture to be a wedding gift to Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
Zack and his father, Steve Pryor drove up from Marietta, Ohio at 4:30am this morning to shovel at Highmark. No tickets for the game today just “a calling that we should be there to help out”
Zack called it a wedding present for Josh Allen.@TBNSports @kfitz134 #billsmafia pic.twitter.com/fSvT2IwY4R
— Joshua Bessex (@Bessex_Joshua) December 1, 2024
Allen, one of the leading candidates for the NFL’s MVP award, got engaged to his longtime girlfriend – actress Hailee Steinfeld – during Buffalo’s Week 12 bye. The couple waited one week to announce the news based on their shared Instagram post on Friday.
Luckily for the Pryor’s, someone decided to pay their generosity back to them. They were reportedly gifted a pair of tickets for the game by another fan. Bills Mafia is known as one of the league’s most passionate and generous fanbases. Sunday’s actions are just the latest example.
SNF has turned into a Winter Wonderland
Weekend forecasts projected most of the Buffalo-area snowfall to occur before Sunday Night Football began and/or during its second half. The first aspect proved to be accurate, but the second wave arrived earlier than expected. When players warmed up for the game, there was no snow on the turf. But when Bills running back Ray Davis scored the game’s first touchdown, it was completely covered.
Ready. For. Football. #SFvsBUF | #BillsMafia pic.twitter.com/QEYu0Ss0oe
— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) December 1, 2024
Dashing through the snooooow!!!
: @SNFonNBC pic.twitter.com/xedtyA6B8R
— Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) December 2, 2024
The weather led NBC to adopt Amazon’s virtual line technology for the night. Eventually, Buffalo took advantage of the familiar weather conditions to beat San Francisco 35-10, as John Gruden rightly predicted.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan’s squad has now fallen 5-7 in the season and is set to face the Chicago Bears in week 14.
