Buccaneers broke Bills Mafia in contentious overtime win

The Buccaneers defeated the Bills in a tough game almost a week ago, and Bills Mafia hasn’t been the same since.

The Buccaneers‘ Week 14 win over the Bills was not without drama. Tampa allowed Buffalo to bring the game back to overtime, but stood firm when it mattered most and won the game with a walkout touchdown.

A great win for the Bucs was filled with what ifs from the Buffalo faithful, the Bills Mafia, with a particular emphasis on missed calls from the officials.

One quick look at almost any Bills social media page will show dozens of posts highlighting missed calls from the officials and gripes with how the league always caters to Brady, which makes sense. If your franchise hasn’t been able to beat a player for the better part of 20 years with different teams, perhaps you would hold some ill will in your heart.

It is also worth mentioning that the officiating has been terrible, and trending down in the NFL, for the last few years. From the way that pass interference is called to roughing the passer, the league needs to find a concrete way to call games going forward if it doesn’t want more nights like this to happen.

Either way, the Bucs have been on both sides of these games, yet you rarely see a response such as this. Missed calls happen. Some refs let teams play on. Buffalo can’t believe that there were no calls that went their way on Sunday against the Bucs, and a few screenshots that provide no context or even full plays don’t do the entire game justice.

Bills Mafia, who has become famous for being a scrappy bunch that breaks tables and for supporting their team through thick and thin, has been reduced to a band of Twitter warriors that have made it their personal crusade to seek vindication for missed calls in a game that is already lost, going so far as raising money for a charity that supports visually impaired people to throw shade at the refs.

The organized pettiness is actually impressive, and charity is never a bad thing, but this type of reaction sustained over a week is not the right look for a group with so much pride.

The Buccaneers lose at least one game per year or bad calls, yet they never dedicate so much time to complaining after the fact. Post the Tweet, post the article, and move on. A whole week and Twitter campaigns designed to spread cherry-picked clips to prove a point? Everyone is better than that.

Losses will happen, and the ones that feel outside of your control are especially bad, but the Bills need to get past this and focus on their next game if they don’t want to get bounced out of playoff contention.

We get it, bad losses hurt, but complaining changes nothing, and it certainly makes no one more sympathetic to your cause. If you want to be known as the whiners, that’s your decision, but you may find more support if you go back to what made people like you in the first place.

The refs are never going to be good in the eyes of any fanbase, it doesn’t matter what stats you pull up. Good teams still find ways to win.

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