History
Buffalo had a team in the All-America Football Conference from 1946 through 1949, the league's last season. The team was originally called the Bisons, but Buffalo had minor league baseball and hockey teams with the same nickname, so a contest was held to select a new name in 1947. The winning entry came from James F. Dyson, who won $500 for his essay comparing the team to a group of Buffalo Bills opening a new frontier in Buffalo sports. (The fact that the team was owned by by James Breuil, president of the Frontier Oil Company, may have helped.)
When Ralph C. Wilson was awarded an American Football League franchise for Buffalo, he adopted the old name for his new team. He hired Gerrard "Buster Ramsay" as the Bills' first coach.
After two losing seasons, Ramsay was replaced by Lou Saban in 1962. Saban guided the team to four straight winning seasons. In 1963, the Bills tied for first place in the Eastern Division, but lost the playoff to the Boston Patriots. They won the division and the AFL championship the next two years, beating the San Diego Chargers in both title games.
Saban left Buffalo for the University of Maryland in 1966 and Joe Collier took over to guide the Bills to another division title, but they lost the AFL championship game, 31-7, to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Then things fell apart. Over the next five seasons, the Bills had a 13-55-2 mark under three different coaches. Saban came back in 1972. He immediately made one major change: O. J. Simpson, who had spent three relatively unproductive years with the team as a kickoff returner and part-time running back, became his featured back.
The Bills won only four games that year, despite Simpson's league-leading 1,251 yards. Then they had three straight winning season, but could finish no better than second in the AFC East and they lost their one playoff game. After the Bills went 2-3 to open the 1976 season, Saban abruptly quit because he felt he wasn't having enough say in personnel decisions, and the team won only 3 of its next 23 games.
In 1978, the Bills hired Chuck Knox, who had coached the Los Angeles Rams to five division championships in five years. In his third season, the Bills won their first division title since 1966, only to lose in the first round of the playoffs. They went 10-6 in 1981, good only for third place in the division, but it got them a wildcard spot. After winning a playoff game for the first time since 1965, the Bills were eliminated by the Cincinnati Bengals in a conference semifinal game.
Knox was fired after going 4-5 in the strike-shortened season of 1982 and the Bills entered the doldrums once more. They won only 16 games during the next four years. The good news was that Marv Levy took over as head coach midway through the 1986 season. In less than two years, Levy had turned the Bills into a perennial playoff team.
From 1988 through 1995, Buffalo won six divisional titles and became the only team to play in four consecutive Super Bowls. That feat was unfortunately overshadowed by the fact that they lost in all four trips.
The string of success was built largely on Levy's use of the no-huddle offense. In an era when situational substitution had become standard in the NFL, the offense often prevented defenses from getting new players onto the field between downs. It worked because of the play-calling ability of quarterback Jim Kelly and the versatility of running back Thurman Thomas, who functioned equally well as a ball-carrier, a pass receiver, and a blocker against blitzes.
Levy retired after the 1997 season and was replaced by defensive coordinator Wade Phillips. The Bills won 21 games against just 11 losses in Phillips' first two seasons, but lost wildcard games both years. After going 8-8 in 2000, Phillips was replaced by Gregg Williams. But Williams never got the Bills above .500 and he was fired after the 2003 season. His replacement, Mike Mularkey, who had spent three years as offensive coordinator for the Pittsburgh Steelers, is the 13th head coach in Bills' history.