Ryan Fitzpatrick’s longest spell with a team came with the Buffalo Bills from 2009-2012. For most, it’s an easy choice for Bills fans to pick the best moment of his tenure under center in Buffalo.
But Fitzpatrick says that highlight isn’t just his favorite from his time in Western New York, but in his entire career.
Fitzpatrick, speaking on the What’s Next? Podcast With Eric Wood, said early in the 2011 season with Buffalo was perhaps the highest high in his career. Specifically when the Bills topped the New England Patriots to go 3-0.
“The highs of the beginning of that season. We went to Kansas City for the opener on September 11 and blew the doors off of Kansas City, came back, had the awesome game versus Oakland, where we went down and scored at the end,” Fitzpatrick said. “And then New England, obviously.”
“The feeling… that was probably my favorite feeling I’ve had in all my years, when we beat New England to go 3-0. Just everybody in Buffalo, the feeling in that stadium,” Fitzpatrick added. “Even looking at Freddy J (Jackson), what an amazing game he had, what it meant to him. Just kind of the history of that. How many times they had beaten up the Bills and everything. That was maybe one of my highest highs.”
That 34-31 win in Orchard Park that day came on the heels of a 17-point fourth quarter comeback. The Bills were down 14-0 early in that one, and entered halftime down 21-10. Then the Bills circled those wagons.
Unfortunately, the team then had some of the lowest of lows that same season. After going 5-2, the Bills lost all but one of their remaining games to finish the year 6-10. Fitzpatrick was dinged up in that game his team went 5-2, a 23-0 win over the Washington Redskins.
That led to some less than stellar play on that losing streak. But for a guy who has had some remarkable highs (and lows) throughout his career, like those three-straight 400-yard passing games with the Bucs, it shows how in-tune Fitzpatrick was, and still is, with WNY and Bills Mafia to put that game on a big pedestal in his career.
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