First came the rumor Monday night, and then came the somewhat surprising confirmation, straight from the Buffalo Bills.
The new Highmark Stadium will host its first regular-season game Sept. 17 on Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night Football in a Week 2 game against the Detroit Lions.
That would probably mean that Buffalo will play on the road in Week 1 because it seems unlikely the Bills would be given two games at Highmark Stadium just a few days apart to start the season.
All along there has been speculation that the league would put the Bills on the road for Week 1 and then save the home opener for Week 2 to give it a little more attention, not to mention a bit more time to make sure everything is up and running. And another working theory is that the home opener would be played in primetime, and sure enough, both of those theories proved spot on.
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The full schedule will be announced by the league Thursday at 8 p.m., but by the time that happens, most of the schedule will have been released via source leaks.
For those who know their Bills’ history, it seems rather appropriate that the Lions would be the team to open the new stadium.
Original Bills owner Ralph Wilson lived in the Detroit area and he and his father were minority owners of the Lions in the 1950s before Wilson became one of the founding members of the upstart AFL in 1959, choosing to place his expansion franchise in Buffalo for the 1960 inaugural season.
The Bills’ original colors mirrored those of the Lions – silver and blue – until they changed to red, white and blue in 1962.
For many years, the Bills and Lions were preseason partners because the travel between the cities was easy, so even though the Lions are an NFC team and have played Buffalo just 13 times since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, there is a natural tie.
The first time the two teams met was in the second-to-last game of the 1972 season and they fought to a 21-21 tie in what was the last game at old War Memorial Stadium. The following year the Bills moved into Rich Stadium in Orchard Park.
Sal Maiorana has covered the Buffalo Bills for more than four decades including 37 years as the full-time beat writer/columnist for the D&C. He has written numerous books about the history of the team, and he is also co-host of the BLEAV in Bills podcast/YouTube show. He can be reached at maiorana@gannett.com, and you can follow him on X @salmaiorana and on Bluesky @salmaiorana.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Bills confirm new stadium debut gets a primetime slot
Reporting by Sal Maiorana, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle / Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
