The Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions have both been around for a long time. A really long time. Yet, somehow, Thursday night will be just the 14th regular-season meeting between the two franchises.
And, because apparently 13 games spread across more than five decades isn’t weird enough, there’s this: The Bills have scored 274 points in those games. The Lions have scored 273. One point separates two teams that have been playing football for over a combined hundred years.
This week’s Time Capsule takes
us through a series that hasn’t given us a lot of games but has certainly given us a few worth remembering.
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The last time: Dec. 15, 2024
This one was supposed to be a potential Super Bowl preview. The Lions entered the afternoon 12-1 and riding an 11-game winning streak. The Bills were 10-3 and coming off a 44-42 loss to the Los Angeles Rams.
Apparently, Buffalo decided 42 points wasn’t enough.
The Bills walked into Ford Field and scored 48. Josh Allen threw for 362 yards and two touchdowns while adding another 68 yards and two scores on the ground. James Cook rushed for 105 yards and two touchdowns as Buffalo piled up 559 yards of offense.
And they needed almost all of it.
Buffalo jumped out to a 14-0 lead and stretched that advantage to 35-14 in the third quarter, but Jared Goff and the Lions weren’t going quietly. Goff threw for 494 yards and five touchdowns. Detroit scored 21 points in the fourth quarter, and a game Buffalo had seemingly put away turned into one where nobody could really relax until the clock finally hit zero.
Bills 48. Lions 42.
Potential Super Bowl preview? Well, we know how that part turned out. But Buffalo did leave Detroit with one of its biggest wins of the regular season, and Allen left with another addition to the increasingly ridiculous collection of games on his MVP résumé.
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Before that: Thanksgiving in Detroit
Two years earlier, Allen and the Bills were also in Detroit. Actually, they were there for the second time in five days.
A massive snowstorm in Western New York had forced Buffalo’s Week 11 game against the Cleveland Browns to Ford Field. The Bills won that one, flew home, and then turned around and went right back to Detroit for Thanksgiving. Because why make anything easy?
This time, the Lions made sure Buffalo had to work until the very end. Detroit tied the game at 25 with just 23 seconds left.
Allen hit Stefon Diggs for 36 yards on the first play of the ensuing drive, Buffalo moved into field-goal range, and Tyler Bass connected from 45 yards with two seconds left to give the Bills a 28-25 win.
Allen finished with 253 passing yards and two touchdowns while adding 78 yards and another score on the ground. It wasn’t quite the offensive explosion we would see two years later, but the result was the same.
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The first one: Rookie Josh
To find Allen’s first game against Detroit, we have to go all the way back to 2018. Buffalo was 4-9. Detroit was 5-8. Allen was a rookie, and the Bills were still trying to figure out exactly what they had in their first-round quarterback.
There were clues.
Allen threw for 204 yards and a touchdown and rushed for another score as Buffalo beat Detroit 14-13. It wasn’t 48-42, and it wasn’t a last-second Thanksgiving win, but it started a streak.
Allen is now 3-0 against Detroit. Thursday night gives him a chance to make it four.
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How far back do we have to go?
Want to find the last time the Lions beat the Bills? We need to open a slightly older Time Capsule.
Oct. 15, 2006.
Dick Jauron was Buffalo’s head coach. J.P. Losman was the quarterback. Willis McGahee was carrying the football. For Detroit, it was Jon Kitna at quarterback, Kevin Jones at running back, and Roy Williams catching passes.
The Lions won 20-17, and they haven’t beaten Buffalo since.
The Bills have won five straight meetings — in 2010, 2014, 2018, 2022, and 2024. Of course, there’s a pretty important qualifier here. Buffalo and Detroit only see each other once every four years under the NFL’s normal scheduling rotation, so a 20-year drought doesn’t exactly mean the Bills have spent two decades tormenting the Lions.
But 20 years is 20 years.
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One stadium closes, another one opens
There’s one more piece of history that makes this week’s matchup a little different.
Allen’s first game against Detroit, that 14-13 win in 2018, was the last time the Lions played a regular-season game in Orchard Park. It was also their last game in the old Highmark Stadium.
Now they’re back, and this time they’re part of something much bigger than the series history. Thursday night’s game will be the first regular-season game played in the new Highmark Stadium.
The Bills and Lions have met only 13 times. Buffalo holds an 8-4-1 advantage. One point separates them on the all-time scoreboard. Detroit hasn’t beaten Buffalo since 2006, and Josh Allen has never lost to the Lions.
But none of that history happened here. The new stadium doesn’t have a Bills-Lions story yet. Thursday night gets to write the first one.
