Garrett Lee and three of his buddies were tailgating on Jan. 2 in Orchard Park, N.Y. waiting for the Buffalo Bills to take on the Atlanta Falcons.
Snow was falling on what was a typical Buffalo day in the dead of winter. Lee, a Bills season-ticket holder since 2015 from Batavia, N.Y., was cooking up some Italian sausages with peppers and onions and some burgers with Trevor Powers and the rest of the boys.
That’s when Lee saw it. In all of its wonderful glory. A big, fat, scuffed up sweet potato.
The dented tuber was sitting in the back of Powers’ Subaru Outback. Lee thought it was odd because they weren’t cooking sweet potatoes. But after a few moments of confusion he decided to put it in his pocket and bring it into the game with him.
Then he forgot about it.
“It’s like the fourth quarter and I go to reach for my phone in my pocket and I pull out the sweet potato,” Lee said. “And I’m like, huh, I guess I forgot about this.”
Chiefs fans wondering if it's a good idea if Bills Mafia brings potatoes into the game Sunday.
The Bills beat the Falcons, 29-15, that Sunday and Lee got to thinking. Maybe it was this magical root vegetable that was the key to his team’s success against Matt Ryan and the Falcons.
“Then I brought it to the Jets game and we won that. It’s like, once is a coincidence, twice is a trend,” Lee said.
So he brought a potato again the following week against the New England Patriots in the Wild Card playoff game. Lee said the sweet potato was frozen in the back of his car as temperatures plummeted below freezing for the Saturday-night showdown. He managed to get it back into the stadium once again. After a Josh Allen touchdown to Dawson Knox, Lee celebrated the only way he knew how.
“It was that first touchdown from Josh to Dawson, where Josh said he was just throwing the ball away and Dawson somehow caught it. I just held [the potato] up like it was Excalibur,” he said. “I was like, now we’re on to something.”
Buffalo hasn’t lost since, and Lee’s been at every game with a sweet potato in his pocket.
On Tuesday, Bills Mafia super fan “Brother Bill” tweeted in hopes that somebody could get a sweet potato into Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday when the Bills take on the Kansas City Chiefs.
Lee isn’t going to KC.
That’s when Lee’s phone exploded like a loaded potato left in the oven too long. Chiefs fans found out about the plan, and some thought it was hilarious. Others weren’t happy about it.
“Kansas City fans are either looking at Bill and I and being like, look at these guys just being dudes. Doing weird stuff to support their team. Like, this is what playoff football is all about. The Red Sox had growing beards - in hockey they grow playoff beards. The Angels had the rally monkey in 2002. Teams have always rallied around stupid things,” Lee explained. “And then you had the fans who were like, these two dudes need to be arrested immediately. They are planning a full-scale assault at the stadium with sweet potatoes.”
Chiefs fans not loving the idea of sweet potatoes making their way into Arrowhead.
KC fans tweeted at Brother Bill and tagged the official Chiefs account to make them aware of the plan for fans to smuggle sweet potatoes into the stadium. One Bills fan responded asking the Chiefs fan to relax: “It’s a sweet potato not an M16A2.”
The Chiefs fan responded with, “It’s illegal.”
Fans are sharing memes and others are sharing their pictures of sweet potatoes ready to accompany them to Arrowhead on Saturday. Lee said it’s funny that Chiefs fans have decided to draw the line at sweet potatoes.
“We can fully acknowledge that Bills Mafia is full of weirdos. We have a guy who cooks on radiators and showers himself in condiments every week. We jump through flaming tables. We start drinking at 8 o’clock in the morning, if not earlier, in the freezing cold weather. We’re not even gonna talk about the things that get thrown on the field during other Patriot games or the Kiko Alonso jersey incident from 2013,” Lee said. “But a sweet potato is where you want to draw the line on it?”
Lee has embraced his role in all of this and admitted he’s been poking fun at Chiefs fans all week.
“If this is what they’re gonna give us, by all means I’m gonna keep poking the bear and keep stoking the flames and really get them riled up,” he said. “I think it’s absolutely hilarious. We haven’t said anything about guaranteeing a Bills win or anything about any player, nothing. All the conversation, all the dialogue about this game, has been revolved around a single vegetable the last three days.”
Lee’s follower count on Twitter doubled this week and he’s had more engagement on three potato tweets than anything he’s posted since joining the app four years ago. Bills fans are posting sweet potato pictures and it’s driving Chiefs fans crazy.
Lee will be watching from Batavia on Sunday. He’ll be on the look out for potatoes in the stands.
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