Bills fans fail to set Guinness World Record for crowd noise against Patriots
The Bills didn’t just get their you-know-whats handed to them in a 40-32 loss to the New England Patriots that was worse than the final score indicated, but Buffalo was handed another defeat on Sunday.
In their attempt to break a Guinness World Record for crowd noise, Buffalo fans fell well short of their goal despite the Bills taking a 7-0 lead early against their AFC East rivals at Ralph Wilson Stadium.
Chad Walber, a research and development engineer with New York-based PCB Piezotronics, was on hand for the 1 p.m. kickoff to measure the decibels of crowd noise along with a Guinness World Record representative, and he chronicled the sound level at the stadium on Twitter throughout the afternoon.
Needing to break the Guinness World Record of 142.2 — set by Kansas City Chiefs fans against the Patriots at Arrowhead Stadium last season — Buffalo’s decibel level reached a high of 124.8 following the Bills’ second score of the game, which cut New England’s lead to 21-13 five minutes before halftime.
As the Patriots built a lead as large as 37-13, some Bills fans exited the stadium, according to Syracuse.com, but a silenced crowd awoke when New England’s decision to pass on almost every down — rather than run down the clock — helped Buffalo collect three straight fourth-quarter touchdowns that slashed the lead to 37-32 with just over four minutes remaining. The decibel level climbed back to 122.9 on the Bills’ fifth and final TD, but it sounds like they could’ve used the help of their departed fans.
The Patriots responded with a three-minute drive that ended in a field goal, leaving the Bills with 1:15 on the clock and no timeouts to stop it. Buffalo quarterback Tyrod Taylor threw an interception on the first play of the final drive, and the game was over. New England QB Tom Brady finished with 466 yards — the most ever recorded against the Bills — to go along with three TDs and no picks, despite the noise.
Everyone from Bills defensive tackle Marcell Dareus, who said, “Don’t nobody like the Patriots,” to Buffalo’s team store employees, who put inflating pumps out front in a deflate-gate dig, spent the week leading up to Sunday’s game ribbing New England. Afterwards, Bills coach Rex Ryan took the blame.
“Yeah, I got an issue we never won,” he told reporters after the loss. “I mean that’s it. You can blame it any way you want, I don’t care. It’s my fault we talk too much. That’s why we lost.”
Grippy J. Gibson, a self-proclaimed of the “Bills Mafia” whose gofundme campaign raised $9,280 to bring the Guinness World Record representative to Buffalo, chronicled the afternoon on Twitter as well.
There is no known record of the decibel level for the collective sigh of disappointment heard in Buffalo.
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Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie and Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach
