Marianne

On New Year's Eve 2017, a Cincinnati Bengals quarterback accidentally became the most beloved man in Buffalo, New York. Bills fans thanked him by donating $442,000 to his charity. Most of it seventeen dollars at a time. Here's why. The Buffalo Bills had not made the playoffs since 1999. Seventeen straight seasons. It was the longest active drought in the NFL, and the longest of any team in ALL FOUR major North American sports leagues. An entire generation of Bills fans had never seen a playoff game. December 31, 2017. Buffalo has done its part and won its own game. Now they need Baltimore to lose, or they're out again. The Ravens are winning. Cincinnati has nothing to play for. The Bengals were eliminated weeks ago. Fourth and twelve. 53 seconds left. Andy Dalton throws it to Tyler Boyd, who breaks three tackles and goes 49 yards to the end zone. 31-27 Bengals. Ravens eliminated. Bills in the playoffs for the first time in seventeen years. The videos of Buffalo bars in that moment are still some of the best footage in sports. Now here's what makes this a story instead of a highlight. A Bills fan named Forrest, a father of four, wanted to say thank you somehow. So he googled Andy Dalton and found the Andy and Jordan Dalton Foundation, which he'd never heard of. It provides support and equipment for families with seriously ill and physically challenged children in Cincinnati and in Fort Worth, Texas, where Dalton played college ball. He donated. Then he tweeted a screenshot of the receipt. His own words: "I had no idea it was going to take off. I was just looking for an outlet to express my gratitude." Within thirty minutes of the game ending, donations started arriving. And Bills Mafia turned it into something beautiful. They gave in $17 increments, one dollar for each year of the drought. Others gave $14, Dalton's jersey number. Others gave $49, for the length of the touchdown pass. Some pledged to donate $14 every December 31 for the rest of their lives. Donations came in from Australia. Israel. England. Within days, more than 17,000 donors had given $442,000. Dalton posted a video, visibly stunned: "We cannot thank everybody enough. This has been just so amazing to see just how supportive people are. The impact it's going to make is gonna be huge." Then Bills fans noticed something. Dalton threw the ball. Tyler Boyd is the one who broke three tackles. So they went and found Boyd's fundraiser too. Boyd had set up a page for the Western Pennsylvania Youth Athletic Association, the youth league he grew up playing in outside Pittsburgh. His goal was $20,000. Bills fans blew past it. Boyd's total ended up over $100,000. His message to a fanbase he had just spent his whole career not thinking about: "Thank You to the Bills entire fan base. What great people you are." The Bills organization also sent the Bengals a thank you letter. And wings. Now the ending. Eight months later, in August 2018, the Bengals came to Buffalo for a preseason game. Andy and Jordan Dalton came early. And they donated to the pediatric department at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo. They gave it back to the city that gave it to them. The Dalton Foundation's Pass It On Fund, which buys medical equipment for families who can't afford it, gave out $465,000 in grants to 208 families the following year. That happened because of one fourth down play and a fanbase that decided to say thank you with money instead of words. And it changed Bills Mafia permanently. In the years since, that fanbase has donated millions to charities connected to opposing players, over and over, until it stopped being a story and became an expectation. A man who plays for another team, in a game his team had no stake in, threw one pass. Seventeen thousand strangers sent his sick kids' charity almost half a million dollars. For more stories like this, follow us on any platform @thesportsontap