Moving on From the Browns

I think I’ve found my new NFL team: the Buffalo Bills.

Welcome to Free Tuesday — where I will talk a bit about the NFL team I am rooting for in 2026. Yep. I’ve made a decision. One team feels right.

First: There are only 90 days left until the publication of FIFTY SEASONS! The book is making its way into the world already — I am expecting a package of advance reader copies to arrive in the mail today (!), and I’ve already heard from a few reviewer-type people who have begun reading it. So far, their reaction has been everything I could hope for. They are telling me about how much fun they’re having reading FIFTY SEASONS. One told me it was like having baseball shot directly into their veins.

That’s exactly what I want it to be.

You can preorder FIFTY SEASONS from Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, and all the rest — and if you fill out the form here, I’ll send you a little gift. If you preorder from our good friends at Rainy Day Books by December 15, I will sign your book and inscribe it any way you like.

I am told that some of the early inscription requests are doozies!

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(Michael Owens/Getty Images)

I have not watched a single play of Cleveland Browns football since the passing of our good boy Westley, and it has surprised me how little I have missed it. I loved the Browns for more than a half-century. I loved them through Red Right 88. I loved them through The Drive. I loved them through the move. I loved them through 0-16. Those Browns kicked me in the teeth over and over and over, and I kept on loving them because I was born at old Mount Sinai Hospital at 105th Street in Cleveland* and I grew up on a little block in South Euclid, and I would throw rolled-up socks to myself and make diving catches on the bed and pretend I was Ozzie Newsome.

*Me and Keir Dullea, who played the astronaut David Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Then the Browns broke me by signing He Who Shall Not Be Named and giving him the biggest contract in NFL history, and going back to him as a starter after years of injury and ineptitude rather than beginning a new chapter. The Browns have a winning record now, and some people are saying glowing words about He Who Shall Not Be Named’s resilience, and I want Browns fans to be happy. I really do. But I can’t root for them. It’s not a voluntary thing. They trigger my gag reflex.

So I have been rooting for other teams — with varying success. I have actively tried this year to root for the Bears, Lions, Bengals, Chiefs, Vikings, and, because I live in Charlotte, the Carolina Panthers. That last one didn’t take at all. Charlotte is a lovely town, and we’ve lived here for 15 years, but I just couldn’t muster any actual feelings for the Panthers. I just don’t think I could ever truly love a warm-weather team.

The Bengals, it turned out, were a nonstarter too — I did live in Cincinnati for a time, and I adore the city, but I can’t just start cheering for a team that was a Browns rival.

I just couldn’t get into the Minnesota Vikings. That one should have made a lot of sense — cold-weather city (the coldest, honestly; I’ve never been colder than I’ve been in Minnesota, not even Green Bay), no Super Bowl wins, lots of pain, the whole Purple People Eaters history, etc. But they just didn’t work for me. I think I know why — I’ll explain it when talking about the Lions.

The Chiefs were an obvious choice. My wife Margo and daughter Elizabeth are huge Chiefs fans. I think of Kansas City as home. I wrote about the Chiefs for many years. But … they’ve had too much success lately. I need a team that has suffered the way that I have suffered. Chiefs fans used to know that kind of suffering, but it’s been a long time. I need a team burned with crushing disappointment. Anything else would feel too unfamiliar.

The Bears are great fun — I thoroughly love Soldier Field and Chicago and Da Bears fans. And I have so many friends who are Bears fans. And this offense is such a blast. I thoroughly enjoyed watching them hammer the Seahawks on Monday night. But in rooting for the Bears, I felt a bit like a poser. Bears fans are also Bulls fans and also Cubs or White Sox fans and also Blackhawks fans, it’s a whole thing, and I’m just not a part of that thing.

Which brings us to the Detroit Lions. I SO wanted it to be the Lions. They are so much fun to root for. They have never won a Super Bowl. They are in a cold-weather city that is so much like Cleveland. Jahmyr Gibbs and Amon-Ra St. Brown are two of my favorite players in the NFL. Plus, I’ve always rooted for the Lions on Thanksgiving. I felt sure that this was the perfect fit.

But it’s not going to be the Lions.

Something felt off about rooting for them.

What? It took me a long time to figure it out — too long. It comes down to this, I think: The Detroit Lions play indoors. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. The Lions have been playing indoor football pretty much my whole life — 52 consecutive seasons now, the longest run in the NFL — and I just don’t relate to indoor football the same way.

So that leaves …

Well, before we get there: They just opened a Wegmans grocery store here in Charlotte. I know that seems unrelated, but it’s not. Do you guys know about Wegmans? It’s basically heaven. Margo and I had shopped there a few times in the past, and when they announced that Wegmans was coming to town — and they were building it less than 10 minutes from where we live — well, let’s just say that Margo pretty much lost her mind. She counted down the days; seriously, she would X out each day on her calendar leading up to the Grand Opening, like she was an inmate counting down the final days of her jail sentence.

What makes Wegmans heaven? I can’t even fully explain it. They have a food court with prepared foods like you would not believe. They have all sorts of special items you can’t find elsewhere. They have great specials and big coupons. But more than anything, everyone in a Wegmans is SO FRIENDLY and SO HAPPY. Just to give you one example, we were in there a few days ago, and I asked one of the people in the meat department where I could find a good bratwurst to grill. He came out from behind the counter and walked me over to the bratwurst section, where he began to tell me, blow by blow, what makes a good brat and the best way to prepare it.

And then a woman in a Buffalo Bills sweatshirt overheard (yes, we’re getting to it), and she started offering her own thoughts, and she suggested we buy Sahlen’s hot dogs, because they’re apparently the best hot dogs, and then ANOTHER woman wearing a DIFFERENT Buffalo Bills sweatshirt walked over, and they didn’t know each other, but she had heard “Sahlen’s,” and she wanted to weigh in on how great Sahlen’s hot dogs are, and the whole thing was wonderful and exactly the sort of delightful moment that brightens a day, particularly in these times.

Yes, Wegmans proudly started in Buffalo.

Yes, Wegmans unabashedly sells Buffalo Bills merch in Charlotte, N.C., and in every other store they have in the country.

Yes, we bought a reusable Wegmans shopping bag with Josh Allen on it.

I am, for the 2026 season, a Buffalo Bills fan.

This probably would have happened even without Wegmans — the Bills really are everything I want in a team. Cold weather. Zero Super Bowl wins. Awesome fans. History of heartbreak (and not just ANY history, but heartbreak that, like Cleveland doom, comes with actual names: Wide Right. Music City Miracle. Thirteen Seconds). Josh Allen at quarterback — I mean, you don’t get more delightful than Josh Allen, right?

And this Bills team is something else. Great offense. Shaky defense. Pretty much every game is an epic comic book battle. Josh Allen is Superman, and James Cook is Batman, and their back seven on defense is filled with Riddlers, and you just don’t know how it’s going to turn out. In just a few weeks, I’ve found myself utterly enraptured. One minute, I’m jumping out of my chair. The next, my stomach hurts.

It feels an awful lot like rooting for the Browns did all those years ago, when Brian Sipe kept bringing the Kardiac Kids back.

So from here on in, this is the Buffalo Bills Diary. I want this so badly for Bills fans. This has been a historic year in sports. The Knicks won their first NBA title in more than 50 years. The Brewers won their first World Series ever. A Bills Super Bowl would be so perfect.