Buffalo spent $2.2 billion on a new football stadium, and Josh Allen made sure everybody remembers whose building it is. Five total touchdowns, a 41-31 beatdown of the Lions, and Dan Campbell’s defense turned into the world’s most expensive housewarming gift by the second quarter.
This one got billed as the Gibbs-Cook rematch everyone previewed, Jahmyr Gibbs against Buffalo’s James Cook, running back versus running back. That storyline lasted about as long as it takes me to lose a parlay. The Detroit Lions came to Orchard Park on a Thursday night with a real shot at crashing the party, per ESPN, and left as the punchline instead.
The building is as much a story as the score. Highmark Stadium cost $2.2 billion, according to Yahoo Sports, which is a number that makes my rec league fees in Hoboken look like a coin lost in the couch cushions. It’s also, apparently, the stadium fans were already complaining about before a single snap.
Two billion dollars, and somebody still can’t see the field. Sounds about right for this century.
Here’s the part that stings extra for Detroit. Ben Johnson ran the Lions’ offense as offensive coordinator through the 2024 season before Chicago hired him away as head coach that January. He won the NFC North in year one and got the Bears a playoff win too, per the Bears’ own site. Campbell stayed behind, kept his job through the coordinator exodus, and got to watch Ben Johnson’s old defense get shredded on national television in his own building’s grand opening.
Allen’s line matters more than the trivia. Three touchdown passes, to Josh Palmer, Dawson Knox, and Dalton Kincaid, plus two more on the ground, per 13WHAM. It’s the fourth time in his career he’s put up five total touchdowns in one game. The win also pushed him to 90 career victories, one of only four quarterbacks ever to reach that mark in their first nine seasons, and those two rushing scores bumped his career rushing-touchdown total to 83, tied with Jim Taylor for 18th all time.
My sister, who still goes to Rutgers and runs our family group chat like her own late-night show, texted “guess the stadium curse was fake” about a quarter into the game.
She’s not wrong.
My mom had 660 AM sports radio going at the dental office all day building this thing up, and I still put forty bucks on Detroit covering because I am, as established repeatedly, terrible at this hobby.
Buffalo’s own account wasn’t shy about any of it.
https://twitter.com/BuffaloBills/status/2100262686806454482
Fair enough. When your quarterback throws it three different directions and still has legs left over for two more scores, you’re allowed to be smug about it.
None of this means Detroit is cooked. Campbell didn’t lose his job when Johnson left for Chicago, and one loss in someone else’s brand-new stadium isn’t a referendum on a franchise that’s been building something real. A bad half against a quarterback playing the best football of his career is a rough Thursday, not a crisis.
Buffalo wanted one image burned into everybody’s head from the new stadium’s first night. Josh Allen gave them five of them. Ben Johnson just had to watch from six hundred miles away, presumably relieved he only has to see this guy in the regular season if the schedule makers hate him.
