The Bills–Dolphins rivalry is a National Football League (NFL) rivalry between the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins.
The teams, both members of the AFC East, have played each other twice per year since the 1966 season.
The rivalry was once lopsided as the Dolphins, one of the league's best teams after Don Shula took over as head coach in the 1970s, amassed 20 consecutive wins over the Bills in that decade. It later became more competitive in the 1980s as Buffalo emerged as a leading team in the AFC alongside Miami. During the 1990s, the teams faced off four different times in the AFC playoffs, and the period featured Hall of Fame quarterbacks Jim Kelly for Buffalo and Dan Marino for Miami. Though both teams fell short of the same level of success in the 2000s and 2010s after the retirements of Shula, Kelly, Marino, and Bills coach Marv Levy, the Bills and Dolphins have maintained their rivalry, which has become competitive again during the 2020s as both teams have become playoff contenders once more.
The Dolphins lead the overall series, 63–61–1. The two teams have met five times in the playoffs, with the Bills holding a 4–1 record.
History
1966–1969: The AFL days After Miami joined the American Football League (AFL) for the 1966 season, it played against Buffalo for the first time on September 18. The host Bills posted 48 points in the first half of the game, and won 58–24. In the second game between the teams, and the first to be played in Miami, the Bills shut out the Dolphins 29–0. The following year, Miami defeated Buffalo for the first time; a late 31-yard Bob Griese touchdown pass to Howard Twilley gave the Dolphins a 17–14 win. In 1968, the teams played to a 14–14 tie, the only one in the rivalry. After two consecutive Dolphins victories, the Bills won the teams' second game in 1969, 28–3. The game, which featured two receiving touchdowns by O. J. Simpson, proved to be their last win in the series for 11 years.
1970–1979: Complete dominance by Miami Following the 1969 season, the AFL and NFL completed the AFL–NFL merger by re-aligning the NFL's divisions. The Bills and Dolphins joined the NFL's new AFC East division, guaranteeing that they would play twice per year, once at each team's home stadium. In the 1970s, Miami won all 20 meetings between the teams; 12 of the victories came by 10 or more points. Under head coach Don Shula, the Dolphins became a league power during the decade, appearing in the Super Bowl three times and winning two championships. One of the most notable Bills–Dolphins games of this period came in 1972, the year the Dolphins completed an undefeated season. The closest game by final score that Miami played during the season was its first game against the Bills, a 24–23 Dolphins win in the Miami Orange Bowl. Two years later, the Orange Bowl hosted a contest that Chris Iorfida of CBC Sports later called "A rare competitive game between the clubs during the mid- to late-1970s, and an exciting one." The Dolphins held a 28–21 lead when Bills reserve quarterback Gary Marangi passed for the tying touchdown in the final minute of the game. Miami responded 37 seconds later with a 23-yard Don Nottingham run for the touchdown that gave the team a 35–28 win.
By November 1978, the Dolphins' winning streak in the series had reached 17 games, a mark tied for the longest streak in NFL history for one team against another. The press in the Buffalo area frequently noted this fact. The Dolphins broke the record with a 25–24 result in Buffalo's Rich Stadium on November 12 of that year. With 9–7 and 17–7 victories in 1979, Miami's streak reached 20 by the end of the decade.
1980–1989: Bills turn the corner and the emergence of Marino and Kelly On September 7, 1980, the Bills recorded their first victory versus the Dolphins in 21 games, after failing to win a single game against them during the 1970s. With a pair of touchdowns in the final quarter, Buffalo won 17–7. After the conclusion, fans at Rich Stadium rushed the field in celebration, tearing down one of the goal posts in the process. In 1983, the Dolphins hosted the Bills in rookie Dan Marino's first NFL start. The Dolphins overcame a 14–0 gap to lead 35–28 in the final minute before Bills quarterback Joe Ferguson led a game-tying comeback. The game in the Miami Orange Bowl went to overtime, where Dolphins placekicker Uwe von Schamann was unsuccessful on two potential game-winning field goal attempts. The Bills won 38–35 when Joe Danelo made a 36-yard field goal attempt late in overtime; it was Buffalo's first road win in the rivalry for 17 years. Ferguson had 419 yards passing and five touchdowns in the game; the former set a franchise record. Other than those two contests, Miami won 11 of the other 12 games between the teams from 1980 to 1986. United Press International termed the matchup "one of pro football's most lopsided rivalries" in 1983. The Bills, however, won the series' last six games in the 1980s. The first of those came in October 1987, when the Bills won 34–31 in overtime after trailing the Dolphins 21–0 in the first half; the game featured six combined touchdown passes by the teams' quarterbacks, Marino of Miami and Jim Kelly of Buffalo. One of the final games between the Bills and Dolphins in the decade was a 1989 encounter in which Kelly ran two yards for a touchdown on the last play of the contest, giving the Bills a 27–24 victory.
1990–1999: Fight for AFC supremacy
Most of the 1990s games between the teams featured the quarterback play of Marino and Kelly, who became key figures in the rivalry, and eventually earned induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. From 1986 to 1996, they had a total of 21 matchups, counting postseason games. In the 1990 playoffs, the Bills and Dolphins met for the first time in the postseason. Buffalo won the divisional round game, held at Rich Stadium, 44–34, as Kelly threw for three touchdowns. Two seasons later, the teams met again in the playoffs, this time in the AFC Championship Game. Players from both teams commented on the rivalry's intensity at the time; Richmond Webb, a Miami offensive lineman, said, "I don't know how it got started – it was a long time before I got here – but these two teams don't like each other. It's like the Game of the Year every time we play them." Before the Bills' last regular season game against the Houston Oilers, Miami safety Louis Oliver had shirts delivered to Oilers players, encouraging them to defeat the Bills; the Oilers did just that, winning 27–3 and allowing the Dolphins to finish first in the AFC East. In response, Bills running back Thurman Thomas said it was "typical of the Miami Dolphins ... to have someone else do their dirty work." A week later, the Oilers raced to a 35–3 lead but collapsed in a 41–38 loss to the Bills in the wild card playoff round, then on January 17, 1993, at Joe Robbie Stadium, the Bills defeated the Dolphins 29–10 to advance to their third consecutive Super Bowl.
The first game in the series in the 1993 season, in Rich Stadium, saw an incident where Miami linebacker Bryan Cox gestured at Bills fans, having previously said that he would "retire from football if I am ever traded up there." Multiple Dolphins players later said the spectators responded in a similar fashion towards them. After a 22–13 Dolphins victory over the Bills, sportswriter Bill Plaschke called the game "a considerable step toward making their rivalry the ugliest in the league". The teams met twice more in the playoffs during the 1990s. On December 30, 1995, Buffalo broke the league record for rushing yards in a game with 341, winning 37–22. This was Shula's last game in the NFL. Three seasons later, the teams met at Pro Player Stadium on January 2, 1999, for their fourth playoff game of the decade, which the Dolphins won 24–17 after forcing five Bills turnovers. In regular season games during the decade, the Bills held a 12–8 win–loss advantage. CBS Sports would later rank the Bills–Dolphins rivalry as the fifth-best NFL rivalry of the 1990s.
2000–2009: Decline
When the NFL reshuffled its divisions after the Houston Texans joined, there was talk of the Bills moving to the AFC North, but Bills owner Ralph Wilson wanted to keep the Bills–Dolphins rivalry active, and thus, the Bills remained in the division. However, the rivalry declined sharply during the 2000s. The rise of the New England Patriots and their dominant reign over the AFC East took focus away from the rivalry. This decade was marked by the aftermath of the retirements of Kelly and Marino from the Bills and Dolphins, respectively. The Buffalo News later wrote that the rivalry had begun declining after the end of their careers. In addition, longtime Bills head coach Marv Levy, who had led the team during its run of success in the 1990s, had retired after the 1997 season. On the NFL's website, Nick Bakay attributed the decline to the reduced success of the Bills and Dolphins in the following years, as there were only three playoff appearances by either team in the 2000s, all by Miami, as the Bills missed the playoffs from 2000 to 2016. Each team won half of the 20 games in the series during the 2000s.
Two games were noteworthy in this decade. On December 4, 2005, two former teammates from the Wisconsin Badgers football team, Lee Evans on the Bills and Chris Chambers on the Dolphins, turned in strong receiving performances for their respective teams. Evans set then career highs with receiving yards (117) and touchdowns (3), but Chambers set Miami franchise records for receptions (15) and receiving yards (238) as well as scoring the game-winning touchdown for Miami in the final seconds, helping the Dolphins erase an early 21–0 Bills lead to win 24–23. In 2008, the Bills hosted Miami at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, Canada; it was the first time the country had been the site of a regular season NFL game. Miami won the contest 16–3.
2010–2019
The teams split their two contests in 2010, while the Dolphins won both of their 2011 matchups. The Bills then won 11 of the following 16 games, claiming a 12–8 advantage during the 2010s decade.
During the 2013 season, quarterback Thad Lewis started in place of injured Bills starter EJ Manuel for both of their games against the Dolphins. This was notable as Lewis had grown up in Miami. Coincidentally, the Bills won both games. The first game was marked by a late-game strip-sack of Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill by Bills defender Mario Williams to set up the Bills' game-winning field goal, and the second was a 19–0 shutout by Buffalo.
During an October 23, 2016 match-up between the two teams, the Bills had a 17–6 lead at one point in the third quarter, but a career game from Miami running back Jay Ajayi helped the Dolphins to come back in the fourth quarter, winning 28–25. Ajayi became just the fourth running back in NFL history to rush for 200 yards in back-to-back games, as he had rushed for over 200 in the prior game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. The game also featured a hit on Bills safety Aaron Williams from Dolphins receiver Jarvis Landry that ended Williams' season and ultimately led to his retirement. On December 24, 2016, the Dolphins won their first game in Buffalo since 2011. The Dolphins won a close game 34–31 in overtime to move to 10–5 on the year and clinched a playoff berth for the first time since 2008 with a Denver Broncos loss the next day. Buffalo, on the other hand, was eliminated from the postseason with the loss despite posting a franchise record 589 yards of offense in a single game. Its defense allowed a 57-yard run from Ajayi in overtime with only 10 defenders on the field, which set up Miami's game-winning field goal. Shortly after the game, the Bills fired head coach Rex Ryan.