{"id":218399,"date":"2026-01-03T14:14:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T14:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/218399\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T14:14:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T14:14:06","slug":"we-are-a-part-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/218399\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;We are a part of history&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Where do I begin with what that stadium means to me. First off, I have to confess something. I&#8217;m not good with letting things go. I like to hang on longer than most. Thinking about the last game is making me realize that. That&#8217;s why Sunday isn&#8217;t going to be easy.<\/p>\n<p>When I think about some of my first memories at Highmark Stadium, it&#8217;s not a specific game, it&#8217;s looking out into the crowd. What comes to mind is seeing Richie Incognito jerseys in the stands when I was a rookie. That&#8217;s huge for a lineman. Your guy was coming from a smaller school in Temple and going to a place where the fans love their players, even offensive lineman.<\/p>\n<p>That s&#8212; stuck with me. It gave me hope. It made me realize I&#8217;m at a place where one day, hopefully, I can see my jerseys in the crowd. And hey, it happened. It&#8217;s a beautiful thing seeing those 73 jerseys in the crowd. I don&#8217;t take any of this s&#8212; for granted.<\/p>\n<p>I also won&#8217;t forget riding into the facility on game days. I get to drive right through tailgating. I get to feel and see how lit the fans are. You really help set our mentality. It&#8217;s one of kicking a&#8211;, the way you tailgate, the things you jump through, getting doused in ketchup and mustard. It&#8217;s dope as hell.<\/p>\n<p>Bills Mafia, you are really one of one. The love you have for us is really f&#8212;&#8211; special. When we win, the entire community is happy. When we lose, it&#8217;s tough way to start the week. Victory Mondays are really for everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Where do I begin with what that stadium means to me. First off, I have to confess something.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[120759,120760,2664,85,46,120758,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-218399","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-dion-dawkins","9":"tag-farewell-highmark-stadium","10":"tag-features","11":"tag-il","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-player-features","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}