By the time night falls on Sunday and the Buffalo Bills’ home game against the New York Jets goes final, it will mark the end of an era. There will never be a regular-season game played at the old Highmark Stadium again, quite a sobering fact as the mammoth new Highmark Stadium towers across the street.

Unless some absolute playoff tomfoolery happens, it will likely be the last Bills game ever played at the old Highmark Stadium.

The Bills are treating it with ample revelry, having big plans for what is likely to be the final time fans pack into that stadium.

And there are many different ways to think about the Bills’ home of 53 years heading into Sunday’s final, and by now, you’ve probably read and watched your fill. But if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to add another one to the pile.

Rather than my usual notebook for the week, this game is bigger than a usual Week 18 matchup between a team that may rest many of their starters against a clearly tanking team. With due respect to the upcoming game, 53 years in one stadium calls for a bit more.

From an aesthetic perspective, the old Highmark Stadium was the last of its kind by NFL standards. It’s a completely unprotected stadium from an area that, when November, December, and January roll around, makes for some of the most unforgiving weather conditions across the league. The snow is one thing, but the winds are another. Winds swirl in one corner of the field, and it’s somewhat of a homefield advantage to specialists who know the secret.

Even with some facelifts to stay current, the facility has deteriorated over time. There is ample rust scattered throughout the structure. On a snowy or overly rainy day, random water pours out from overhangs as you enter through a tunnel to get to the seating areas. When a big snowstorm hits, the Bills have to put out a call for stadium shovelers, and fittingly, that happened one last time this week.

The Bills have sorely needed a new stadium for quite some time, though despite that, a nostalgic feeling is coming over the whole area. And for good reason.

Of course, there are the memorable Bills games over the years, and I’m sure many have random moments of games burned into their memories that have otherwise been forgotten. But in the moment, they felt so large and memorable, even if they weren’t through the test of time.

Though what I think makes the old Highmark Stadium, Rich Stadium, The Ralph, or whatever iteration you know it best as, goes far beyond just Bills games. It’s about the community. It’s about the shared experiences. It’s about the memories built with family and friends.

My experience is a bit different than most as a non-Bills fan growing up in Buffalo. I grew up one suburb over from Orchard Park. In my senior year, I lived just down the street from the stadium. My high school is five turns away. I graduated from a college only 20 minutes away. Then in 2010, I began covering the Bills full-time, only a year and change removed from college. I’ve missed only a handful of practices, and the only home games I’ve missed were during the COVID season in 2020 and for the birth of my first child in 2023.