When a player on the opposing team makes a terrible mistake on a big play, the reaction for many sports fans is joy. Our team’s going to win! We rule, you stink!
But not every sports fan.
With a minute and a half left in an N.F.L. playoff game on Sunday, the Baltimore Ravens had scored a touchdown to close their deficit to the Buffalo Bills, bringing the score to 27-25. A 2-point conversion would tie the game.
“The whole season essentially comes down to this play,” said the play-by-play TV announcer, Jim Nantz.
The Ravens quarterback, Lamar Jackson, threw the ball to tight end Mark Andrews, who was at the goal line. He caught it … and he dropped it. To be fair, he seemed to slip as the ball reached him on the snowy field in Buffalo. But he dropped it.
The whole season did come down to that play. And the Ravens blew it, and lost the game. Their season was over.
But at least some Bills fans felt sympathy, even amid their triumph.
Andrews has Type 1 diabetes, and two Bills fans have set out to raise money for Breakthrough T1D, a charity supporting diabetes research and advocacy that he has supported. Their language sounds just a little different from the fiery speech some football fans like to use when discussing the game.
“We just want to spread love; that’s really what we want to do,” said Ryan Patota, a 20-year-old sophomore at Canisius University in Buffalo, and a lifelong Bills fan. Patota and Nicholas Howard, also a sophomore, who run a Bills fans Instagram page, decided to start a charitable drive with that goal in mind.
“I mean honestly, you hate the other team,” Patota said. “You want your team to win. But we want to bring both bases together and say, ‘Hey, this is more than a game.’”
Howard said: “I’ve got tremendous respect for Mark Andrews. Even though he was playing against us.”
The effort had raised more than $100,000 as of early afternoon on Thursday, after over 3,000 individual donations. The original goal was to raise $5,000. “I never expected to blow up like this,” Patota said.
Initially, the donations were mostly from Bills fans, he said, but as word spread, fans of the Ravens and other N.F.L. teams joined in.
Andrews pricks his finger 30 times a game to check his blood sugar and uses an insulin pump. “Type 1 diabetes is incredibly difficult, but I refuse to let it affect my job or my life in any way,” he said in an article on the website of the UMass Chan Medical School.
The Ravens did not respond to a request for comment from Andrews, who is 6-foot-5, weighs 250 pounds and has played in the league for seven years, three of them in Pro Bowl seasons.
Elite athletes often get hate from opposing fans, but those that err can also face vitriol from supporters. Sure enough, the angrier and more outspoken Ravens fans dumped negativity about Andrews all over social media after the dropped catch. That reaction was a motivation for the drive’s organizers, they said.
“There are a lot of keyboard warriors that make disgusting comments,” Patota said.
Howard said, “Maybe they lost a bet, but it doesn’t give them the right to spread hate.”
David Whelan, a football fan who kicked in $25 to the fund-raiser, wrote, addressing Andrews on the donations page, that he felt “pretty bad that some Ravens fans apparently have hilariously short memories and forgot the disproportionately huge contribution you’ve made to their team being one of the best in the N.F.L.” (Andrews caught 55 passes in the regular season and five earlier in the fateful playoff game.)
Despite the outpouring of togetherness, Patota said he remained a staunch Bills fan. But, going forward, “we’re definitely going to have a soft spot for the Ravens.”
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