The playoff-bound Buffalo Bills celebrated their very last game at Highmark Stadium in style on Sunday (Jan. 4) with a decisive 35-8 shellacking of 3-14 downstate doormats the New York Jets. The win was important not just because it punched the No. 6 seed team’s ticket to play the No. 2 seeded Jacksonville Jaguars in the wild-card round on Sunday (Jan. 11), but also because it marked the team’s final game at Highmark Stadium after a 53-year run.
How did the team celebrate? By playing the most beloved hit from one of the city’s most-beloved bands: the Goo Goo Dolls‘ “Iris.”
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Fans who had already braved hours in frigid 20-degree weather to watch the walk-over stuck around after the final seconds ticked off, with the more than 70,000 in attendance joining together to sing the Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” in the closing minutes before fireworks burst over the stadium as Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” played on the stadium’s speakers.
Then came the moment that really brought it all home. A five-minute highlight reel honoring Highmark featuring the band’s 1998 Billboard Hot 100 No. 9 hit. A fan video from the special moment showed the bundled up masses singing a round of “And I don’t want the world to see me/ ‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand/ When everything’s made to be broken/ I just want you to know who I am” as they savoured the final moments in what was the league’s fourth-oldest stadium.
On Tuesday (Jan. 6), the John Rzeznik-led band posted a bit of the video, including images of current players wistfully watching the montage on the Jumbtron and thanked the team for the special moment. “What an incredible honor to have ‘Iris’ played as the very last song at Highmark Stadium,” they wrote on Instagram. “Home to the @BuffaloBills for 53 seasons !!!!”
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Last week, the long-running group celebrated “Iris” reaching three billion streams on Spotify. The Goo Goo Dolls are gearing up for a summer U.S. tour with Neon Trees with a spot at the Innings Festival in Tempe, Ariz. on Feb. 20, followed by a run of Canadian dates in March and April.
