Logo for a Logo? Buffalo Bills Celebrate 50 Seasons of 'Charging Buffalo'

The Buffalo Bills maintain one of the NFL's most consistent identities.

There are few certainties left in the National Football League but the Buffalo Bills doing battle with a charging buffalo on their helmets is a rare exception.

Buffalo acknowledged five decades of consistency this week, releasing a logo for the 50th anniversary of the long-running primary emblem on its social media accounts. The logo traditionally depicts a charging blue buffalo with a red streak running across to indicate movement. 

Though the helmet it has been placed upon has shifted to differing hues of red and white over the past half-century, the logo itself has remained almost entirely unchanged since originally gracing the Bills' helmets in 1974, replacing the red standing buffalo worn on white in the prior dozen seasons.

The iconic mark was designed by freelance illustrator Stevens Wright, who would later design several emblems for the World League of American Football. A report from The Buffalo News upon Wright's passing in 2013 referred to his work in Western New York as his "crowning triumph."

The Bills' offense rocks the charging buffalo in 2022  / USA TODAY SPORTS

“It was life-changing for him,” Wright's daughter Beverly Wright Woo told Gene Warner. “As an artist, he considered this his greatest accomplishment. He told me that the legacy he left behind was the Bills logo, that he left a footprint for the world.”

Buffalo has endured its highest highs and lowest lows in the helmet: it was the symbol of the AFC in the early-to-mid-1990s, as the Bills became the first (and, to date, only) team to appear in four consecutive Super Bowls (1991-94).

Each of those, however, yielded heartbreaking losses and it'd later be a symbol of football futility during a 17-year playoff drought (2000-16), tied for the fourth-longest in NFL history. The buffalo has since charged again with four consecutive playoff appearances, the second-longest streak in the NFL behind the eight of Kansas City.

The Bills (5-5) have some work to do if they want to continue that streak after Monday's heartbreaking loss to the Denver Broncos. That journey continues on Sunday when they host the New York Jets (4:25 p.m. ET, CBS).