Buffalo Bills kicker Matt Prater received a hero’s welcome after securing his team’s insane comeback victory over the Baltimore Ravens.
Prater, 41, kicked a 32-yard field goal as time expired on Sunday, September 7, giving the Bills a 41-40 win over the Ravens at Highmark Stadium in Buffalo.
With 8:35 left in the fourth quarter, the Ravens led the game 40-25 and had a 98.9 percent chance to win, according to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats.
Prater, the second-oldest player in the NFL, signed with the Bills on Thursday, September 4, after the team’s starting kicker, Tyler Bass, was placed on injured reserve.
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After his kick went through the uprights, Prater was lifted onto the shoulders of his new teammates and paraded around the field.
“I was not expecting this,” Prater told reporters in his postgame press conference.
Prater arrived in Buffalo on a red-eye from Arizona around 6:30 a.m. on Thursday, according to The Athletic.
“I’m still on cloud nine,” Prater said after the game.
Despite the storybook moment, Prater — who has also played for the Miami Dolphins (twice), Detroit Lions (twice), Atlanta Falcons Denver Broncos and Arizona Cardinals over the course of his 19-year NFL career — refused to take credit for the incredible comeback.
“It wasn’t me, it was everybody,” Prater said. “I just have to swing my leg, they’re doing everything else, the hard parts.”
Once he arrived in Buffalo, Prater didn’t waste any time in making connecting with teammates
“I met him two days ago in the locker room and he showed me a video of his son playing quarterback,” Bills quarterback Josh Allen said after Sunday’s game. “Today before the game, he comes up to me before we even take the field. He just said, ‘Hey, I promise you I’m gonna give you everything I got tonight.’”
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Bills head coach, Sean McDermott, was still trying to make sense of what had transpired in the aftermath of the game.
“This one will be one of those stories that are told for a long time,” McDermott, 51, told reporters. “I’m sure people are gonna wake up, some Buffalonians maybe, and maybe people just around the country, and will be like, ‘Wait, did that happen?’”
Punter Brad Robbins joked that “Matt was a rookie when I was eight years old,” and said he asked the Bills’ head of equipment, Jeff Mazurek, to make him a souvenir in honor of his new special teams teammate.
“As soon as I found [Prater] he was here, I was like, ‘Hey, I don’t care what it takes, but can you make me a jersey? I’ll buy it off ya,’” Robbins asked Mazurek. “I can have Prater sign it. A Prater Bills jersey is going to be like a rarity. It’ll be pretty sweet.”
