By the numbers: Which NFL team should Wyoming cheer for?

Start the new NFL season with a team to call your own

I remember sitting around the lunch table one day in middle school in my Northern California hometown when a very important question began making its way from boy to boy.

Raiders or 49ers?

Apparently, everyone was expected to have an answer.

I was much more of a baseball kid than a football fan, so I hadn’t given the matter much thought. But when my turn came, I had to think quickly.

“49ers,” I proclaimed.

And just like that, I was locked in.

Nearly 50 years later, I’m still a 49ers fan. I didn’t know it at the time, but my timing wasn’t particularly good. The 49ers soon bottomed out, winning just two games in both 1978 and 1979. Meanwhile, across the bay, the Raiders had gone 100-38-6 during the 1970s and won a Super Bowl.

I had apparently chosen poorly.

Then along came Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and eventually Steve Young, and suddenly that split-second decision at a middle school lunch table began looking pretty smart. Five Super Bowl championships later, there was no turning back.

I’ve now lived in Wyoming for about 40 years, and being an NFL fan here presents an interesting problem.

We don’t have a team.

With the new NFL season about to kick off, I’m certainly not changing teams. After nearly half a century, the 49ers have me for life. But this year I decided I could use a B team, somebody else to follow and cheer for when San Francisco isn’t on the field.

Living in Wyoming, that raises an interesting question. If someone were starting from scratch, who should a Wyoming resident cheer for?

Rather than make another five-second decision like I did at age 12, I decided this time I would use science. Well, sort of.

I began assembling what may be the world’s first completely unnecessary mathematical formula for determining Wyoming’s rightful NFL team.

I considered the 49ers, Packers, Broncos, Chiefs, Seahawks, Rams, Chargers, Bills, Vikings, Raiders and Cardinals. I gave three points for winning a category, two for second and one for third.

Then I let the numbers decide.

Proximity

First, can we just cheer for the closest team? If proximity determines loyalty, we can stop right here. Denver is roughly 85 miles from the nearest point in Wyoming. Las Vegas is about 405 miles away. Kansas City, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Seattle and the California teams are hundreds of miles farther.

And then there is Buffalo. The Bills play about 1,263 miles from Wyoming. You could leave Cheyenne, drive to Denver, watch most of a Broncos game and start home before a Wyoming fan driving to Buffalo got out of Nebraska.

So Denver gets three points. Las Vegas gets two and Kansas City one.

Score: Denver 3, Raiders 2, Chiefs 1.

That seemed almost too easy.

Then Wyoming football history messed everything up.

Wyoming’s NFL players

Forty-one Wyoming-born players have appeared in the NFL, and when I traced the franchises they actually played for, I expected Denver to do well.

It didn’t.

The winner was the Rams.

Seven Wyoming-born players have played for the Rams franchise, followed by Green Bay with six. Denver had three.

Kansas City had zero.

Among Green Bay’s Wyoming contingent was Rock Springs native Boyd Dowler, who became one of Vince Lombardi’s great receivers. Dowler spent 11 seasons with Green Bay and played on five championship teams, including the winners of the first two Super Bowls.

Denver’s Wyoming-born players include Pat Matson, Zane Beadles and Jacob Bobenmoyer, but three wasn’t enough to keep pace with the Rams or Packers.

The Rams get three points, Green Bay two and Denver one.

Score: Denver 4, Rams 3, Packers 2, Raiders 2, Chiefs 1.

Buffalo still had zero.

The Josh Allen problem

Then came the Josh Allen problem. How do you score Josh Allen?

Buffalo is so far away it shouldn’t have much of an argument for becoming Wyoming’s team. Josh Allen changed that.

Allen threw for more than 5,000 yards during his University of Wyoming career before Buffalo selected him seventh overall in the 2018 NFL Draft. He went from Laramie to becoming one of the biggest stars in professional football, and his No. 17 has now been retired at War Memorial Stadium.

Plenty of Wyoming fans who watched him on Saturdays simply followed him to Buffalo on Sundays.

And then there is one of those facts that seems almost too convenient for this article: the Buffalo Bills are named for Buffalo Bill.

So an NFL team in western New York has a superstar former Wyoming Cowboy playing quarterback for a franchise carrying the nickname of Buffalo Bill Cody.

I could devise an entire category measuring University of Wyoming players who have suited up for various NFL teams.

But why bother?

Josh Allen gets three points. That’s it. No second place. No third place.

It’s my formula.

Score: Denver 4, Rams 3, Bills 3, Packers 2, Raiders 2, Chiefs 1.

Buffalo had gone from 1,263 miles outside the competition to one point behind Denver.

Winning matters

There is another consideration when adopting a football team.

It would be nice if they occasionally won.

So I examined the 10 completed regular seasons from 2016 through 2025.

Kansas City crushed everybody.

The Chiefs went 118-47 during those 10 seasons, a .715 winning percentage. Buffalo was second at 105-59, followed by Seattle at 101-63-1.

Green Bay went 99-64-2, Minnesota 97-67-1 and the Rams 96-69.

My 49ers were 84-81, which perfectly captures the peculiar experience of being a 49ers fan. San Francisco reached two Super Bowls during the decade but mixed those great seasons with some truly awful ones.

Denver was only 76-89.

The Raiders were 68-97.

Arizona was worse.

So Kansas City gets three points, Buffalo two and Seattle one.

Score: Bills 5, Denver 4, Chiefs 4, Rams 3, Packers 2, Raiders 2, Seahawks 1.

Wait a minute.

Buffalo was winning.

Josh Allen had officially broken my formula.

The Chiefs’ decade deserves respect, but there’s an interesting twist as we enter 2026. Kansas City stumbled to 6-11 last season while Denver went 14-3 and won the AFC West. Buffalo finished 12-5, Seattle 14-3, and the Rams and 49ers both went 12-5.

Even more appropriately for this particular argument, Denver eliminated Buffalo 33-30 in last season’s playoffs.

Three bonus points for Denver. 

Perhaps the football gods had been reading my spreadsheet.

What does Wyoming actually search for?

Finally, I decided to quit telling Wyoming residents which team they should like and see which teams they actually look for.

For that, I turned to Google Trends and examined five years of Wyoming search interest.

This time Denver didn’t merely win. The Broncos dominated.

Among the teams I compared, Denver had the highest Google interest in 49 of the 61 months, about 80 percent of the time.

The Broncos’ average Google Trends interest score was 27.7. Second? Buffalo at 20.9.

Kansas City was a distant third at 12.7, followed by the Raiders at 8.9, Packers at 8.2, 49ers at 6.6, Rams at 4.9 and Chargers at 4.3.

Think about that.

The Bills play more than 1,200 miles away, yet Wyoming searched for Buffalo considerably more often than Kansas City during a period when the Chiefs were one of the NFL’s dominant franchises.

There is Josh Allen again.

Denver gets three points, Buffalo two and Kansas City one.

Final score: Denver 10, Buffalo 7, Chiefs 5, Rams 3, Packers 2, Raiders 2, Seahawks 1.

Denver wins.

Which makes sense.

Denver is so close that I’ve heard it joked that Denver thinks of itself as a Cheyenne suburb.

But if you’ve been cheering for Buffalo lately, it’s completely understandable.

In fact, my supposedly objective formula says you have a pretty good case.

Follow your heart

If you’re like I was nearly 50 years ago, sitting there without an NFL team and suddenly being asked to choose one, the geography, statistics and math say pick the Denver Broncos.

Then throw away the spreadsheet.

Because the most important rule of being a sports fan has nothing to do with winning percentages, mileage, Google searches or which quarterback happens to be playing well right now.

Pick the team that feels like yours.

Then stick with them.

The numbers can help you pick a team. Your heart makes you a fan.