Don Beebe and Steve Tasker
Former Bills wide receiver Don Beebe and special teams ace Steve Tasker visit their old lockers at Highmark Stadium in August 2025. Photo courtesy of Don Beebe
On a Friday in early August, Don Beebe was visiting Buffalo, where he was staying at the home of his former teammate, Steve Tasker. Beebe, who played wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, was in town for a charity golf tournament hosted by his former quarterback, Jim Kelly.
This visit was a rare and quick one. Beebe lives in his native Illinois, where he’s the head football coach at Aurora University. Training camp was beginning Wednesday morning, and the college football playoffs could potentially run the same length of time as the NFL season. If things went well for Beebe’s Aurora team, he might not have the chance to make it back to Buffalo for a Bills game.
Typically that would be OK; Beebe is a fixture in Bills history, but it has been several years since he’s attended one of his former team’s home games. Highmark Stadium, or Rich Stadium, as it was called in Beebe’s day, is closing after this season. Not long after the Bills’ new venue opens up across the street in Orchard Park, the old one is scheduled for demolition.
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On that Friday afternoon, Beebe was visiting Tasker at the Bills’ broadcast studios, which are located in the team’s training center across the parking lot from the stadium.
The thought played through Beebe’s mind: They are going to be tearing this place down soon. I may not see this again.
He wanted one last look.
Don Beebe
Don Beebe hauls in a pass during the Bills' 1993 playoff defeat of the Houston Oilers at then-Rich Stadium, better known as "The Comeback Game." Buffalo News file photo
“I’m not sure if I’ll get back,” Beebe said to Tasker. “Let’s go get a picture in front of our lockers.”
It seemed like a good idea to Tasker who, unlike Beebe, has never really left the Bills. Tasker came to Buffalo in 1986, three years before Beebe, and retired in 1997, three years after Beebe left. Rather than return to their native Kansas, Tasker and his wife, Sarah, continued their life in Western New York. They raised their kids in East Aurora, a short drive from the stadium, and Tasker became a broadcaster. He worked nationally for CBS, and now for the Bills.
“It’s like 38, 39 years that I’ve been around that building,” Tasker said later. “I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much time in one building, ever.”
Steve Tasker
Steve Tasker returns a kickoff down the sideline at then-Rich Stadium during a playoff game against the Los Angeles Raiders in 1994, the coldest game ever played at the stadium. Buffalo News file photo
But still, Tasker rarely makes it into the Bills game day locker room. Back when he and Beebe played, that room was the team’s everyday locker room − “a second home,” Tasker said. Since then, the Bills built an expansive training facility and weekday locker room across the parking lot, adjacent to the studio where Tasker records his show. So the longtime stadium locker room – once home to O.J. Simpson and Doug Flutie and every Bill in between – is now used less than a dozen times a year.
If “Beebs,” as Tasker calls Beebe, wanted to see it, he was game. When Tasker signed off the air, the pair headed across the lot to the stadium and entered the tunnel that connects their old player parking area with the locker room and the field. They walked through the same doors, likely veered left down a double hallway toward their old cubicles, and the memories flooded back:
Practices and meetings and interviews … the stuff of a player’s daily existence.
Game days and halftimes and rah-rah speeches …
Losses and wins and historical moments, like the January 1993 playoff game when the Bills were losing 35-3 to the Houston Oilers at halftime. Beebe remembered where linebacker Darryl Talley stood at halftime as he challenged his teammates to step up, telling them, by Beebe’s recollection: “We can win this. If anybody doesn’t think we can win this, then don’t go back out. Stay in here.”
He remembered coach Marv Levy following Talley by pointing out that backup quarterback Frank Reich, who was in for the injured Kelly, had already engineered the greatest comeback in college history one decade earlier. “Let’s go back out there and do it again, Frank,” Levy said.
And that’s what happened.
The Bills won, 41-38 in overtime, and ultimately advanced later that month to the Super Bowl against the Dallas Cowboys. They lost, but Beebe hustled his way into NFL history that day. Deep in the fourth quarter, with Dallas ahead 52-17, Cowboys defensive lineman Leon Lett picked up a Buffalo fumble and ran for the end zone. But before he crossed the goal line, Lett held the ball out in celebration. Beebe, who was chasing him down the whole time, came from behind and knocked the ball from Lett’s grasp, saving the touchdown. To Beebe, it was a normal thing to do: Why wouldn’t he play hard till the end?
But to millions watching, Beebe – and the Bills – became an enduring symbol of resilience. That iconic play didn’t happen in this stadium, but this locker room is where that sense of resilience was rooted.
“To go back in there brought back a lot of memories,” said Beebe, who later won a Super Bowl ring with the Green Bay Packers. “Being able to share that with one of my really good friends was a special moment.”
Tasker and Beebe found their old lockers, which wasn’t hard, since the room has only been painted, recarpeted and redecorated in the decades since they played. “It really hasn’t changed much at all,” Beebe said.
Tasker’s corner locker, at that time, was occupied by punter Brad Robbins, who has since been released. Beebe’s locker, adjacent to Tasker’s, belonged to kicker Tyler Bass, who is now on injured reserve.
The duo didn’t stay long. They didn’t explore, or walk down the stairs to the training and equipment rooms. The surge of memories was enough. That, and a quick photo. They found someone who was in the locker room, handed over a phone, and posed.
The next morning, Beebe opened Facebook and posted two photos: Beebe, in a black Under Armour polo, with his arm around his longtime friend Tasker, who was wearing a golf shirt emblazoned with the logo for his radio show, “One Bills Live.”
Both men looked at home. Because they were.
Beebe started typing a caption for Facebook. Typically his social media posts are focused more on the present: He has written two devotionals, and in a movie being made about his life, Beebe is being portrayed by his son, Chad. He shares what’s new, and he looks forward. But this time, he leaned into the nostalgia of a quick moment he caught while he could.
“Been a long time since I’ve been back in the old locker room,” Beebe wrote. “Even though it was 31 years ago (when) the two of us would sit in front of these lockers, it felt like yesterday with all the memories pouring back. The Bills will play in a new stadium next year but Rich Stadium will always be home to me. Thanks for all the great memories Buffalo.”
Follow Tim O'Shei on Twitter @timoshei.
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