Jim Kelly spent 11 years in the NFL on his way to a Hall of Fame career with the Buffalo Bills. But since 2013, he has had multiple bouts of cancer. However, he’s still fighting every day and he was kind enough to join Travis and Chad on Rip City Drive Thursday to discuss his great career and his fight against cancer.
Kelly says he absolutely loves the city of Buffalo, New York.
“I’ll tell you what, the people in Buffalo, there’s no one like them. The fans and the way they’ve been, they rallied around me when I played, they rallied around me when my son was diagnosed, when I was fighting my cancer and given less than a 10 percent chance of living, they fought for me there too. I’m blessed, I thank God that I’m a Buffalo Bill and I enjoy every minute of it. I love Western New York, there’s no doubt about it.”
Kelly also talked about why the Bills struggled early on in his career.
“I wasn’t the leader I probably should have been early on because you feel that you’re invincible, that we’re going to do this but it takes everybody pulling together and until we realized that, we weren’t going anywhere.”
He also has high admiration for his former coach Marv Levy.
“Every time I talk to anybody, I say it always starts at the top and it started with Marv Levy our head football coach. He’s the one that was able to put us all in check and tell us the way it was. He was never a big raw raw guy. He almost never got in your face, but when he spoke, we listened. I know that’s an old cliché, but if there’s anybody that made that cliché work, that was Marv Levy.”
Take a listen to the fantastic interview below and be sure to check out his wonderful foundation Kelly for Kids.