Longtime Bills voice John Murphy steps away from play-by-play duties

Orchard Park, N.Y. (WGR 550) - The longtime voice of the Buffalo Bills is stepping away from play-by-play duties with the team.

John Murphy has served as the play-by-play voice on the Buffalo Bills Radio Network for parts of 19 seasons, taking over for broadcasting legend Van Miller upon his retirement after the 2003 season. Murphy was the soundtrack of Bills football on local airwaves stretching much of New York State, and even into Northern Pennsylvania and as far West as Cheyenne, Wyoming .

However, Murphy's time on air was cut short late in the 2022 season when he suffered a stroke , forcing Bills beat reporter Chris Brown to step in as the play-by-play man in the booth on an interim basis.

Over the course of the 2023 season, "Murph", as his colleagues call him, made a number of appearances in the booth for Bills home games at Highmark Stadium, solely as a spectator. He was able to reconnect with a number of different personalities that walked through broadcast row, and was still a larger than life presence.

However, despite working hard over the last 16 months to recover and rehab from his stroke with the hopes of hopping back behind the mic, Murphy is making the decision to step aside from his play-by-play duties for the Bills.

"I had to miss last year, and then to miss this year, it's too much to miss," said Murphy during a recent interview with WBEN's Susan Rose.

"I've lost a lot of weight, I work out every day. I feel good. I just can't talk, and that's what's holding me back from being on the radio. I just can't talk, and it wouldn't be fair. I thought I might make it back last year and didn't, and I tried again this year and it's not gonna happen. It's slow progress, but it is progress. Hopefully by September, I'm able to talk a little bit."

Murphy admits the decision to step away was a difficult one, but it maybe didn't hit so hard until the last few days with thinking about all the things he will miss.

"I'll miss a great deal. I'll miss the people, first of all, the great, great people that work for the Bills and have worked for the Bills over the years. I'll miss working with them. The great people at 'GR radio and working with them. I'll miss the people more than anything," Murphy said.

Despite how much he will miss those he interacted with on a regular basis around One Bills Drive, Murphy says he is at peace with the decision.

"I made it probably in the last month or so," he said. "Just things that are going on, and here comes a new season already, and it comes up fast. It just wouldn't do me any good to try to come on and do it halfway. I can't do it that way."

But Murphy wasn't alone in making this decision. He also talked to his wife, Mary, about stepping away from his play-by-play duties in the booth, and she agreed with the decision.

"She says, 'If you don't like it and if you're feeling like you'll be compromised, don't do it.' I think that kind of carried the day. I just felt like it's too much," Murphy explained. "I'm not making good enough progress to come back the way I want to do it, and the way I want to be."

Murphy was inducted into the Buffalo Broadcasters Hall of Fame back in 2019, and his wife will join him in the Hall of Fame this coming September when she is inducted after years at WKBW-TV as a reporter, anchor, and consumer advocate for the station’s Action 7 franchise from 1985-2005.

Meanwhile, Murphy continues his recovery efforts from his stroke, saying he continues with speech therapy twice a week, and utilizes a program, Brain HQ, to help with his cognitive deficiencies. He says for anyone that has recently gone through a stroke and is in their recovery process, hang in there and keep working away.

"Figure out what you want to do. It might not be exactly what you want to do, but do something else," Murphy said. "I'm lucky that I have such a great family and so many good friends that keep me motivated to work, and I work. And just because my family and friends tell me to, I work at it."

While Murphy is ending this chapter as the play-by-play voice of the Bills, he says this isn't any sort of retirement from Bills broadcasts just yet.

"I am gonna give myself until maybe the first of next year before I'm fully back. But I think I'm gonna step away and really concentrate on my recovery, and then get to work on whatever it may be," he said.

"I think by September, I hope to provide and/or comment in the booth, the radio booth for home games, and maybe road games, too. But only if my voice is better. But we'll see. We'll see how that works out."

When reflecting on his years in the broadcast booth calling Bills games, Murphy values the moments when people continue to link him with his predecessor, who was the play-by-play voice in Buffalo ever since the team's first season in 1960.

"I think to be closely identified with Van, to work with Van for 16 years before I took over the play-by-play; I understand what the job is. I understand how to do the job right, I think," Murphy said. "And not that I was doing it like Van right away, but after a while, you have your own pace and your own systems. I think I carried on for Van pretty well."

So what was Murphy's most memorable game called in his 19-plus seasons as the play-by-play voice of the Bills? As it turns out, it happened to be a recent game in which Buffalo's season came to an end.

"[It] was a playoff game a couple of years ago in Kansas City, where they had the lead with 13 seconds left and lost. That was a tough game to take," Murphy admitted. "It was so momentous, I didn't really accept what it meant until - it took me a day or two - I came home and watched the tape and I realized, 'Oh my God, they lost that game!' It was back-and-forth. It was a game-winning touchdown for Mahomes, a game-winning touchdown for Josh [Allen]. It went back-and-forth, and in the end, Kansas City won, but it didn't hit me until a couple days later that they lost that game. That was probably the biggest shock, and the most memorable game I did."

While Murphy is hopeful he will get a chance to be at another Super Bowl one day involving the Bills, he certainly believes the team will get there soon.

"I think in the next couple years they'll go. Maybe not this year, but they'll be there. With Josh, they can do anything," Murphy noted. "They'll build around Josh, maybe take half a step back this year, but I think they'll be OK. I think with Josh, you can do anything you want."

For the time being, Brown will continue to work as the interim play-by-play man for the Bills ahead of the 2024 season. There are no immediate plans to name a successor to Murphy in the broadcast booth as the permanent play-by-play voice of football in Western New York.

For whoever that may end up being, though, Murphy's advice for that individual would be to work at it.

"Even two years ago, the last season I did it, I was working seven or eight or nine hours a week getting ready for the game. I would watch a ton of video, watching on the screen, and watch three or four games of the opponents, watch the Bills' game over again, and that helps a lot. Just work at. Just don't think you're mailing it in because you're the voice of the Bills. You work at it," he said.