Getty Bills Head coach Sean McDermott. The Buffalo Bills were an original franchise in the American Football League, which started play in 1960, and they won two AFL championships. The Bills won the fledgling league’s title in 1964, and then in the following year, they repeated as champs. But 1965 marked the end of an era, the final year of the AFL and NFL as fully independent leagues. The merger of the two leagues into what became a unified NFL with two “conferences” would not be completed