ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — Safety Amani Hooker entered the Titans' bye week on a Tennessee team going nowhere. Some 10 days later, he found himself landing in Buffalo, elated to join a contender.
“It’s amazing. That’s literally all I can say,” Hooker said Wednesday, a day after the Bills acquired him from the Titans.
“I’m obviously grateful for the Titans and what they did for me. But in the past, we haven’t been winning,” he added. “And to be on a team that’s putting up points with a quarterback and offensive guys that are on fire, and a great defense, I’m just excited to be here.”
What’s not to like for an eighth-year player who went from a 1-7 team to one that's 7-1?
Upon his arrival, Hooker began appreciating the fan support when he saw the number of people wearing Bills gear at the airport. One of the first teammates to greet him was quarterback Josh Allen. And Hooker eagerly headed out to practice, hoping to help an area of need for Buffalo's defense.
Hooker expects the transition to be smooth, noting he's familiar with various defensive schemes. He’s looking forward to building chemistry with fellow safety Cole Bishop. And there’s no doubt in Hooker’s mind he’ll be on the field Sunday, when the Bills visit the New York Jets (2-7)
“Oh, I’m going to play,” he said.
Buffalo traded a second-round draft pick to Tennessee in a bid shore up its struggling defense. The Bills allowed an average of 28.5 points and 387 yards through their first six games before showing signs of improvement in wins over Baltimore and Minnesota, both of which were led by struggling backup quarterbacks.
Hooker brings experience and a calming presence to a job previously held by C.J. Gardner-Johnson, who was cut after six games for erratic play and lapses in discipline.
“Really savvy football player that can play a lot of different roles in the back end,” coach Joe Brady said. “I’ve gone against him in his career. Obviously, he has a knack of finding the football.”
Hooker joins Buffalo as the NFL’s co-leader with five interceptions, with three of them coming in his final game with Tennessee — a 43-36 overtime loss to the Joe Burrow-led Bengals on Nov. 1.
Hooker isn’t promising three interceptions to open his Bills career, but foresees himself making an impact.
“It’s hard to duplicate great games like that. I was just doing my job and the ball was thrown my way,” he said. “So if the ball comes my way enough, I expect myself to make plays on it.”
Hooker’s addition reinforced the belief among Bills players that the team is a Super Bowl contender.
“I think that’s exactly what the message is,” Allen said. “Our front office did what they did and we’re extremely excited to have him.”
Hooker is aware of the expectations and eager to meet them.
“It’s great to be wanted, especially when they sacrificed what they did to get me,” he said. “So now it’s my job just to prove them right.”
It’s been years since Hooker’s been in this position. After the Titans made the playoffs in each of his first three seasons, they’ve gone a combined 20-56 since 2022.
The Bills, by comparison, are already closing in on clinching their eighth straight playoff berth.
“The reason you’re sad to go is the relationships you build over time there,” Hooker said of leaving Nashville. “But the opportunity here is tremendous and it’s exciting. To be in this position with a contender, it’s a dream come true.”
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Tennessee Titans safety Amani Hooker (37) celebrates after a interception against the Cincinnati Bengals during the second half of an NFL football game in Cincinnati, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)
Tennessee Titans linebacker James Williams Sr. (52) celebrates after an interception by safety Amani Hooker (37) during the first half of an NFL football game against the Cincinnati Bengals in Cincinnati, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Democratic nominee Scott Colom defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith on Wednesday in Mississippi's closely contested U.S. Senate race after a prolonged ballot counting process, giving the state its first Black U.S. senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction.
Colom's narrow victory is a seismic shift in Mississippi, which has been controlled mostly by white conservatives for generations despite having the largest share of Black residents of any U.S. state. The outcome adds to a decisive midterm rebuke of President Donald Trump, whose party suffered defeats in several Republican-controlled states, and it will bolster some Democrats' argument that their future runs through the American South.
“All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this,” Colom told a crowd of hundreds who gathered at Tougaloo College for his victory party. “I had the courage to believe in Mississippi. I had the courage to understand that we can show the country that Mississippi matters.”
The Associated Press called the race in Colom's favor after local officials spent several days processing absentee and provisional ballots, called affidavit ballots in Mississippi.
The last time Mississippi chose a new Democratic senator was 1947; the winner was a staunch segregationist. Colom, a 43-year-old local prosecutor, capitalized on the state's large Black population, discontent with the economy and Hyde-Smith’s missteps as she sought a second full term.
“They actually deserve a senator that will listen to them, that actually cares about what they think, actually cares about what they’re going through,” Colom said in the campaign's closing stretch.
Hyde-Smith, 67, called Colom late Wednesday afternoon to concede and released a concession speech online shortly afterward.
“While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters,” Hyde-Smith said. “I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous responsibility of representing our great state.”
Colom said during the campaign that he could represent all of Mississippi, a state where racial divisions have long defined its politics and society, and he repeated that pledge after his victory.
“My commitment to you, each and every one of you, is that first I’m going to treat your children like I want my children to be treated,” Colom said. “I’m going to treat your parents the way I want my parents to be treated. I’m gonna treat your future the way I want my future to be” and “work to make every Mississippian’s life better.”
Party leaders hailed the senator-elect's triumph, with nods to the South's emerging status as a political battleground after other victories from North Carolina and South Carolina to Georgia and Texas.
“Scott ran the campaign of a lifetime and re-imagined what’s possible for Democrats in the South,” Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of New York posted online.
Former President Bill Clinton, a native Arkansan who campaigned with Colom days before the election, addressed the senator-elect on social media, saying he won “because you believe in the promise of your state’s people. And they believed in you right back.”
Vera Finley was among those supporters.
“I am here to celebrate my parents and my grandparents. I am not one generation out of the cotton fields,” Finley said ahead of Colom's victory speech. “Both of my parents picked cotton. And my great-grandmother was sold here as a slave from Virginia to here. So I am so excited to be on this side of history.”
Another Mississippian, NAACP President Derrick Johnson, issued a statement saying the state’s voters, most notably Black voters, “made history because they refused to be intimidated, discouraged, or counted out” in a state that has seen “some of the nation’s most difficult battles for voting rights.”
The contest was a latecomer to the national spotlight, finally drawing attention and money months after Black senators, including Georgia's Raphael Warnock and Maryland's Angela Alsobrooks, first urged donors and party leaders to it as winnable.
The son of a onetime Republican who worked for President Ronald Reagan, Colom produced of the year’s most widely circulated ads. After Hyde-Smith seemed to brush off high beef prices by saying consumers could choose other proteins, Colom cut a 30-second spot depicting incredulous voters saying they’d “pick another senator instead.”
When Trump came to Corinth, Mississippi, in late October to rally with Hyde-Smith, Colom walked the line of Trump supporters as they waited to enter. He introduced himself and asked about their concerns.
Later, when Trump called Hyde-Smith to the stage, she said only nine words in six seconds before stepping away: “Is this not the best president in our lifetime?”
Colom's appearance outside the rally tracked his strategy of criticizing Trump’s policies — especially the Iran war that drove up gas prices and tariffs that caused headaches for Mississippi farmers — without taking personal jabs at the president or people who voted for him. Instead, he consistently put the onus on Hyde-Smith, framing her as a nonentity in Washington — a critique that resonated in a state accustomed to long-serving, powerful senators.
There is some irony in Hyde-Smith losing to Colom. In 2022, President Joe Biden nominated Colom to be a U.S. District Court judge. Mississippi’s senior Republican Sen. Roger Wicker and former Gov. Haley Barbour, who is also a former national Republican chairman, backed the nomination.
Hyde-Smith, however, blocked Colom’s confirmation. Colom said his campaign was never about getting even with Hyde-Smith.
The senator-elect concluded his campaign with an ad that featured him at the Jackson home of Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader who, in 1963, was gunned down in his driveway by a white supremacist.
Colom told the story of Evers' military service at Normandy in World War II, his voter registration efforts in Mississippi, his assassination and the three decades it took to win a conviction. “He was killed for helping Mississippians vote,” Colom said. “On Tuesday, use your vote and honor everyone who died for that right.”
At the lectern Wednesday night, Colom said it was appropriate that the race be called on Veterans Day, as he again paid tribute to Evers.
“He served his country, came home to Mississippi, and they wouldn’t let him vote,” Colom said. “But he had faith that Mississippi could make progress."
Because of the Black population and its alignment with Democrats, Mississippi’s general elections have been closer for years than its Southern neighbors. Trump won by double digits in each of his three presidential contests, but in 2023, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves managed to win reelection by a margin of just 3 percentage points.
Colom and other Black party leaders and strategists insisted throughout 2026 that he could narrow the gap with strong Black turnout, Republican discontent and an uptick in Democrats' usual share of the white vote in Mississippi.
Results showed strong turnout in the Mississippi Delta and its concentration of majority Black counties. But nearly all of the state moved leftward from the 2024 election, when Trump carried Mississippi by nearly 23 points.
Hyde-Smith was appointed to the Senate in 2018. She won a special election runoff in 2018 and a full term in 2020. Both times she defeated Democrat Mike Espy, a former U.S. agriculture secretary who'd also been Mississippi's first Black congressman since Reconstruction.
During the extended vote count, Colom acknowledged the historic nature of his candidacy but said he cares more about what it means for others.
“My job is to do well enough as the next United States senator that the next time some young Black boy or girl has the work ethic, the vision and the values,” he said, “and they want to be United States senator, that nobody says because of anything I’ve done that they shouldn’t get a chance.”
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Barrow reported from Atlanta and Washington.
Mississippi Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom, his wife Nadia Colom, and daughter's Gwendolyn Lucille Colom and Brooklyn Madison Colom, attend an election event in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
People use their phones as they attend an election event for Mississippi Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Mississippi Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom gestures at an election event in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Attendees cheer during an election event for Mississippi Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
An attendee cheers during an election event for Mississippi Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
An attendee reacts during an election event for Mississippi Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Members of the Hinds County Resolution Board process absentee ballots for a final count, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026, at the Hinds County Election Commission in Jackson, Miss., as the U.S. Senate race between Democratic candidate Scott Colom and the incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith remains uncalled. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Members of the Hinds County Resolution Board count absentee ballots for a final count, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026, at the Hinds County Election Commission in Jackson, Miss., as the U.S. Senate race between Democratic candidate Scott Colom and the incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith remains uncalled. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Mississippi Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom speaks with staff at his campaign office in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Mississippi Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom talks on the phone at his campaign office in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., walks to join members of the Republican Conference to elect their leadership following the sweeping victory by Democrats in the midterm elections, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Mississippi Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom talks on the phone with Sen. Cory Booker, in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Mississippi Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom talks on the phone with Sen. Cory Booker, in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Scott Colom speaks during a news conference, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026, at the Hinds County Sheriff's Office in Jackson, Miss.(AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate Scott Colom speaks during a news conference, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026, at the Hinds County Sheriff's Office in Jackson, Miss. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
