It’s been a tough season all around for the 49ers, but one of their biggest stars did something special for a fan dealing with something even more trying.

Before this week’s edition of Sunday Night Football, featuring the Buffalo Bills and the visiting San Francisco 49ers, one road fan got a souvenir he won’t soon forget. This 49ers fan was holding up a sign stating that he had beaten cancer, and implored his team to similarly beat the Bills, catching the eye of one of his team’s biggest stars.

Versatile running back Christian McCaffrey strode over to the end zone in which the fan was situated and amidst a short exchange, handed him a team ball before heading back to finish his preparation for the big matchup.

Check out this quick clip of the interaction between the reigning AP Offensive Player of the Year and a fan that has certainly had a challenging few months at the very least.

Most likely, fan either traveled a long way to watch his team, or has waited nearly a decade for them to come to his hometown as per the NFL’s rotating schedule for non-conference games. The Niners last beat the Bills in 2012, and they last won in Buffalo four years earlier, so if McCaffrey is to help make this fan’s wish come true, he’s going to have to break a mildly daunting trend.

He and his squad will also have to contradict some much more recent and damning history- the Bills are having a much better year than are the Niners. Buffalo sits atop the AFC East with a record of 9-2, and if the Kansas City Chiefs slip up, the Bills hold the head-to-head tiebreaker if the two teams are tied for the conference’s top seed. Meanwhile, the Niners came into the year with their usual high level of expectations, but they’re sitting below .500 and on the fringes of a tough NFC Wild Card race.

Fans have to shovel snow out of their own seats for the 49ers-Bills game at Highmark Stadium

Fans and players are battling the elements Sunday night in Buffalo.

The Buffalo Bills players weren’t the only ones putting in work at Highmark Stadium Sunday evening, with fans forced to clear their seats of the heavy snow that has accumulated in the upstate New York venue over the past 24 hours.

Buffalo is currently San Francisco in a pivotal Sunday Night Football matchup after accumulating more than 20 inches of snow, but the embattled Bills Mafia was undeterred by the lake effect, taking extreme measures to ensure that the sellout crowd was able to arrive in time for kickoff. After hours of dry conditions, however, the snow began once again at kickoff, coupling with 20-degree temperatures and stiff winds to create an even more hostile environment for the Californian visitors.

A Thanksgiving weekend cold front whitened several NFL and FBS gridirons across the Great Lakes region in recent days, but the snowiest city in major American sports certainly got the most notable snowfall. Buffalo once again called on their devoted fanbase to help excavate Highmark Stadium, offering an hourly wage, hot beverages and shovels to fans willing to help move the packed snow.

Zack and Steve Pryor formed a particularly devoted shoveling duo Sunday morning, leaving their home in Marietta, Ohio, at 4:30 a.m. to help clear out Highmark Stadium. The father-son pair didn’t have any tickets to the game, claiming they simply had a “calling that we should be out there to help” — Zach also described his efforts as a birthday present to Bills quarterback Josh Allen, who recently announced his engagement to high-profile actress and singer Hailee Steinfeld.

The Bills have played at Highmark Stadium since 1972, where they’ve employed a snow-shoveling-by-committee approach for the last five decades to combat the 92 inches of snow that Buffalo receives every NFL season. Agonizingly, Buffalo’s new stadium is currently under construction just a stone’s throw away, a $2 billion facility modeled after Tottenham Hotspur’s new arena that covers 60 percent of attendees and will open in 2026, but the Bills have taken proactive measures for their penultimate season at Highmark, creating a Google form to solicit snow-shovelers for future storms.