Getty Image
Winter weather is going to be out in full force when the NFL’s slate of wild card playoff games commences this weekend—including a storm that supposedly cast the location of the game between the Bills and the Steelers into doubt.
The fact that the NFL playoffs kick off in January means there’s only so much the league can do to prevent adverse elements from having an impact on the postseason (with the exception of the Super Bowl, which is almost always held in a venue where the weather is a non-factor).
There aren’t many cities with an NFL team that run the risk of experiencing the full wrath of winter quite like Buffalo, which is forced to deal with the massive “lake effect” snowstorms that routinely blanket the area with multiple feet of snow.
Now, the NFL really didn’t have to worry about those blizzards having an impact on the playoffs for close to two decades courtesy of the lengthy postseason drought the Buffalo Bills officially brought to an end in 2018. However, that’s no longer the case now that the franchise has managed to turn things around.
Saturday’s game between the Chiefs and the Dolphins is expected to be played in some of the coldest conditions in NFL history and based on how the forecast is currently looking, the Bills and the Steelers will be dealing with a fair amount of snow as well as wind gusts that could reach speeds up to 50 MPH.
According to Awful Announcing, that led to a radio host in Pittsburgh hopping on the air on Thursday to claim he’d spoken with someone affiliated with the Cleveland Browns who said they were informed the stadium needed to be ready to host the two teams if a state of emergency was declared in Buffalo.
However, a spokesperson for the NFL (as well as the Bills) quickly denied that particular contingency plan was in place, so pending a very unexpected change, we may want to gear up for some winter chaos in Buffalo.