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Saturday’s game between the Chiefs and the Dolphins is expected to feature some of the coldest conditions in NFL history, and while it probably won’t be an enjoyable experience for anyone at the stadium, Kansas City can take solace in knowing recent history suggests they have a major edge.
The Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins both finished the regular season with an 11-6 record, but the former earned the right to host their opponent at Arrowhead Stadium for their Wild Card Round showdown.
The inherent home-field advantage likely played a small role in the fact that the Chiefs are listed as 4-point favorites, but it’s become increasingly hard to ignore another factor that could have a significant impact on the outcome of the game: the weather.
The National Weather Service predicts Kansas City will be “dangerously cold” when the game kicks off on Saturday night, and as of this writing, it’s believed the wind chill could plummet to as low as -30 degrees with the “real” temperature hovering around o°F.
In theory, both sides are at an equal disadvantage (the Dolphins may have designed Hard Rock Stadium to ensure the afternoon sun blazes down onto the opposing sideline, but there’s no way to harness a type a similar form of gamesmanship in this situation). However, a couple of trends suggest that’s not the case in practice.
According to CBS Sports, Miami (which hails from a city where the lowest recorded temperature during the entirety of 2023 was 44°F), has lost ten straight games when the thermometer dipped below 40.
Kansas City, on the other hand, was born into the cold and molded by it when you consider it’s gone 9-1 at Arrowhead in the past 10 games played in the same conditions (a stretch that includes a perfect record in four playoff games).
Every seasoned gambler knows you should only put so much stake in the past while attempting to predict the future, but those numbers are pretty hard to ignore.