Winter weather will be in full form when the NFL’s wild card playoff games begin this weekend, including a storm that may call the game between the Bills and the Steelers into question.
Because the NFL playoffs begin in January, there is only so much the league can do to keep weather from interfering with the postseason (with the exception of the Super Bowl, which is nearly always staged in a venue where weather is irrelevant).
There aren’t many NFL towns that face the full fury of winter like Buffalo, which is forced to deal with large “lake effect” snowstorms that often bury the city with many feet of snow.
For nearly two decades, the NFL didn’t have to worry about blizzards having an impact on the playoffs, thanks to the Buffalo Bills officially ending their postseason drought in 2018. That is no longer the case now that the franchise has turned 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 according to the forecast, the Bills and Steelers will be dealing with a fair amount of snow as well as wind gusts of up to 50 miles per hour.
According to Awful Announcing, this prompted a radio host in Pittsburgh to go on the air on Thursday and claim he’d spoken with someone associated with the Cleveland Browns who told them the stadium needed to be ready to host the two teams if a state of emergency was declared in Buffalo.
However, a spokeswoman for the NFL (as well as the Bills) promptly disputed that such a plan was in place, so unless something truly unexpected happens, we may be in for some winter turmoil in Buffalo.
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