NFL playoff game between Bills-Steelers moved to Monday due to dangerous winter weather

The Buffalo Bills’ wild-card playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers that was scheduled for Sunday was moved to Monday amid a forecast for dangerous winter weather, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Saturday.

Hochul and other officials said they were making the change for safety’s sake.

“We want our Bills to win, but we don’t want 60,000 to 70,000 people traveling to the football game in what’s going to be horrible conditions,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said at a news conference in suburban Buffalo.

Officials advised residents to stay off the roads starting at nightfall on Saturday, with a driving ban taking effect at 9 p.m. The game will now be played at Highmark Stadium at 4:30 p.m. Monday instead of 1 p.m. Sunday.

Hochul said she started talking with the NFL on Thursday about the possibility of having to reschedule the game.

The Bills are familiar with weather-related schedule changes. In 2022, a lake effect storm led to Buffalo’s home game against Cleveland being moved to Detroit in November. A month later, a massive blizzard forced the Bills to delay their trip home, forcing them to stay overnight in Chicago on Christmas Eve.

The snow isn’t the problem in Kansas City, though more was falling Saturday morning — it was expected to finish long before the Chiefs and Miami Dolphins kick off Saturday night. Rather, the concern was what the National Weather Service called “dangerously cold” wind chills, which could make the forecasted temperature of minus-2 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-18 degrees Celsius) at kickoff feel like minus-24.

There have been only four postseason games played in subzero temperatures in NFL history, the most recent the 2007 NFC title game between the Giants and Packers, when it was minus-3 at kickoff. New York won 23-20 at Lambeau Field in a game perhaps best remembered for the images of Giants coach Tom Coughlin’s frozen face on the sideline.

The coldest game in league history remains minus-13 for the 1967 NFL championship, when the Packers beat the Cowboys at Lambeau Field in a game that came to be known as the Ice Bowl. The wind chill that day was minus-48 degrees.

The Chiefs are planning to have numerous warming stations throughout the stadium, and they’ve bent some of their rules to help fans deal with the cold. They are allowed to carry in blankets, provided they have no zippers or compartments.

The weather almost certainly will put a chill into the Dolphins, whose loss to Buffalo last week cost them an opportunity to host a home playoff game this weekend. They practiced all week in warm Miami, and it was 86 degrees on Friday, when they stepped on the plane to Kansas City. It was 10 degrees with a wind chill of minus-6 when they arrived, an almost 100-degree difference.

“You can’t prepare for a game like that with that kind of weather, so it’ll be new,” said Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who grew up in Hawaii and played his college football in the relative warmth of Alabama.

The coldest game ever played at Arrowhead Stadium was 1 degree at kickoff, set during a game against the Denver Broncos on Dec. 18, 1983, and matched during a game against the Tennessee Titans on Dec. 18, 2016.

Just about every forecast called for that record to be broken Saturday night.

“Cold’s cold. For you, me — it’s cold,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said. “But you go do your thing. That’s how you go play.”