Two days before the playoffs, the NFL announced the neutral site that could play host to the AFC championship game. Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium would host a potential Chiefs-Bills conference title tilt, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com tweets.
This NFC venue emerged as the host after it became known Indianapolis and Detroit indicated their stadiums were not available. This stadium would only come into play if the AFC’s top two seeds — Kansas City and Buffalo — meet to decide the conference’s Super Bowl representative.
While an outdoor stadium was believed to be a consideration for this unique circumstance, as both the Chiefs and Bills hail from cold-weather cities, only indoor sites were mentioned during this process. Mercedes-Benz Stadium hosted Super Bowl LIII and has been the site for CFP national championship games.
Should the Bills and Chiefs reach the conference championship game, it would be Buffalo’s second relocated contest this season. A snowstorm moved a November Browns-Bills contest to Detroit. While weather issues have moved games before, a conference title game being relocated is new territory for the league. But the owners narrowly approved the NFL’s proposal on a compromise, as the Bills controlled their own destiny for the AFC’s No. 1 seed prior to the Damar Hamlin injury and hospitalization leading to the cancellation of Week 17’s Bills-Bengals matchup.
Although the Bengals launched a protest of the playoff modification, they only objected to the coin-toss component — which affected the AFC North teams and which is no longer in play, thanks to Cincinnati’s Week 18 win over Baltimore — in the proposal. The Bengals, Bills and Chiefs were all believed to be fine with the relocated AFC title game, though the Chiefs abstained from voting. The Bengals also had a narrow path to the No. 1 seed going into Week 17, but the Chiefs’ Week 18 win would have prevented that regardless of a Bills-Bengals result. As such, this relocation measure will only take effect if the Bills and Chiefs meet for a third straight postseason.
Both those matchups — a 2020 AFC title game blowout and 2021 divisional-round classic — occurred at Arrowhead Stadium and went the Chiefs’ way. The Bills (13-3) have not held home-field advantage since the 1993 season (when they beat the Chiefs to book a Super Bowl XXVIII berth), and because win percentage gave the 14-3 Chiefs the edge, the AFC East champions are set up for a tougher road to the AFC title game.
Should the Bills and Bengals win their respective wild-card games, as they are heavily favored to do, they will meet in Round 2. The Chiefs will face a less-accomplished team — likely the winner of the Chargers-Jaguars matchup — despite the Bills having defeated them in Kansas City this season, still providing the top-seeded team an advantage despite the NFL stepping in to prevent the Bills from playing in K.C.
Rumors of the NFL using this as a trial balloon for neutral-site conference championship games have emerged, and while that would be intriguing (and similar to college football’s setup), it would minimize the importance of obtaining home-field advantage and thus devaluing the regular season to a degree. But if a third Patrick Mahomes–Josh Allen playoff clash commences, the league will see this compromise/experiment come to fruition.
AFC championship game is going to be hosted in Sofi actually…
LMAO
Not impossible, but I’d say the Vegas odds are steep against it.
The odds are getting a little bit better if the Chargers can keep playing the way they’re playing in the first half of tonight’s game. They’d need either the Dolphins or the Ravens to get hot too.
Wow! That one quickly went up in smoke! SoFi is out.
Should have flipped a coin so at least one home fan base could enjoy it
BS. Fans should boycott.
I’m a firm believer that football should be played in the cold and on natural grass not in a dome on artificial turf. They being said I believed Green Bay At Lambeau field would’ve been a perfect neutral site
The story there was not enough hotel space to accommodate 2 out of town teams and fans
Lambeau would have checked all the boxes. Large seating capacity, cold weather environment, etc.
Except for the hotels. Packer fans, just come in from the ice shanty to attend the game, while visiting fans take up hotels an hour our more all around GB. Now you’d have to find accommodations for two sets of fans. Visiting teams stay 40 minutes away typically, now you need 2x hotels for visitors. It’s not always about the stadium.
Cleveland would have been perfect
Agreed. Both teams play outdoors and in colder weather, this game should be as well. Also, play it somewhere between the 2 locations like in Pittsburgh or Cleveland where the fans could make that drive. Not everyone can afford to take flights, rent cars and hotel rooms.
The Chiefs would quickly scream “palpably unfair!” Cleveland is physically closer to Buffalo than to Kansas City.
It would have been a pseudo home game for the Bills. What is it, like a 4 hour ride?
Location wise, Soldier Field would have been better. But the NFL surely wants more than 60k people in the stands
This is a garbage result of a garbage plan (cancelling the Bengals/Bills game).
More embarrassing is that Indianapolis and Detroit were both unavailable as they have a volleyball tournament scheduled for Conference Championship weekend in Indianapolis and Detroit is replacing their turf. It seems like teams/stadiums should be held reserved for the NFL until after the Super Bowl. Nice lack of confidence by both of those team/stadium operations folks.
These are large venues that need to churn every dollar they can by booking as many events as they can. This freak one in a million occurrence shouldn’t have all NFL venues locked up for an extra month.
Here’s something for Rich to chew on: Until the late 1970s, the New York Jets could not play a home game at Shea Stadium until after the Mets’ season was over. That was one of the reasons why the Jets started playing home games in New Jersey in the mid-1980s.
I wonder how popular the Jets were at the Polo Grounds.
Of course the 1963 Jets or ‘62 NY Titans didn’t have to worry about being locked out due to the early Mets going on a post season run.
These facilities aren’t being built for hosting volleyball tournaments or RV and Camper shows. Those are bonus events. They are built for NFL games. If they are booking non NFL events or maintenance in January, they clearly have zero confidence in the team that plays there.
And the city of Atlanta and all the business owners say thank you for the revenue that Kansas City should have gotten!
We’ll never know if Buffalo would have beaten the Bengals or not in the cancelled game. If they had, they would be on Bye week this weekend and KC would be hosting Miami.
See if Buffalo makes it that far first!