The Pittsburgh Steelers have eight Super Bowl appearances, six Lombardi Trophies and they have played in 16 AFC Championship Games. It is the most appearances by any team in the AFC, and they have an overall record of 8-8. Pittsburgh has hosted the AFC Championship 11 times, which is also the most in AFC history. They are 6-5 at home and 2-3 on the road in those games. The current 12-year absence from hosting the AFC Championship game is the longest drought in the Super Bowl era for Pittsburgh.
The Steelers last appeared in the championship game in 2016 when they visited the New England Patriots and lost 36-17 to Tom Brady and Bill Belichick in New England. The Steelers have not won a playoff game since. The AFC Championship game has been played outdoors in a cold weather site in 18 of the 22 possible games in the 21st century.
The Kansas City Chiefs would have been forced to host the Buffalo Bills in Atlanta, which is an NFC city if the Bills could have managed to beat Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals. Art Rooney II held a press conference Thursday afternoon and announced his displeasure with the idea of a neutral site conference championship game.
"I hate the idea," he said. "I don't like that at all. It's my sense that if you put that up for a vote, it wouldn't pass today, but who knows."
The choice of Atlanta as a neutral site for a game between Kansas City and Buffalo, two teams that are used to playing in inclement weather, was a curious choice. The NFL has eschewed the rules to favor offenses and penalize defenses. The league has taken extreme and sometimes incomprehensible interpretations of the rules to protect star quarterbacks but has applied them at best in a questionable fashion.
Some of the most famous games in the history of the league have occurred in extreme weather and the NFL doesn’t seem content for that to continue. Pittsburgh played the Houston Oilers in the late 1970s in a pair of memorable championship games that could have been quite different in a dome or warm weather site. The Patriots dynasty started in a snowstorm against the Las Vegas Raiders, not to mention the altitude in Denver and the record cold in Cincinnati that made all the difference in past playoff games.
The NFL is floating a trial balloon with the idea of controlling the weather, which is the last potential disadvantage for offenses in the playoffs. You can’t call penalties on a snowstorm, but Roger Goodell and his band of merry NFL officials have started working on it. The AFC is dominated by cold-weather powers that fight hard to get games at home in January for a reason, so in typical NFL fashion, they are working on legislating the weather out of football.
Moving the games indoors on artificial turf because of the “weather” elements is not about competitive balance, it is about fantasy football and gambling. Players prefer to play on natural grass and moving the game indoors is not prioritizing player safety. Last year’s Super Bowl, which was essentially hosted by the Los Angeles Rams, saw Odell Beckham Jr. shred his knee on a non-contact injury that is all too common on turf.
The game of professional football is almost unrecognizable from a decade ago. Players have gotten bigger, stronger, and faster but the league has gotten softer. You can’t touch Tom Brady, but you can grab Kenny Pickett’s face mask and drive his head into the turf. The NFL doesn’t apply its rules across the board and it has not demonstrated any current plans to start.
The move to penalize teams that play the last third of the season in cold weather is not about player safety or season ticket holders that spend their hard-earned money to go to support the home team every Sunday. The average fan can’t afford to go to a Super Bowl, but they can affect it by creating a home-field advantage for their team that could affect the outcome of games. Super Bowl crowds are rarely raucous and do not influence the game. The NFL isn’t interested in the fan experience or player safety, it’s all about the money and at least Art Rooney is calling them out on it.
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