The NFL announced on Thursday that Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta will be the neutral site for the AFC Championship Game if it involves Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills.
As far as potential neutral site venues go, this is probably as fair as the NFL could have managed and pretty much fits every subjective and objective definition of the word “neutral.”
That site will only be used if the game involves the Chiefs and Bills. Any other matchup will be played at the highest-seeded team.
The decision to move that particular to a neutral site is due to the Bills only playing in 16 regular season games following the Damar Hamlin incident. They were still in contention for the top spot in the AFC (which comes with a bye week and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs) before that game was stopped.
They enter the playoffs as the No. 2 seed with a 13-3 record behind the 14-3 Chiefs. Had the Bills completed their game against the Cincinnati Bengals and won it, they would have had the same record as the Chiefs and won the tiebreaker due to their 24-20 head-to-head win earlier in the season.
So why is Atlanta so perfect for this choice?
It is virtually equal distance from both cities (892 miles from Buffalo; 799 miles from Kansas City) and will provide perfect weather conditions given that the game will be played indoors. That is something that should please both teams given the strengths of each team — the quarterbacks. The weather would have almost certainly played a role in Kansas City or Buffalo in late January.
Giving Patrick Mahomes (Chiefs) and Josh Allen (Bills) perfect weather conditions and completely removing the element of weather should provide for another epic game. Last year the two teams met in the divisional round in Kansas City and played one of the most exciting playoff games in modern NFL history with the Chiefs winning in overtime. Kansas City also won the 2020 AFC Championship Game against the Bills.
The Bills will have to win two games to reach the AFC title game, starting with this Sunday’s game against the Miami Dolphins.
The Chiefs will play the lowest-seeded team remaining in the divisional round.
