Snow Moves Bills-Jets from Buffalo to Detroit

The Buffalo Bills scheduled eight home games at Ralph Wilson Stadium this season for the first time since 2007. Mother Nature had other plans.

The NFL rescheduled the Bills-Jets Sunday 1 p.m. game for Monday. The Bills will now host the New York Jets in a 7 p.m. Monday night game. Strangely, the game won’t come in the Bills’ Toronto home away from home but 250 miles west in…Detroit.

Buffalo’s lake-effect blizzards, which figure to drop upwards of eight feet of snow in some areas when they mercifully end, made hosting a football game in Buffalo a logistical nightmare. The Bills attempted to coax fans into helping to shovel 220,000 tons of snow out of their venue with the lure of tickets and $10 an hour. Now they may be hard pressed to ready their venue by the November 30th home game with the Cleveland Browns.

Though the NFL held off an announcement for the time and venue change until late Thursday, moving the game struck observers as a fait accompli. “At this point in time, doing what we have to do with the driving ban and everything we just said — staying off the roads — would make a Bills game impractical,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo explained early Thursday. The storms have resulted in at least ten deaths.

Ford Field, vacant with the Lions at New England on Sunday, will host the Jets-Bills game.

“We are pleased to be hosting the Bills and Jets for their game Monday night,” Detroit Lions President Tom Lewand said in a statement. “While our thoughts are with the people of the Buffalo area during this difficult time, our team at Ford Field will do everything we can to be good hosts to their team this weekend.”