In a rarity, an NFL playoff game has been postponed to a new date due to weather.
The Steelers-Bills AFC Wild Card game originally scheduled for Sunday at 1 PM ET has been moved to Monday at 4:30, it was announced Saturday, marking the first postponement of an NFL playoff game since Steelers-Chiefs in 2017. That 2017 game was merely moved from Sunday afternoon to Sunday night. No playoff games were postponed in the COVID-affected year of 2021.
The Monday afternoon timeslot figures to be less of a drag than usual given Monday is a national holiday. Nonetheless, Monday at 4:30 simply cannot compare to Sunday at 1 PM from a viewership perspective, meaning CBS should end up with a much smaller audience than would have otherwise been expected.
(The NBA figures to take a massive hit from the move, as TNT is scheduled for a doubleheader at 3:30 and 6 PM ET that would have otherwise faced no competition.)
Wild Card weekend coincides this year with a massive weather event across the country. In addition to Steelers-Bills being postponed, the forecast calls for extremely low wind chills in Kansas City for Saturday’s Dolphins-Chiefs game.
