NFL playoffs (Photo by Peter Aiken/Getty Images)
The NFL may play a neutral site AFC Championship game this postseason. Has that ever happened before?
In the wake of the Week 17 game between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals not being played to its conclusion, there are multiple scenarios this season that could conclude in the AFC Championship being played with no home-field advantage.
The game will be played on a neutral site in the following scenarios, H/T ESPN:
- If Buffalo (12-3) and Kansas City (13-3) both win or tie, a Bills-Chiefs championship game would be at a neutral site.
- If Buffalo and Kansas City both lose and Baltimore wins or ties, a Bills-Chiefs championship game would be at a neutral site.
- If Buffalo and Kansas City both lose and Cincinnati (11-4) wins, a Bills or Bengals vs. Chiefs championship game would be at a neutral site.
It raises the question, has this ever happened before?
Has a neutral site conference championship occurred in NFL Playoffs before?
As best we can tell based on a dataset that scraped FiveThirtyEight’s data, no, a conference championship has never been played at a neutral site. In fact, no postseason game of any type has been played at a neutral site aside from Super Bowl games.
Neutral site games are not completely foreign in the NFL, though. The Super Bowl each year is played on a ‘neutral site’ (with exceptions to the past two years when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Los Angeles Rams qualified for the title game when it was played in their home stadium).
The NFL has also played multiple games abroad in London, Germany, and Mexico. Others have been relocated within the US due to weather, the two most recent being the Bills playing a home game in Detroit this season and the Saints playing a home game in Jacksonville last season.