The Ravens’ preparation for Sunday’s road game against the Bills includes more than prepping for what they’ll see the Bills try to do on the field over the course of the game.
Somebody should knit the ravens some little scarves, or small blankets for them to nest under and stay warm!
Still waiting for these people to discover roofs…
Weather should be part of the game
My comment was meant as a joke, but I don’t know much about football. Could you explain why this is good?
American football originated as an outdoor game and was played in most weather conditions.
For the Buffalo Bills, the effects of being close to Lake Erie can confer an advantage. It can be brutally windy at any time of the year, making it challenging to throw and kick the ball. Then you throw rain or snow on top of that, it can be quite the challenge.
The truth is that every NFL has an indoor practice facility. Teams in cold weather areas who play in outdoor stadia practice indoors most of the time.
They might run a practice or two outdoors if it matches the weather (mostly) for game day.
A good example - the San Francisco 49ers were scheduled to play the Buffalo Bills and it was supposed to snow. Lots of “fans” were whining that the Bills would have the advantage because of it - that they play in the snow “all the time.”
The weather was actually nice for that week and the Bills practiced outdoors for a few hours to adjust to the cold. There was no snow until after the game started.
It’s all about adapting.
For anyone still crying about it, the new stadium is going to have a heated grass field with a crazy drainage system. So, the warm weather teams won’t be “disadvantaged” because of field conditions.
On the other hand, it will be even louder because it will have 2/3rds of a roof. So, opposing teams’ fans can whine about that.
Oh so it’s a “this is how we did it and we haven’t changed yet” thing.
Yeah it’s a whole thing. They could easily put a roof on highmark if they wanted
Miami puts the opposing team in direct sunlight and they get to be in the shade, which is incredibly deliberate vs just not having a dome. So Buffalo, Giants/Jets (share MetLife), and Patriots force them to play in cold wintery weather. Watching Miami fall apart in cold weather is beautiful so I am happy the new Highmark stadium is not a dome.
No they can’t. The structural changes necessary to put a roof on are ridiculously expensive and would not extend the life of a stadium.
Plus, having a full roof presents many challenges and if there’s a major issue, they can’t be readily converted. Even stadia with retractable roofs would struggle to host a game during bad weather if the roof was stuck open.
