I’m still experimenting with this website—when to post, how often to post, and whether I want Joe from Queens to be the daily drive-thru of Buffalo sports content as the Chicken Finger king of West Seneca has or a special attraction, like Andre the Giant coming to town. So there’s going to be a lot of tinkering.
And while tinkering, I saw some stuff online about the new stadium and the playing surface. Tim Graham had a story in The Athletic about the field not being great, with players complaining about it—including one player who spoke off the record.
Of course, Bills X is going to do what Bills X always does:
Have completely normal, measured opinions about everything…[insert sarcasm]
When it comes to the field, the first thing that popped into my head was Pittsburgh. Heinz Field—or Acrisure Stadium, if you insist on calling it that—has had issues with its grass discussed forever. So obviously, I hope we’re not dealing with something similar here.
But it also got me thinking about something else.
We all know what’s coming if the Bills get off to a slow start.
At some point, someone will start talking about the team “adjusting to the new stadium.”
New locker room. New sidelines. New sightlines. New field. New routine. Whatever. That’s football. Give people a 1-3 start and we’ll have 37 different theories explaining it by Tuesday morning.
So I wanted to see if there was actually anything to it.
What happened to NFL teams when they moved into a new stadium?
More specifically: How good were they the year before the move, and what happened during their first season in the new building?
Did teams regress? Did they improve? Did their offense or defense change dramatically? Did they win their division? Did they make the playoffs?
Because before someone spends an entire fall blaming a new building for anything that goes wrong, we might as well see what history actually says.
The Patriots are the ultimate warning against blaming the building. They won the Super Bowl at 11-5 in 2001, left Foxboro Stadium, opened Gillette Stadium in 2002 and went 9-7 and missed the playoffs. I remember a friend of mine who was a Pats fan said it was cause Tom Brady was partying too much with Tara Reid. Then he dumped her and they won the next two Super Bowls. So was 2002 a “new stadium adjustment,” or just the normal year-to-year weirdness of the NFL?
None of the 23 teams have won the Super Bowl in Year 1 of a new stadium.
Some teams got dramatically better. Pittsburgh went from 9-7 to 13-3 when Heinz Field opened in 2001, winning its division and reaching the AFC Championship Game.
A new stadium didn’t stop deep playoff runs. The 1999 Titans reached the Super Bowl, while Pittsburgh and the 2010 Jets reached conference championship games in their first season in a new building.
Sometimes nothing changes. Detroit finished 3-13 in its final Silverdome season and 3-13 in its first season at Ford Field. Apparently the new-building smell wasn’t enough to fix the Lions.
The Eagles definitely have a Buffalo feel of getting to the conference title games but then losing both years.
10 of the 23 teams made the playoffs in Year 1 — about 43%. So there isn’t much evidence here of a universal “new stadium adjustment year.”
Tennessee had the best immediate turnaround. The Titans went from 8-8 and missing the playoffs in 1998 to 13-3 and the Super Bowl in their first season at Adelphia Coliseum. They ranked 7th in scoring and 15th in points allowed.
The fastest any team won a Super Bowl in their new stadium was year 2 (Rams/Pats)
Four teams made the playoffs in both their final season in the old stadium and their first season in the new stadium:
Eagles: 2002 — NFC Championship → 2003 — NFC Championship. They went 12-4 both seasons.
Colts: 2007 — lost Divisional Round → 2008 — lost Wild Card.
Jets: 2009 — AFC Championship → 2010 — AFC Championship. They actually improved from 9-7 to 11-5 in the first year at the new Meadowlands.
Falcons: 2016 — lost Super Bowl → 2017 — lost Divisional Round.
Look, I’m not looking for this to become an excuse. To be honest, I think it’s bullshit. Everyone’s going to play on the same field, and the Bills aren’t going to be the first NFL team to move into a new stadium.
But I also know how this age of information works. If the Bills start 1-3, somebody somewhere is going to start talking about the new field, adjusting to the new stadium, different sightlines, new routines or whatever else we can come up with to explain four football games.
So I figured I’d get ahead of it.
Save the chart. Print it out. Bookmark it. Or wipe your ass with it.
Just don’t tell me in October that nobody could have possibly predicted we’d be talking about this.
Well, streaks are meant to be broken and here’s to hoping! It took over a half century of Super Bowls for a team to play in their own host stadium, then it happened twice in a row. 🤷♂️ 🏟️
Any stats on bills when they went from the old war memorial stadium in buffalo to Ralf Wilson stadium in orchard park?