The Bills beat the Steelers in very cold weather, and the Buccaneers beat the Eagles to move on in the NFL playoffs.
After the Steelers lost to the Bills in the wild-card playoffs on Monday, head coach Mike Tomlin wouldn’t say anything about his future in the team.
“Mike, you have one year left in your contract—” the reporter asked. The head coach got up from the stage and looked around. The Bills got 368 yards to Pittsburgh’s 324 and made the Steelers lose the ball twice.
After the Bills beat the Steelers 31–17, things got heated. Josh Allen threw for 203 yards and three touchdowns and ran for 74 yards and a touchdown of 52 yards.
As the Steelers started to have trouble in the middle of this season, there was more talk about Tomlin’s future with the team. They won their last three games for the season to just barely make the playoffs.
During the season, Pittsburgh had a lot of problems. Wideouts Diontae Johnson, as well as George Pickens, started fighting with each other. The team also fired Matt Canada, who was the offensive coordinator, during the season.
But Pittsburgh still managed to go 10-7 or finish at or above 500 for the 20th year in a row. Tolstoy is the latest in a long line of great Steelers teachers. After taking over over Bill Cowher, he won the Super Bowl in his second year.
In 1992, Cowher took over for Chuck Noll. Since 1969, Noll had been the boss and they had won five Super Bowls. The Steelers received the best coaching of any team.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers beat the Philadelphia Eagles 32–9 on Monday night to move into the divisional round of the NFL playoffs. They were the last team to move on. On Sunday at 3 p.m., the Bucs play the Detroit Lions.
The Buffalo Bills beat the Pittsburgh Steelers earlier on Monday. The game was pushed back a day because of a crazy winter storm in Buffalo.
National Weather Service reports that it was only 17 degrees in Buffalo when the game started, so it was very cold for both teams.
The Bills got out to a big lead right away, and fans threw snow at each score to celebrate. They went on to win 31–17. That, along with the fact that the team has three starting players, makes the season a lot harder.
The Bills worked late into the night to get the snow-covered stadium ready for the game. They even asked for more snow shovelers on their website or social media to help them clear Highmark Stadium overnight.
Volunteers were given food and drinks and paid $20 an hour to help out overnight and into Monday morning. It was hard for the Steelers to tackle Bills players, and their attack did not work well most of the time.
Even with all the work that had been done, many fans still found seats covered in thick snow on Monday.
Videos shared on social media showed fans within the stadium moving through the ice to get to the blue seats.
One Steelers fan used his body to move through the snow-covered rows of seats. It was still packed, though, as you can see from above.
Josh Allen scored four touchdowns for the Bills, including a crazy 52-yard run that made the score 20-0. His completion rate was 21/30, which is 203 yards and three scores.
Statistics-wise, the game was pretty even, but the Steelers lost two big balls, including one right away in the subsequent quarter when Mason Rudolph’s pass was picked off in the Bills’ end zone.
Head coach of the Bills, Sean McDermott, said the work to get the field and stadium prepared to host the game was “admirable.”
He said it was impossible to see out of his room several times on Sunday. He thanked the fans of the team by calling them by their group name.
“The Bills Mafia showed up. He told the press after the game, “I know that there weren’t always tidy seats to sit on, but it didn’t seem to matter to them, so I applaud them.”
When things went bad, Buffalo got hot again. After a rough start to the season, they won their last five games, including a win over the Dolphins in the last week to steal the AFC East title and the second spot in the AFC.
Now, they will get ready to play the Kansas City Chiefs, who are the reigning Super Bowl winners, at home on Sunday at 6:30 p.m. ET in the Divisional playoff round.
The early weather report says that day will have a high of 25 degrees and a low of 17 degrees in the morning on Monday.