The Steelers wildcard playoff game, originally scheduled to be played at Highmark Stadium at 1 p.m. on Sunday, was postponed due to severe weather–including blizzard-like conditions in Buffalo and surrounding areas.

As of this writing (Sunday morning), the matchup is now scheduled for Monday at 4:30 p.m.

The NFL made this decision in conjunction with New York Governor Kathleen Hochul, who declared a state of emergency in 15 counties.

It’s hard to predict the weather with 100 percent accuracy, but it was pretty damn easy to predict the reactions of so many so-called NFL fans the moment the decision was made to postpone the game for 27 hours. Naturally, plenty of folks went online to call our society soft. Other folks–mostly Steelers fans–insisted that the NFL was out to get their favorite team and was doing all that it could to give Buffalo, the number-two seed in the AFC and a perennial Super Bowl favorite since 2020, an edge.

First of all, the Bills, nearly double-digit favorites since the moment the matchup was set the previous Sunday night, were going to have an edge in any climate–including snow, rain, wind and even under a dome. Second of all, if the Steelers needed a natural disaster to even things in this game, they may as well have forfeited and gotten on with making their offseason vacation plans.

Back to the soft crap (no pun intended), a sentiment that gets thrown around whenever an abundance of caution is used when something occurs today when it wasn’t even considered under similar circumstances in the past.

Yes, they used to play football games in blizzards all the time back in the day. Yes, a Lions receiver, Chuck Hughes, suffered a fatal heart attack in a game against the Bears in 1971, and play resumed after he was taken off the field on a stretcher.

You know what else happened back in the day? People smoked on airplanes. Women smoked while pregnant. People would just walk up to you and start talking to you with a lit cigarette hanging from their lips.

All of that stuff is frowned upon today. Nobody is smoking on airplanes. Women are now harshly judged when they’re seen smoking while pregnant. And if someone walks up to you and gets real close to your face with a lit cigarette hanging out of their mouth, you’re likely going to tell them to get the hell away from you.

We don’t even have to go back decades to find a reason to postpone the Bills/Steelers game on Sunday. A five-day blizzard hit the Buffalo area in late December of 2022, dumping four feet of snow over a five-day period; 47 people wound up losing their lives.

How could a governor NOT declare a state of emergency and strongly urge that a football game, one that would include over 70,000 fans trying to commute to Highmark Stadium, be postponed until it’s a bit safer?

Why did the Chiefs and Dolphins play their wildcard game in sub-freezing temperatures? Because you can still travel in sub-freezing temperatures. If you decide it’s too cold, you can leave the stadium or just stay home. It’s much harder to get to and leave anywhere when there is four feet of snow on the ground.

Football fans are always talking about coaching malpractice. That’s a bit dramatic, but political malpractice could involve some serious consequences.

But, hey, let’s end this on a positive note. Remember when you woke up on Sunday, January 8, and you were hoping and praying that the Steelers would get the help they needed just to sneak into the playoffs? You probably would have signed up for anything that morning, right?

Probably even a 27-hour delay and one less day’s rest if the Steelers went ahead and won their first postseason game in seven years.

There are problems, and then there are problems.

A Steelers playoff game that gets postponed for a day isn’t life or death, especially when it can mean the difference between life and death.