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Every week, the NFL checks in with the Lions to see if Ford Field is available … just in case.
Only case came this week.
While the Bills and Browns are set to play today in Detroit for their 1 pm ET game, originally scheduled as a Buffalo home game, it took a full-time effort from more than 150 Detroit workers to make it happen .
“It’s all hands on deck,” Todd Argust, senior vice president of facilities for the Lions, told NFL.com. “Everybody rallied.”
Ford Field will be ready for Browns-Bills. Media crews were allowed in Friday to set up the scoreboard as if it were a Bills home game. Buffalo will use the visiting locker room to remain consistent with what it will use on Thanksgiving Day when it plays the Lions.
There will be no Bills logos on the field — the timing of the conversion didn’t allow for it and the league didn’t want a hasty attempt that could lead to problems. But Buffalo is invited to bring any team logo banners and signage for the field walls and the Lions will put them up.
Oh, and according to Argust, the game sold out in three hours.
“The tickets were reasonably priced, from $10 to $30,” Argust explained, “and they were all taken. They were released to the Bills season ticket list, then Bills app users, then holders of Lions season tickets. They all went fast.”
Bills general manager Brandon Beane said earlier this week: “It’s the home team’s choice really. We’re the home team. The only thing we want from the home team standpoint for this week is the fans.”
With heavy snowfall in Western New York — up to 77 inches, according to weather experts — the NFL decided to move the game in consultation with local authorities.
“The decision to move the game to Detroit had everything to do with safety,” Bills executive vice president Ron Raccuia said.
But that led to a mad scramble from the Lions and their facility.
As the league’s choice for site-neutral contingency plans, they’re always ready. But this week was a little different.
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