
LA’s Remarkable Playoff Relocation Wasn’t NFL First, Happened Before in Boston
Fans watching the last Monday Night Football matchup of the season this week quickly learned that neither the LA Rams nor the Minnesota Vikings were playing on their home turf.
Though the Rams had earned that all important 'home field advantage' for Wild Card weekend, the wildfires still raging throughout Los Angeles caused the NFL to make a almost unprecedented decision.
They rightly chose to move the playoff matchup from SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA to State Farm Stadium in Glendale, AZ, but this wasn't the first time an NFL playoff game was relocated.

For decades every postseason game outside of the Super Bowl has had a home field team. In fact, most people watching the Rams-Vikings game had likely never heard of a playoff game being moved to a neutral stadium.
But it had actually happened just one time before.
That only other time was nearly 90 years ago, back when Boston first had a football team. And it was this team that had their playoff matchup moved.
History of the Boston Redskins
Before the Washington Commanders played in our nation's capitol, they got their start as the Boston Braves. Formed in 1932 and titled after the Boston baseball team of the same name, the Boston Braves had a terrible first season.
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By 1933 they had rebranded themselves as the Boston Redskins and relocated to Fenway Park. They played there for the next four seasons, with mostly mediocre results.
During the 1936 season the team got on a roll and ended with a 30-0 blowout of the Pittsburgh Pirates in their final game, marking their first winning record (7-5) and their first Eastern Division Championship.
Boston fans were not impressed however and failed to show up for their first hometown football team.
During that 30-0 Pittsburgh win only 4,713 fans were present at Fenway Park (a ballpark that held nearly 40,000 at the time).
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Presumably to punish that lackluster fanbase, Boston Redskins owner George Preston Marshall decided not to accept home field advantage for the Division Championship and moved the game to the Polo Grounds in New York instead.
Literally the only other time in American football history that a playoff game was relocated to a neutral stadium.
Perhaps proving there is something to the concept of 'home field advantage', the Boston Redskins lost that game 21-6 to the Green Bay Packers. By the next season Marshall had moved his entire team to Washington and the rest, as they say, is history.
It was another 20 years before Boston got another professional football team with the founding of the Boston Patriots 1959. They too played a few seasons at Fenway Park before settling into Foxborough in 1971.
Since then they have had a steady stream of supportive fans, even when the games are tough to watch.
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