Snow Physics Helps the Bills!

Who doesn't love playing football in the snow?  If you get lucky and have some snow on Thanksgiving, you go all out in the Turkey Bowl, diving for catches and sliding in the snow.  How great is it that professional football keeps being played whether it's raining, windy, or snowing?  The Indianapolis Colts visited the Buffalo Bills today and were treated to wind and snow.  The Bills won in overtime, 13-7, in a game in which snow physics played a major role.

Scoreless near the end of the first half, the Bills had 1st and goal at the Colts 8 yard line.  Check out the formation below (click on image for a larger view).

I've circled four key players in the above screen capture.  Look at that field and note that the image isn't crisp because it was snowing at the time.  Players in snow can lose about 30% of the friction on their shoes from what they're used to.  They can't run with long strides or they risk slipping.  A football brought from a warm locker room can lose a couple psi because air molecules aren't bouncing around inside the ball as much as they were in the locker room.  The air temperature in Buffalo at the time of the above play was about 30 F.  Air at that temperature is about 9% denser than air in a balmy 75-F stadium, and that added air density makes for more air resistance on passes.

Snow physics helped the Bills score from the formation shown above.  The Colts rushed just four, but there is a reason I circled left defensive end, Margus Hunt (#92) in the above image.  Check out the image below, which is 2.6 s after the above image (click on image for a larger view).

Margus Hunt slipped and fell forward in the snow!  All of a sudden, the right side of the Bills line had no rush to block and there was no defender on that side to swat the pass.  By the time Hunt got up, it was too late.  The screen capture below shows Bills quarterback Nathan Peterman (#2) releasing his pass at 45 mph and 21 degrees above the horizontal (click on image for a larger view).

The ball was released outside the Colts 10 yard line.  Bills wide receiver Kelvin Benjamin (#13) only reached 11 mph prior to crossing the goal line.  He caught the pass 1.43 s after Peterman released the ball (click on image for a larger view).

Note Colts cornerback Christopher Milton (#28) looking over his left shoulder.  He had gotten turned around in the snow and didn't have enough shoe friction in the snow to close the gap and stop Benjamin from making the catch.  Benjamin caught the pass while it was moving at about 41 mph.  Benjamin's padded gloves increased friction with the ball so that he could secure the catch in the snow.  Check out his perfect two-handed catch below (click on image for a larger view).

Milton certainly had a great view of Benjamin's catch!  Credit Benjamin for superb fundamentals.  Though Benjamin couldn't reach his top speed while running with short strides in the snow, slippery snow physics hurt the Colts' defense!

The trajectory of Peterman's pass is shown below (click on image for a larger view).

The ball only got about 5 yards above the snow on its flight to Benjamin's gloves.  But that was all the height needed for a pass thrown at the 11 yard line and caught halfway into the end zone near the right sideline.

Chuck Nice of Playing with Science joined me on TuneIn's No Huddle to discuss some snow physics and the above play.  Chuck was great setting up the play and then I rambled about the physics.  Click here for our segment.  We got a little snow in Lynchburg yesterday, but I'm jealous of all the snow in Buffalo!