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Home and Away in the NFC
by Rob Staton
16/1/2008
Teams fight all year to be number one seed in their respective conference. The reward? A first round bye but also home field advantage as they plot a route to the Super Bowl. After Saturday’s divisional playoff matches the effort seemed worthwhile.
 At Lambeau Field the home field advantage was clear to see. It was cold, it was snowing, and Green Bay were hosting the Seattle Seahawks in a divisional playoff. As the conditions worsened the home side dominated, turning an early 14-0 deficit into a 42-20 rout. Brett Favre and the Packers had been there before, and with a relentless running game led by Ryan Grant’s record setting performance they will get another chance to prove exactly how much of an advantage playing at home is next week.
Just one day later, and the Dallas Cowboys may be regretting that miracle comeback at Buffalo in week five or the tentative win at home to the Packers in week 13 which all but guaranteed the number one seed. Of course at the time there is no way of knowing what will unfold in the playoffs, but the Cowboys’ home field ‘advantage’ meant a visit from the New York Giants, a team that had won every single one of it’s road games since a defeat to Dallas on the opening weekend. Led by an ever maturing Eli Manning, the Giants will head into the NFC Championship game with what could be described as an ‘on the road’ advantage.
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Weather reports on Saturday morning for Wisconsin read, Some light snow later in the afternoon. Immediately after the Seattle Seahawks’ season was over, head coach and former Green Bay legend Mike Holmgren admitted that in all his time living in the area, he’d never known the weatherman get it so wrong.
The blizzard set up a scene reminiscent of a golden football age, and was the perfect setting for a golden football player in Brett Favre to lead his team in conditions he was long used to. The Seattle Seahawks however, are not so used to the snow. Since they moved to an open air stadium at Qwest Field in 2002, the Seahawks have had to play in snow once. Strangely enough, it was a regular season game last year against the very same Green Bay Packers. In conditions almost identical to Saturday’s match, Shaun Alexander ran for 201 yards as the Seahawks powered their way to a 34-24 victory on Monday Night Football. Strange then that a year on with the same conditions, the score was almost identical in favour of the home team with a home running back rushing for exactly the same 201 yards.
It would be unfair on Favre, Ryan Grant and the rest of the Packers organisation to concentrate solely on the home field advantage for a reversal in their fortunes against the Seahawks, having blown their opponents away so clinically. But it could be argued the snow negated the Seahawks speed and quickness on the pass rush which had served them so well in the wild card round at home to Washington. Green Bay were simply better suited to the conditions. The Packers pummelled the Seahawks into submission, Grant’s 201 yards and three touchdowns setting post season records for the franchise. The 42 points scored was also a record, as was the six touchdowns scored and the 25 first downs accumulated.
Since Lambeau opened in 1957, the Packers have lost only once in the post season at home. Patrick Kerney was part of an Atlanta Falcons side that scored a 27-7 victory there in 2003. He led the NFC in sacks in the regular season (14.5 sacks) and was seemingly unstoppable in the wild card round. On Saturday, he failed to register a single statistic. Seattle themselves are a perfect example of team using home field advantage. 7-1 at home in the regular season, they were let down on their travels. Shut out in a humbling 21-0 defeat to the Steelers in week 5, and losing to no name quarter backs at struggling Carolina and Atlanta in the last three weeks of the season. They also narrowly lost to Arizona and Cleveland on their travels. Such poor road form stopped the Seahawks challenging for the 1st or 2nd Seeds in the NFC, and thus brought about their downfall.
 In retrospect, the New York Giants’ fifth seeding and guarantee of playing on the road throughout the playoffs has served as an advantage to match any home field, maybe even Lambeau in the snow. After a first week loss in Dallas, the Giants have been unstoppable on their travels, and haven’t they travelled? After wins at Washington and Atlanta, they travelled all the way to Wembley and London to record a victory over the hapless Dolphins. After a bye week break they returned to Giants Stadium to lose at home to the Cowboys. Remarkably, they lost their remaining three games on home turf. It’s a record that likely would have ruined other teams’ hopes of making the playoffs. But away from Giants Stadium, they won out to record a 7-1 record on the road. Nobody can say they were easy wins either, at Detroit, Chicago, Philly and Buffalo. They travelled to Tampa Bay in the wild card, and won comfortably to set up the trip to Dallas.
When playing at home, most teams have the advantage of a noisy vocal backing from the supporters to disrupt drives and force penalties. On Sunday the hometown Cowboys were flagged a grand total of eleven times, including a crucial offside penalty on the Giants’ first touchdown drive. There were also clear communication errors between quarterback Tony Romo and centre Andre Gurode, errors usually restricted to the away side. The Giants were efficient on offense and dynamic in defense to force those errors and grind out a 21-17 victory to record a 9th straight road victory. Why does this team look so dominating away from home, yet at times feeble and intimidated at Giants stadium?
You could argue that the pressure on Manning and his team mates at home has rendered any home field a disadvantage. The Giants’ fans are not the most patient, and they let the team know it. The winning run on their travels would hint at a team thriving on being afforded the opportunity to play without scrutiny. In beating the Buccs and the Cowboys, Manning has marshalled his offence respectively. His stats show four touchdown passes zero interceptions. Without a home crowd weighing on his shoulders, Eli Manning has shown a level of maturity in these two post season games that suggest he is finally ready to step out of his brother’s shadow. He’s one game away from guaranteeing there will be a Manning at the Superbowl. But how much of that is down to the fact the Giants were able to keep it on the road in the playoffs?
In next week’s NFC Championship game, the debate about how much of an influence home field advantage is could well be settled. The Packers at Lambeau, possibly in another blizzard, taking on the NFC’s best road team. It’s set up nicely, and the prize for the winner couldn’t be bigger.
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