Home field quite an advantage
The Patriots have a built-in edge on their side when they line up against the Steelers in the AFC Championship Game on Sunday: Gillette Stadium and the home-field advantage it offers.
Historically (and with the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady Patriots now in their 11th conference final, there’s a lot of history to work with), home-field advantage in the title game has been friendly to the Patriots. Under Belichick, the team is 4-1 when the league’s penultimate game is played in Foxboro (with the lone loss coming to Baltimore).
On the road, Belichick’s Patriots are just 2-3 in the AFC title game (with a loss in Indianapolis and two in Denver).
The seven-game winning streak on which the Pats ended the regular season carried them into the top seed that earned them the right to host Sunday’s game. Their strong finish this year was in stark contrast to their 2-4 record down the stretch last season, when the Pats lost a tiebreaker to the Broncos for the top seed and then had to travel to Denver for the AFC title game — which they lost, 20-18.
Home field is important. In the last 10 years, the home team is 9-1 in the AFC Championship Game.
What could be just as important, however, is how the Steelers fare when they travel away from their home at Heinz Field.
The Steelers are just 22-21 on the road in the last five seasons (playoffs included), a far cry from their 29-13 record at home.
On the road, the Steelers’ high-powered offense seems like it can be slowed as much by the location as by the opposing defense. This season the Steelers average 7.2 fewer points per game on the road than in Pittsburgh. Their two worst losses of the season (a 34-3 defeat Week 3 in Philadelphia and a 30-15 defeat Week 6 in Miami) came on the road.
The three other teams fighting for a berth in Super Bowl LI this weekend don’t have that type of inequality on offense. The Packers, who travel to Atlanta for the NFC Championship Game, score 1.5 fewer points on the road than at home. The Falcons (2.5 more points per game at home) and Patriots (1.6 more on road) also have more balanced road/home splits than the Steelers.
The Steelers did win a road game in an inhospitable environment, Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium, to earn their trip to Foxboro. But their offensive issues were on full display in an 18-16 win during which they did not score a touchdown.
Ben Roethlisberger, Le’Veon Bell and Antonio Brown led the Steelers offense inside the Chiefs 30-yard line seven times, but they emerged with six field goals — and a costly Roethlisberger interception on the Chiefs 5-yard line as well.
The game was a microcosm of the Steelers’ season on the road. Pittsburgh has the second-best red zone offense in the league at home (scoring touchdowns 73.1 percent of the time), but like the rest of their offense that number plummets on the road to 27th in the NFL at 43.5 percent.
The Patriots find themselves in familiar and advantageous territory as the top seed hosting the title game on Sunday. In four of the previous five times they were a No. 1 seed under Belichick, they made the Super Bowl.
The winner of Sunday’s game also will set an NFL record for most Super Bowl appearances by a franchise. The Steelers and Patriots currently share the record of eight appearances with the Broncos and Cowboys.
So as the Patriots seek to become the first team to appear on the NFL’s biggest stage nine times, they appear to have the Steelers right where they want them — on the road yet again.