Tom Silverstein’s analysis
The Packers show homefield advantage at Lambeau Field still matters this season.
GREEN BAY – If you thought that NFL home-field advantage in the season of COVID-19 meant diddly squat, you had a point.
Going on the road hasn’t been such a bad deal.
You’ve got most of your hotel to yourself and no distractions from family and friends, who are barred from visiting.
You’re playing in empty or near-empty stadiums with low-level ambient crowd noise serenading you instead of explosive cheers putting an exclamation point on each of your failures and pulsating music making communication impossible.
All the advantages of home have been taken away.
Except one, that is.
If you play in Lambeau Field, there’s a pretty good chance the weather will be crummy and the field conditions dicey come playoff time.
The Green Bay Packers’ 40-14 victory over the Tennessee Titans on Sunday night was a prime example of why homefield advantage stills matters to coach Matt LaFleur’s team and why a chance to clinch it next week with a victory over the Chicago Bears at Soldier Field is imperative.
On a snowy, slick day when the temperature was 28 degrees at kickoff and dropped a few degrees as the night wore on, the Packers dominated the Titans, who came into the game with a 10-4 record and a two-game winning streak.
On a field where the hash marks and yard lines needed to be brushed off before and during the game, the Packers played their most complete game of the season. They looked like they had a true homefield advantage against their foes from the South.
“I think the cold is something we always embrace here,” said LaFleur, who knows all about it having grown up in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. “That’s what we practice in, that’s what we live in every day.”
And they have a quarterback who almost always gives the Packers an advantage because of his ability to function in wind, snow, rain, sleet, hail or whatever else Mother Nature can throw at him. There’s a reason he’s 78-19-1 at Lambeau Field during his 13 years as a starter.
Against the Titans, who seemingly are built to play in the cold with their 6-2, 247-pound running back Derrick Henry and commitment to getting him the ball. Henry came into the game with 321 carries for 1,679 yards and 15 touchdowns and left with just 23 carries and 98 yards added to those totals.
Quarterback Ryan Tannehill completed just 11 of 24 passes for 121 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions.
The Titans, who came into the game averaging 399.4 yards and 31.1 points per game, managed just 260 yards and two touchdowns. The Packers gained 448 yards, including 234 yards on the ground, their second-highest total of the season.
“This was it; this was definitely it,” receiver Davante Adams said of the complete game the Packers have been looking for all season. “It was a beautiful game.”
The Packers had hoped to clinch homefield advantage in the NFC Sunday night, but when the Seattle Seahawks (11-4) beat the Los Angeles Rams earlier in the day, the Packers had no chance to clinch anything.
The best they could do was improve to 12-3 and hope the Seahawks lose to San Francisco next Sunday, which would guarantee them homefield.
Win or lose, the Packers knew that most likely their hopes for homefield advantage and the bye week that comes with it (this year only one team gets a bye) would depend on the outcome of their season finale.
If the Packers win, they would capture the No. 1 seed based on the best record (13-3) in the NFC. The best their two main competitors, Seattle and New Orleans, could finish is 12-4.
The Packers hold a head-to-head tiebreaker advantage over New Orleans because of a Packers victory in Week 3, so if the Seahawks were to lose to the 49ers, the Packers and Saints would finish ahead of them at 12-4. The Packers would prevail due to that victory.
If the Seahawks beat the 49ers, the Saints beat Carolina and the Packers lose to the Bears, there would be a threeway tie and the Saints would get the No. 1 seed based on the best conference record (10-2 to Green Bay and Seattle’s 9-3).
The Packers cannot win any tiebreaker against the Seahawks – it comes down to common games, and the Packers have a worse record – so under the above scenario they would be the No. 3 seed. And if the Saints lost and the Seahawks win, a Packers loss would give the Seahawks the top seed and the Packers the No. 2.
Beating the surging Bears (8-7), who are still in the running for a wild-card berth, would render all the tiebreakers meaningless and mean everything to the Packers.
Consider the teams that might have to come into Lambeau Field for a playoff game on Jan. 16 or 17: Dallas (plays indoors), Los Angeles Rams (warm weather team), New Orleans (indoors), Tampa Bay (warm weather) and Arizona (indoors).
The only teams that wouldn’t be too far out of their element would be the Bears, the Seahawks and the Washington Football Team.
“It is a different deal when you come in here and play and there’s snow,” LaFleur said. “It’s almost what you envision when as a kid when you come into Lambeau. It’s snowy and cold. We wouldn’t want it any other way.
“Just our ability to operate in that snow, both in the run game and the pass game, I think is pretty special.”
According to Adams, his game is affected greatly when there’s snow on the ground. The heaters are turned on underneath the field while the tarp is on, but then turned off after it is pulled up. With freshly falling snow, the field gets slippery because the snow gets packed into the grass.
You have to know what cleats to wear and what your limitations are when your shoes get packed with snow.
“Just the change of direction, you start to get this slush on the ground and it starts caking on the bottom of your cleats,” Adams said. “If you’re not wearing the right cleats, the footing starts to go. For me, I’m a quick-feet guy and so I like to make sure I get outside my framework and just really stick and burst and take off.
“This was one of those games you couldn’t do a whole lot at the line of scrimmage.”
Somehow, Adams caught 11 passes for 142 yards and three touchdowns, though.
The Packers’ big guys, both on the offensive and defensive fronts, know what to wear and what they can get away with also. At the same time the Packers were holding Henry under 100 yards, rookie AJ Dillon was pounding through the Titans defense for 124 yards and two touchdowns in a breakout performance.
Over the years, the Packers have had big backs who were able to navigate poor conditions, from Edgar Bennett to Dorsey Levens to Ahman Green to Ryan Grant to Eddie Lacy.
Now they have the 6-0, 247-pound Dillon to help soften up opponents. With Aaron Jones rushing 10 times for 94 yards, the pair combined to carry 31 times for 218 yards and two touchdowns. That’s the kind of day Henry might have when he isn’t playing in Lambeau Field.
“When the footing and the weather is what it is, the fundamentals are going to be maybe what carries you through, whether that’s on defense or taking care of the football or protecting – a lot of things,” Titans coach Mike Vrabel said. “None of it was good enough.”
The fact the Packers played their best game of the season in their first winterlike conditions bodes well for having a real advantage come playoff time.
But before they can have that, they’ve got to beat a cold-weather team in what they hope will be really crummy conditions.