NFL Playoffs: Do Losses by Falcons, Patriots Prove Homefield Is No Advantage?

For 17 weeks, football teams, broadcasters and fans obsess over the notion that one of the keys to a successful Super Bowl run is gaining home field advantage.  You'll see graphs and charts and talking heads hyping up a game in November, hammering home the point that this game will have ramifications about who will have home field advantage in the playoffs. 

The belief has always been that home field advantage is a shortcut to Super Bowl greatness.  However, if you look at the recent history of the postseason, you may see that this notion of playing at home being an advantage may well be going out the window.

This weekend's Divisional playoff games further proved that playing at home may indeed be a vastly overrated concept.  On Saturday, Aaron Rodgers made the Falcons look like tackling dummies, going 31-for-36 for 366 yards and three touchdowns en route to a 48-21 trouncing of the No. 1 seed.

Then you had Sunday evening and the New York Jets, a team that many were laughing at due to their arrogance for trashing Tom Brady and Wes Welker seeing as they were returning to the site of a 45-3 embarrassment just last month.  However, the Jets proved everyone wrong with Mark Sanchez outperforming the great Tom Brady, beating their hated rivals 28-21. 

Even the Steelers had a tough time defending their home field against the Ravens, needing a Ravens offensive self-destruction to come back from a 21-7 halftime deficit to eventually win 31-24. Truly, the only home team to sufficiently beat down its opponent was the Bears, who beat an 8-9 Seahawks team 35-24.

Having the two top seeds in the playoffs lose looked surprising enough until you look at the Wild Card round when three of the four road teams won. The only home team to advance, you may remember, was the Seahawks who were actually 10-and-a-half point underdogs against the Saints.  

One could argue that the 2010 season is just an outlier until you look at recent postseason history. In 2009, road teams went 3-7 in the playoffs including the Jets making another run to the AFC Championship. In 2008, however, road teams went an impressive 5-5, that saw two No. 6 seeds and a No. 4 seed involved in the Championship games. The 2007 playoffs also saw a 5-5 record.  

You have to go back to 2006 to find a season where home field advantage lived up to its billing with the home teams going 8-2. But even in 2005, road teams won six games.  Just in the past six seasons, two teams played and won all their games on the road and eventually won the Super Bowl: the 2005 Steelers and 2007 Giants, a feat that had not been accomplished prior to '05. 

The question is, why do journalists, broadcasters and fans continue to believe that home field advantage is the end all be all? Is it to create irrational hype? Does the league do it because they believe if it's not talked about, people won't go to a game? Or is it just a case of old-habits-die-hard?  

Whatever the case may be, the fact is the adage that having your home fans, home turf and home weather conditions enhance the likelihood of a victory clearly no longer has the same impact. There likely is many reasons why this is the case, but I believe there may be one that is more important than others: free agency.

Over the course of the NFL's history, free agency is still a relatively new concept, really coming into its own over the past 20 years. Prior to this, players would stay in one market their entire career. Today? Someone who played college ball in Miami might start in Buffalo, be traded to San Diego but later sign with Chicago. You no longer have a case where half a team never played a game that was below 32 degrees.  

In the future, fans will undoubtedly cheer their team on in the hopes they will see them go 13-3 get the first seed and vanquish any inferior road team. Likewise, fans of a team that sneaks in with a 10-6 record and plays on the road will often times not like their chances.

But before people get too arrogant, or lose all hope, they need to realize that playing on the road is not nearly as intimidating as it once was. In fact, some now are arguing that playing at home increases that teams pressure to perform. 

In the end, if there was a chance to see my team play at home or on the road, I'd obviously choose the former. However, moving forward, no one should take home field advantage for granted. If anything can be learned from these 2010 playoffs, it is that important lesson.