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Sunday, December 02, 2001

Compiled by Ed Bouchette

The most overrated things in football these days are the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 300-yard passing games and the home-field advantage.

Not one is a sure ticket to the Super Bowl.

Never mind that neither the Jets nor the Steelers have come close to 300-yard passing games or that the Eagles were actually a pick by many to reach the Super Bowl, the real fallacy is that the home field means anything anymore.

First, Baltimore, a wild-card team, won consecutive postseason games at Tennessee and at Oakland to reach the Super Bowl last season. So much for home-field advantage in the playoffs.

The home turf also has meant less in regular games the past two seasons. Last season, home teams lost a league-record 44 percent of their games, and they are on pace to break it again because visiting teams have won 48 percent this season.

Home teams went 8-22 the past two weeks.

Oddly, some division leaders have cleaned up on the road and not at home. The Jets are 5-0 on the road, just 2-3 at home. The Eagles are 5-0 away, 2-4 at home. The Rams are unbeaten on the road and both of their losses are at home.

The statistics are simple but the explanations for them are not.

"That's a surprising stat to me," said John Butler, San Diego's general manager. "Maybe we have so much change now with personnel moving to different teams that they're learning what home fields are too. It's not like before when teams were together a long time and had great protection for the home field. Maybe we're finding people who just don't understand yet what the home fields have. Your own home teams are getting used to that field, too, like the visitors."

New fields also might be a difference. For example, the wind at Heinz Field blows and swirls in different patterns than it did at Three Rivers Stadium. While the winds at Three Rivers Stadium were tricky for opponents, they were consistently tricky, and the home kickers knew how to kick there. At Heinz Field, the wind shifts differently. Although Steelers kicker Kris Brown said the wind did not affect him missing three field goals at the open end Nov.4 against Baltimore, others thought it did.

"Those kickers know those places all over the fields at home," Butler said.

Tennessee Coach Jeff Fisher said parity might be the cause of the drop-off at home.

"I know there has been some injuries, some key injuries to some clubs that have made it difficult to win at either home or away. You have some teams on the rise and some teams that are dealing with noise better now than they have in the past. When you bring a team in for the third or fourth time where it's typically difficult to play, it becomes easier as you gain experience dealing with the noise factor."

Steelers Coach Bill Cowher wasn't sure why it's happened, but thought parity might be a factor. His team is 5-1 on the road, chasing the franchise's best record away from home, 7-1 in 1978.

"I'm sure that has a lot to do with it. You go back to teams in the playoffs, teams that have been in the Super Bowl, they're different teams. You don't have the dominant teams anymore year-in and year-out, which probably added to some of the home advantages. I'm sure a lot of it is due to the makeup of teams changing because of free agency."

The Minnesota Vikings haven't contributed to the home-away reversal of fortunes in the NFL. The Vikings will try today to win their first game away from the Metrodome since Thanksgiving 2000. They have lost seven in a row on the road.