Packers: Home-field advantage key vs. Seahawks in playoffs

The home team has dominated recent matchups between the Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks.

It’s hard to think about the Packers-Seahawks rivalry without the nightmare of the 2015 NFC Championship Game. But home-field advantage remains key in this matchup, and Lambeau Field has been a miserable place for the Seahawks to visit in recent years.

The Packers have won their past eight games against the Seahawks at Lambeau. Their last home loss to Seattle? All the way back in 1999.

But it’s not just Green Bay dominating this rivalry at home. Whichever team has played at home has usually won over the past couple of decades.

In games between these two teams (playoffs included), the home team is 8-0 since 2008, and 13-1 since 1999. The last road team to win this matchup was Green Bay at Seattle in 2008.

In his NFL career, Russell Wilson has played at Lambeau Field three times. The Seahawks lost all three. They scored 10 or fewer points twice, and their highest score in that stretch was 17.

All of these statistics don’t count for a whole lot, of course, but it does highlight how challenging it can be to win on the road when you get two evenly matched teams. That has been the case in recent seasons and is perhaps why the home team has come out on top each time.

Wilson, a former Wisconsin Badger, will understand just how cold it can get in Green Bay. But two of his road games at Lambeau were in September. The only time he played the Packers on the road as late as December was back in 2016, when the Packers dominated the Seahawks with a 38-10 victory.

We all know about Seattle’s home-field advantage, but it’s worth noting the Seahawks actually went just 4-4 at home in 2019 while winning seven of their eight road games in the regular season. They made that eight from nine with victory at Philadelphia in the wild-card round.

Home-field advantage will be important, but the Seahawks know how to win on the road. They’ve been doing it all season.

The Packers faced a similar situation back in 2014, the last time they had a first-round bye. After going a perfect 8-0 at home in the regular season, Green Bay hosted Dallas, a team that had gone 8-0 on the road. The Packers won that game after Dez Bryant dropped a catch on fourth down. Yes, he dropped it.

History doesn’t always repeat itself and we can’t look too much into the statistics. However, Matt LaFleur’s Packers have been dominant at home, and that could bode well against the Seahawks this week.