Before their victory in Jacksonville last Sunday the Buffalo Bills had not won a road postseason game since 1992. That was a win over the Miami Dolphins in the AFC Championship Game and two Sundays later the Bills lost to the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl XXVII, 52-17.
The Chicago Bears have not won a playoff game since 2010, a victory over the New Orleans Saints the week before they got beat by the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game.
The Denver Broncos have not won a playoff game since Peyton Manning quarterbacked them to a Super Bowl title to complete the 2015 season. They advanced to their first postseason game since their Super Bowl 50 win last season and were crushed in the Wild Card round in Buffalo, 31-7.
The San Francisco 49ers had a chance to grab the top seed in the NFC two weeks ago with a regular season win over the visiting Seattle Seahawks and got shut down offensively in a 13-3 loss. The defeat dropped the 49ers to the sixth seed, which they parlayed into a road win over the Philadelphia Eagles last week to get another shot at the Seahawks this Sunday at Lumen Field.
The history of NFL games is interesting.
Does it point to winners this week?
Will the Bears get a home win, or at least a point spread cover, over a Los Angeles Rams squad that hasn’t covered as a road favorite in the postseason since 1999? Will the Broncos get revenge for last season’s road loss to the Bills at home on Saturday against a Buffalo team that hadn’t won a road postseason game since 1992 before last week?
Will the 49ers win in Seattle, like they did on opening day this season, and get revenge for their end of the regular campaign loss at Levi’s Stadium that is the reason they are playing this game on the road instead of their friendly home confines?
Let’s start with that game. The 49ers won in Seattle and lost at home to the Seahawks this season. The 49ers winning on the road is nothing new. In fact, San Francisco has the longest road winning streak in NFL history with 18 consecutive wins away from their home stadium between 1988 and 1990 while led by quarterback Joe Montana and the best receiver in the game’s history, Jerry Rice.
Even in more recent times, since Kyle Shanahan took over as head coach in 2017, the 49ers road record is nearly as good as their record at home and against the point spread the road mark is better. Over the past nine seasons, San Francisco is 46-34 at home with a point spread record of 37-42-1. On the road, their record straight-up is 45-37 with a point spread mark of 46-35-1.
From those numbers, one might be led to the possibility that the 49ers have a better chance of winning this game, at least against the point spread, in Seattle than they would have had at home.
Yeah, you can make numbers and history tell you anything you want them too. Match the Seahawks home and away records and you get further historical data to support the 49ers on Saturday night. The Seahawks at home are only 9-8 straight up under their current head coach, Mike Macdonald, and a losing 6-11 against the point spread. On the road, like the 49ers, the Seahawks excel. They are 15-2 straight up and 12-4-1 versus the point spread.
And yet, a couple weeks ago, these two teams met and the winner got home field advantage. Is that really an advantage?
Not based on historical data.
Then again, what we are dealing with here is that the games this weekend are not going to be determined by history, but what is present this very week. The 49ers loss of key players to injuries on both sides of the ball may be a much bigger factor for determining who wins on Saturday than what these teams did in the past.
The Broncos success or failure against Buffalo is a lot more contingent on how these two teams matchup up now than how they did last season in Buffalo. And the Rams, who haven’t covered as a road favorite in the playoffs since 1999, may have a much better chance at beating the Bears than that stat would suggest.
When all our data is collected, this weekend we will land on plays that both see history and wager on the present.