Could COVID Silence Packers’ Home-Field Dominance?

Even last year, when home-field advantage meant almost nothing across the league, Green Bay dominated at Lambeau Field.

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Preston Smith has a glass-half-full viewpoint on playing games in empty or mostly empty NFL stadiums.

“It’s going to be kind of different getting used to not playing with our fans, but my first four years in the league there wasn’t that many fans in the stadium anyway, so it might be kind of normal now again,” Smith, one of the Green Bay Packers’ star outside linebackers, said on Friday while thinking back to his first four seasons with Washington.

The Packers this week announced that at least their first two games of the season would be played with no fans in the seats. At most, team President/CEO Mark Murphy has said, the team will take small steps toward putting 10,000 or 12,000 fans in Lambeau Field. That will be a reality for all of the league’s 32 teams.

For the Packers, home field has been a big, big deal. Over the last decade, they boast a .773 winning percentage at Lambeau Field, the second-best in the league. Last season, while the entire league went just 132-123-1 on their home turf – a .518 winning percentage – Green Bay went a league-best 7-1 at Lambeau.

“Every home game is going to be different just because it was definitely an advantage for our defense and the D-train when we was getting going and the fans were behind us and the crowd was behind us to where offense couldn’t hear what was going on because we could barely hear what was going on,” Smith said.

Statistically speaking, the Packers’ defense was about the same at home as away. They allowed a ninth-ranked 19.5 points per game at home compared to a ninth-ranked 19.6 points per game allowed overall. Home field should be most noticeable on third down. Oddly, though, Green Bay was much better on the road (33.0 percent) than at home (39.4 percent).

“Not having the fans here, just on third downs and on pass rush downs, I think offenses are going to have the advantage of being able to hold their cadences and all that kind of stuff. It’s going to be like we’re playing at an away game every game,” defensive tackle Kenny Clark said.

Where the difference was most evident was on offense. The Packers ranked sixth with 25.6 points per game at home compared to a 20th-ranked 21.4 points per game on the road. For his career, Aaron Rodgers’ passer rating is 107.3 at home vs. 97.8 on the road.

“It’ll be strange to play in some of these venues that over the years have been really, really loud,” Rodgers said. “You’re talking about the advantage that Seattle has with their crowd, New Orleans, Minnesota, Atlanta, Indy, some of these domes that are really, really tough places to play; Kansas City with their incredible outdoor crowd. It’s really going to be interesting to see how that affects those road teams going into those environments. Us, as well, starting the season in Minnesota. How it affects the communication, if they’re allowed to pump in noise or music, who knows? That’s one of those variables that will be interesting. I can say personally it will be very, very strange and sad to not see a full Lambeau every Sunday at home. That’s going to be a little bit weird.”