The Team shows signs of losing that Home Field 'Gillette Mystique' Advantage..... - New England Patriots Forums

PATRIOT64 · 11-08-2006, 11:30 PM

No longer do you see visiting teams fearing coming into Gillette,That is evidenced by the 4 games we have played at home thus far..The first game we were lucky to get out alive by beating Buffalo with a safety...The second game at home against Miami we won by 10 but the game was much closer than the score,Harrington looked like Dan Marino for much of the game and Wes Welker was having Hobbs for breakfast till the rest of the defense saved the day with some crucial solid play to save victory....The last 2 games were simply putrid and we were overmatched and the scores could have been more lopsided than they actually were.

It looks as if we will once again have a winning home record since the teams we play for the rest of the season are creampuffs (except Chicago)

That brings up the question would you rather the team be in the playoffs at home against Denver,Indianapolis,San Diego or Baltimore or on the road where we dominated Minnesota,Buffalo,Cincinnati and the Jets-I know those teams are not that good but in truth they are all NFL teams and were at thier house where no matter how lousy a team is as the 4 teams we beat,ALL NFL teams are still tougher to beat in THEIR stadium (unless you are the Patriots who look to thrive when away this year)- Those games were all wins and we won by no less than 7 points...So it appears this team seems unprepared more so at home than on the road or simply just do not play as well..Sounds crazy but look at the games..Look at the scores...If this keeps up I say it might be an advantage for us is to be away in the AFC playoffs (of course that only matters if we win after the first divisional game which WILL be at home) - I don't care about what the cold weather or whatever it is when winter arrives NFL teams get ready for all weather related elements,thats what they get paid for.

This years version of the Patriots can be titled as 'Road Warriors' and agree or not I say we can still win even with losing the top seed home field advantage which appears to me to be an apparent irrelevant thing with the 2006 Patriots,we can win anywhere,but even better chances to on the road thus far where we remain undefeated.

MrClutch · 11-09-2006, 12:33 AM

Haven't lost in the playoffs at home yet, so I would rather have it at home.

tombonneau · 11-09-2006, 01:02 AM

Shows signs??????

I'd say that any alleged mystique has been gone since halfway through last season. Gillette no longer offers an elite home field advantage; in fact, quite the opposite, I'd say its probably one of the less feared venues for opponents to play in (obv. not taking into the Pats as a team into account, merely the stadium).

PATRIOT64 · 11-09-2006, 01:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tombonneau

Shows signs??????

I'd say that any alleged mystique has been gone since halfway through last season. Gillette no longer offers an elite home field advantage; in fact, quite the opposite, I'd say its probably one of the less feared venues for opponents to play in (obv. not taking into the Pats as a team into account, merely the stadium).

Well,Technically the Patriots have the best record in the NFL at home over the past several years and have only lost a handful of games since Gillette was built,I think the team has won about 75% of the games played here,but I think the way it looks now in a few years that home winning percentage will be coming down quite a bit,thats just the way it goes for dynasties...Ask San Francisco who in the 80s were near impossible to beat at home,Now they are a joke no matter where they play - As long as we don't have to go back to those times in the late 80s and early 90s when we were pretty bad at home AND away,I hope never to see that again till at least I get very old and then again,I probably won't give a damn at an old age

anyways.

TomBrady'sGoat · 11-09-2006, 07:53 AM

wtf are you talking about?

i understand you're annoyed that the Patriots have lost two games at home, and you wish the Patriots had one of those completely-overrated-yet-grown-men-wet-their-pants-thinking-about-it "homefield advantages" where the crowd is really loud and everyone is dressed up as either a dog, a pig, a trash can, or an extra from Mad Max.

(Yes, it is horribly overrated. If a great crowd had anything to do with success Cleveland wouldn't suck every year. Teams with great home records tend to have great road records too because they're great teams. Overall home team W-L isn't much better than road teams and that difference can more accurately be contributed to familiarity with the home surface/conditions/weather and players being able to sleep in their own bed).

Gillette has never been that place. The reason the Patriots didn't lose games at home a few years ago was that they were easily the best team in the league.

***MoLewisrocks*** · 11-09-2006, 09:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PATRIOT64

...So it appears this team seems unprepared more so at home than on the road or simply just do not play as well..Sounds crazy but look at the games..Look at the scores....

Try looking at the opposition. The teams currently ranked #1 and #2 in the league comprise our only 2 losses. And that has more to do with why we lost to them than where we lost to them. We won't face either of them again until January, and last January both of those teams blew home field advantage mistique in the playoffs which is something this team has yet to do.

When you construct a post like this you might as well flag yourself as a bandwagon fan...because that's the sky-is-falling mentality that perceives every loss as a trend and doesn't appreciate this team unless they are undefeated - which they have never been at this point over the last 5 years.

We're on pace for 14-2 or 13-3 or 12-4 and another division title because nobody left on our schedule is on pace for more than a .500 or less season except Chicago - an NFC team who lost to 2-6 Miami at home last week and all but lost to 1-7 Arizona a month ago, and Jacksonville - a wildcard again at best in the throws of a QB controversy.

Homefield mistique doesn't win championships. If it did Indy or Denver would have been in Detroit last February. It's not about where you play but how you play in January that counts.