Phil, Charlie, and Andy have offered their NFL playoff predictions. The Green Bay Packers, America’s real team, are playing the Dallas Cowboys in Dallas. Phil and Andy, demonstrating extremely rare lapses in sound judgment, picked the Cowboys. Charlie, as always a believer in America at her best, picked the Packers.
Conventional wisdom is that cold weather benefits the Packers because they’re used to playing outside in Green Bay in the winter. The most famous example is probably the 1967 NFL championship game known as the “Ice Bowl,” when the Packers defeated the Cowboys at Lambeau Field in subzero temperatures.
An analysis from JR Radcliffe and Eric Litke for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2021 found that the Packers are 90-49-3 in games since 1970 when the kickoff temperature was below freezing. It’s tricky to say just how much of an advantage that really is because it’s hard to adjust for the quality of opponents (i.e., did they win because they played better in the cold, or would they have won regardless?). And it’s only slightly better than typical NFL home-field advantage.
The game this weekend will be in Dallas and indoors, so the weather won’t be a factor. But maybe that will help the Packers. They didn’t make the playoffs in 2022, but in 2021 and 2020 they were eliminated by losing below-freezing games at Lambeau Field to lower-seeded teams.
The Packers were the No. 1 seed in the NFC in both 2020 and 2021, which gave them a first-round bye and guaranteed them home-field advantage until the Super Bowl. In the 2020 season, they lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Lambeau with a kickoff temperature of 29 degrees. In the 2021 season, they lost to the San Francisco 49ers at Lambeau with a kickoff temperature of 14 degrees and snow covering the field by the end of the game.
In both cases the Packers were playing “warm weather” teams from places where it’s sunny year-round, and they lost at home in the cold as the higher seed. If they defeat Dallas this weekend, they’ll play the 49ers in San Francisco in the next round. Maybe being the underdog and playing in warmer weather will help this year.