Home is No Cakewalk: Playoffs in Foxborough Haven’t Been Automatic for Pats
With the Bengals’ Week 16 win over the Denver Broncos, Sunday’s Patriots game against the Buffalo Bills was rendered all but meaningless, as the Pats had already wrapped up the AFC’s No. 1 seed and home field throughout the playoffs.
But after Tom Brady began his NFL playoff career with a 10-0 record, playing at Gillette in January hasn’t always been as automatic as it used to be. Since Brady returned from a torn ACL in 2009, the Patriots have seen postseason struggles as often as success when taking the field in Foxborough, going just 4-3 over the past seven home playoff games.
Ray Rice and the Ravens ran all over the Patriots in their 2009 AFC Wild Card matchup.
The problems began in 2009, when the 10-6 Patriots limped into the playoffs as the No. 3 seed, having just lost top receiver Wes Welker to a torn ACL in the final game of the regular season. Their matchup with the No. 6 seed Baltimore Ravens saw the Pats get in a hole early, as Baltimore’s Ray Rice ran for an 83-yard touchdown on the first offensive play of the game, while the Ravens rolled to 24 unanswered points to a commanding lead after the first quarter. Only a six-yard Julian Edelman touchdown saved the Patriots from being shut out through the first half.
Baltimore kept up the heat over the final 30 minutes, as the Ravens outscored the Pats, 9-7, over the third and fourth quarters en route to a 33-14 victory, an embarrassing return to the playoffs for Brady and the Pats, who had missed the postseason in 2008 for the first time since 2002.
The 2010 playoffs came with much more promise, as the Patriots dominated the league through the record season and finished 14-2 with the No. 1 seed in the AFC and home-field throughout the playoffs. Their first matchup of the postseason – a divisional round showdown with the New York Jets – looked like it was drawn up exactly the Pats’ way, as the No. 6 seed Jets had come into Foxborough just six weeks earlier on Monday Night Football and were run out of the building in a 45-3 blowout win for the Patriots.
Just a month after being humiliated 45-3, Rex Ryan and the Jets had the last laugh on the Pats in 2010.
But it was the Jets who had the last laugh in this contest, as Rex Ryan and the Jets built up a 14-3 lead over the Patriots by halftime and held on for a huge 28-21 upset that was only that close due to a garbage time touchdown from Brady to Deion Branch. After not having gone one-and-done in his first six trips to the playoffs, Tom Brady had now lost the playoff opener at home in back-to-back seasons.
The Pats grabbed the No. 1 seed again in 2011 after going 13-3 in the regular season and began their playoff quest with a 45-10 throttling of Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos, winning a playoff game for the first time since the 2007 AFC title game. The Patriots were then on a collision course with the No. 2 seed Ravens, with a berth in Super Bowl XLVI on the line.
A back-and-forth battle all game, the 2011 AFC championship came down to the wire, as Joe Flacco outplayed Brady – who failed to throw a touchdown pass for the first time since the 2001 AFC title game – and the Ravens drove from their own 21 with under 2:00 to play and held the ball in the Patriots’ red zone in the final 30 seconds. What looked like the game-winning touchdown catch by Lee Evans was stripped away at the last second by Sterling Moore, and all that prevented this game from going to overtime was a shanked 32-yard field goal try by Billy Cundiff. Not one of the Patriots’ better playoff games, despite its historical inclusion in the win column.
The Ravens got revenge on the Patriots in 2012 for their AFC title game loss the year before.
Then comes the 2012 AFC title game, which the No. 2 seed Patriots reached after taking down the Houston Texans in the divisional round. An AFC championship game rematch with the Ravens, the Patriots got off to a better start than in their previous two playoff meeting, leading the Ravens 13-7 at halftime. The second half was completely dominated by the Ravens, as Baltimore tallied 21 unanswered points, while the Patriots inexplicably could not manage to put any points on the board and saw every drive stalled by failed execution.
The Patriots have a chance to erase some of that history this year, as they won’t have to play a true road game for the rest of the season. Since starting 2-2, the Pats have gone 10-2 and set themselves up for a long playoff run. Whether they can take advantage of the position they have earned, however, remains to be seen.
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