Remember the days when Lambeau Field was considered a tough place to play?
People may have said that as recently as last season, but whatever home field advantage the Green Bay Packers had established is now gone. When they face the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday night, home field advantage will literally mean nothing.
It will mean nothing for a number of reasons.
The Packers are 5-2 at home this season. On the surface, that looks decent, until you consider they were undefeated at home last season. Those two losses were to divisional foes — the Bears and the Lions.
No one is trying to sell those two teams as good football teams.
The Vikings now have a chance to complete a division sweep at Lambeau Field for the first time in NFC North history. That being all three division teams beating the Packers in Lambeau Field in one season.
That possibility alone makes us throw up in our mouths a little bit.
Meanwhile, the Vikings are 4-3 on the road, where they’ve won four of their last five. That road loss in there was at Arizona, where the Vikings lost by just three. If not for a late strip sack by Dwight Freeney, the Vikings may have won that game and, at the very least, probably would have sent it to overtime.
You’ll recall the Packers went down to the same place last week and lost by 30 fucking points.
There was a time when you could make an argument that the weather would make a difference in this match-up. After all, the Vikings have always insisted upon playing their brand of shoddy, inferior football indoors like a bunch of pansies.
That doesn’t even matter anymore, since they’ve been playing outdoors at the University of Minnesota’s TCF Bank Stadium for the past two season.
Times have changed.
We’ll just have to hope the king of the NFC North hasn’t just yet.