PHILADELPHIA — Inside the practice bubble at the NovaCare Complex, taking up the entire wall behind one of the end zones, is a wide-angle photograph from what was, in all likelihood, the game that featured the loudest moment at Lincoln Financial Field.
The photo is from the 2018 NFC championship game, and it spans to show the Eagles and Vikings on the field and most of the crowd in the stands. With 6 minutes, 38 seconds left in the first quarter that night, with the Eagles down seven points, Patrick Robinson intercepted a pass by Case Keenum. As Robinson wound and weaved his way to a 50-yard touchdown return, the sound swelled and crashed like thunder, and Fox’s cameras cut to a quick but telling shot of a stadium full of fans jumping in place and screaming like Rocky Balboa atop a mountain in Russia.
“It was just electric,” defensive tackle Fletcher Cox said. “I’ve been telling a lot of the guys, ‘If you think the stadium was loud last week, just wait until Sunday.’ We’ve got to keep the crowd in it the entire game because we’re going to need it.”
Sunday, of course, is the NFC championship game: Eagles-49ers, two teams that appear so evenly matched that any marginal advantage, including the fact that the Eagles will be at home, could influence or even determine the outcome. So yes, the Eagles do need their fans at the Linc to be at their frothiest. But beyond the result of this particular game, those fans also have a chance to demonstrate the stupidity of a potential change to the NFL’s postseason that apparently is gaining traction: moving the conference championship games to neutral sites.
Had the Buffalo Bills beaten the Cincinnati Bengals last Sunday, the AFC championship game, against the Kansas City Chiefs, would not be at Arrowhead Stadium. It would have been held at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
That was the NFL’s solution to sort out the unresolved nature of the AFC standings once the Bills-Bengals game on Jan. 2 was suspended after Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest and collapsed on the field. And that solution gave the league an opportunity to test-drive an idea that, according to Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer, its owners have been bandying about for a while.
No wonder: By going to neutral sites for the conference championships, the NFL could sell naming rights to the games, bill each one as a Diet Super Bowl, and take full control of the revenue from ticket and suite sales.
“I think it’s inevitable that the owners will start talking seriously about it,” Breer wrote, “and probably sooner than later.”
This idea should be killed with fire. It is so soulless, so greedy, and so elitist that only NFL owners could have come up with it.
— It distances the sport from the everyday person, the person who lives and dies with his or her team, who saves up all year for season tickets, who passes those tickets down like a family heirloom. Fight traffic to tailgate in a South Philly or North Jersey parking lot? Absolutely. Drop a few thousand extra dollars on flights and hotel rooms to watch the Eagles play the Giants in Indianapolis? Forget it.
— It disregards the uniqueness of each venue in the league: A Saints game in the Superdome is different from a Seahawks game at Lumen Field, which is different from a Bills game at Highmark Stadium, which is different from an Eagles game at the Linc. That diversity gives the sport character, and character is attractive. Character is compelling: the character of a city, the character of a setting’s weather and style, the character of a team and its fans.
If we learned anything from watching pro sports during the pandemic, from empty NFL stadiums and MLB ballparks to basketball and hockey bubbles, we learned that games played in sterile silence aren’t nearly as interesting. Whether the Eagles win or lose Sunday, the game will be better for being at an outdoor stadium in Philadelphia: chilly, charged, the crowd swinging back and forth from ecstasy to agita.
“I actually liked when they had the Super Bowl up in New York and it was snowing and everybody’s all pissed off,” Eagles center Jason Kelce said. “I was like, ‘This is what it’s about, man.’ The elements play a difference. Every game shouldn’t be 70, 80 degrees and sunny. In football, it’s not a series. It’s more about what team is better on that day.”
— It mutes the drama that builds whenever a visiting team enters one of those venues, amid those adverse conditions, and wins. Around here, no one likes to remember the 2002-03 NFC title game, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ 27-10 victory over the Eagles in the finale at Veterans Stadium. But guess what? That game was an upset, a surprise, a great story (unless you’re an Eagles fan) about a franchise overcoming the odds and its own lousy history. That story wouldn’t have been nearly as memorable had the teams played in a dome.
— It devalues the regular season, more than the recent addition of a 17th game already has, and each team’s pursuit of the No. 1 seed in its conference.
“They’ve already added another playoff game,” Kelce said. “They’ve already added another regular-season game. That’s one of the really cool things about football. The regular season is very important. You only get so many opportunities. You don’t get 82 games or 162. That’s a lot.
“I’m not in favor of it, but I’m not in favor of a lot of things. At this point, being an older player, I just resist change in general because it affects me more in my game. I don’t like doing that at this point.”
From one old guy to another: Preach, brother.
