Chilling Packer Playoff Edge

The freezing weather that consumes Green Bay each winter gives the Packers a playoff advantage so obvious and unfair that it should be changed someday -- no later than next year if not next month.

The Packers almost never lose at home when the temperature slides under the freezing point.

The problem isn’t the bitter cold as such. If it’s a 17-degree afternoon, it’s 17 on both sides of the ball.

The problem is that, year in and out, the Packers have experienced more arctic-weather games than any opponent. And experience teaches. That’s what the Packers have demonstrated and what teams from Florida have discovered on northern visits to places that aren’t even as cold as Green Bay.

Wintertime Edge

The suffocating heat of Florida occasionally gives the Miami Dolphins an advantage at home too, but that’s only in regular-season games. The Packers’ wintertime edge in the playoffs is so troubling -- as evidenced by their winter record -- that it should be removed by moving their playoff games to, say, Arizona, or even Chicago.

It’s cold in Chicago too, but not so impossibly cold as Green Bay.

Those who live in Green Bay would be inconvenienced, true, by trips to Arizona or Illinois. But every game’s on TV.

And Packer backers might also reflect on one other truth: As an NFL town, Green Bay exists only by reason of the magnanimity of the 31 other NFL franchises, which have agreed to pool their revenues and share many millions of dollars.

That couldn’t happen in baseball, in which the New York Yankees, for instance, keep most of their millions and thus win most of the time. For the privilege of NFL membership, Green Bay might consider giving the other NFL members a fairer shot in the playoffs.

Three-Team Race

As a refugee from the Midwest, where I spent 21 winters, I can testify that you never get used to winter weather, as the Packers always say. But with experience, you do learn the nuances of navigating the icy blasts of December and January.

You learn what can’t be easily done, and what you can do more easily -- which helps either on the ice, if, for example, you’re a speedskater, or on a football field.

Most significant, cold-weather successes automatically boost cold-weather tolerance and confidence.

Thus, three days before Christmas, the Packers will have the advantage in today’s game over even the Buffalo Bills. It’s cold in Buffalo too, but the Bills who have never played in Green Bay will be shocked by the way it is there.

In the history of winter football in the Midwest, no other town has ever had to call one of its games the Ice Bowl.

Three teams remain in the drive for home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs: Philadelphia and Tampa Bay as well as Green Bay.

And it’s a given that there is a home-field advantage almost anywhere.

But in December or January, the weather can make the biggest difference, as it did last Sunday in San Francisco, where cold rain and a cold wind gave a Wisconsin-like edge to the Packers. They felt right at home. The fair-weather 49ers plainly never did. At the key position, Brett Favre was obviously more comfortable in the unfriendly elements than 49er quarterback Jeff Garcia.

Final score: Green Bay 20, San Francisco 14.

Another Dusty?

Something else is amiss this year on the 49er team. It’s hard to put a finger on what that is, but it’s clear enough that the talent level in San Francisco is as high as, for instance, Green Bay’s. The 49ers employ one of the league’s best players, Terrell Owens, and another good receiver, Tai Streets, plus a passer who can get them the ball, Garcia.

What’s more, their one-two punch at running back with Garrison Hearst and Kevan Barlow is the envy of most opponents, and their offensive linemen seem comparable with most, as do their defensive players.

If the problem is on the 49er coaching staff, it is seated, most likely, in the play-calling as directed by Coach Steve Mariucci, who seems to get more conservative by the year. On a club with pass-first personnel, San Francisco’s running backs carry the ball too often on first-down plays.

Hearst and Barlow would gain more yards more often as counterpunchers if Garcia and Owens initially established first-down passing. Interestingly enough, following the lead of the San Francisco Giants -- who wouldn’t rehire World Series Manager Dusty Baker last season -- the 49ers are dragging their feet this winter on a new contract for Mariucci.

They either know something or there may be something in the air there.

Has Bulger Healed?

The main questions facing the St. Louis Rams, after their slim win over faltering Arizona Sunday, 30-28, are whether quarterback Marc Bulger is sound and whether he will do any more damage to his bad hand in today’s appearance at Seattle.

It was hard to tell in the Arizona game whether Bulger’s injured finger was well enough for him to be playing. The wound is on the index finger, the most important digit a passer has for the science of correctly directing a football. And next season, in order to make another Super Bowl run, the Rams are going to need, first of all, a completely healed index finger on Bulger’s passing hand.

If the bothersome ligament is re-injured, it could permanently affect him.

Two Passers Hurting

Recent games also have provoked some doubts about Ram physical-fitness supervision in general. At 6 feet 3 and 215 pounds, Bulger doesn’t appear to have the upper-body strength an NFL quarterback needs.

That’s a problem easily fixed by physical-training experts.

From this distance, it seems clear that both Ram quarterbacks, Bulger and Kurt Warner, need some expert physical-training advice.

It isn’t true that Warner’s lack of mobility in the pocket is inbred and changeless. Of the two kinds of strength that physical experts talk about -- overall strength and explosive strength -- it’s the latter that Warner must have, to get quicker into the pocket as well faster out of the pocket on scrambles. And the experts can improve any man’s explosive strength.

Wrong Advice

By heeding the advice of talk-radio and national-TV talkers, the Rams have, temporarily at least, reduced the efficiency of running back Marshall Faulk. In no sense is Faulk a first-down runner against an eight-man front. The talkers have all been wrong about that.

They have all mistakenly attributed last winter’s Ram defeat in the Super Bowl to Coach Mike Martz’s failure to run Faulk. And, getting louder and louder, they’ve kept urging Martz to run him more often this year.

The result is that the Ram offense has not only slowed down but has also basically lost Faulk to his injuries.

A year hence, the Rams can only regain Super Bowl form with the strategy Martz used to reach two of the last three NFL championship games. This year, his critics seem to have forced Martz away from that strategy, which has two principal parts:

* Send the passer out to throw the ball on nearly every down.

* Use Faulk as a once-in-a-while counterpuncher, varying the Ram passing game with the draw plays and the other occasional plays that have made Faulk a terror in St. Louis after an ordinary career in Indianapolis.

Five Guesses

New England to beat the New York Jets by a touchdown on the Patriots’ new field at Foxboro. There is some danger that the Patriots are looking past the Jets to the really big one next week, Miami. But Bill Belichick is a coach who rarely lets such a thing happen.

Oakland to win by a point or two over Denver on the Raiders’ field. But it’s never a surprise when the Broncos take out the Raiders.

Green Bay by a touchdown over Buffalo in a classic Lambeau Field confrontation of cold-weather teams, only one of which, Buffalo, ever loses on winter days (sometimes).

Kansas City over San Diego by a field goal at Arrowhead Stadium. This is LaDainian Tomlinson’s last chance this year to prove he’s more running back than Priest Holmes, whose hip injury is expected to keep him sidelined.

Tennessee by plenty over Jacksonville at the Nashville Coliseum.

It’s in the early stages, but this AFC rivalry could someday be the biggest in the South.