The NFL’s Divisional Round headline matchup has Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints hosting Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their third meeting of the season, and there’s already a popular narrative making the rounds: that it’s tough to beat the same team three times in a single year.
But it’s a fake narrative. Made up. False. If the Saints lose to the Buccaneers, it won’t be because of any sort of payback after two previous wins.
Thanks to research from Chase Stuart for Football Perspective, we can look back on NFL history and see that 17 teams have been in the Saints’ position before, hosting a playoff game against an opponent they defeated twice in the regular season. And the home team went 12-5 in those meetings — that’s a winning percentage of .706.
So let’s reiterate that point: if the Saints lose to Tampa Bay, it’s because the Buccaneers play a better game, not because they’re more motivated or whatever. The better team is going to come out on top, and that doesn’t consider how many times they met previously.
As Stuart pointed out in his writeup, New Orleans isn’t guaranteed a win just because they’ve won twice already — each team’s point differential (Saints +145, Buccaneers +137) suggests they’re strong on both sides of the ball. Take a moment to throw out the past results and really focus on how these two opponents match up with each other now.
But with all of that said: the Saints themselves were the most recent team to pull off the three-game sweep back in 2017. They won both regular season games with the Carolina Panthers before facing them again in the Wild-Card Round, which they won. Maybe they can do it again this time and advance to another NFC Championship Game.
