NFL conference championships glance

Falcons vs. Packers: At Atlanta, the NFC championship is quite a mismatch.
Not on the field, mind you.
The Atlanta Falcons are playing as well as they have all season. Ditto for the Green Bay Packers.
It should be quite a shootout when they meet Sunday in the Georgia Dome's final game, with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line.
But when it comes to the tradition and history of the two franchises, the Packers have a decided edge.
It's a landslide, really.
Lambeau Field. Cheeseheads. Thirteen NFL championships. Four Super Bowl titles. The snow and the tundra. The green and the gold.
The Falcons?
Hmmm ... give us a minute.
In 51 seasons, they have played in only one Super Bowl and never won a championship. For much of their existence, the Falcons were burdened with cartoonish ownership, laughable draft picks and horrific personnel moves such as trading away a strong-armed young quarterback in the early 1990s.
Brett Favre went on to have a pretty good career with the Packers.
Favre's successor understands the significance of playing with such a storied team.
"It's like no other place in our sport," said Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who has guided the Packers to eight straight wins. "As a football historian and someone who's loved the game since a young age, you realize how special it is to be part of this team, but also know that this team has been around since 1919, and it's going to be around long after you're done."
The Falcons don't have that sort of legacy to fall back on.
But they do have the highest-scoring team in the league, led by MVP candidate Matt Ryan, and a home-field edge that really paid off last week.
The Georgia Dome, which will be torn down after this season and replaced by $1.5 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium, was as loud as anyone could remember for a divisional-round victory over the Seattle Seahawks. Green Bay's dramatic upset of the top-seeded Dallas Cowboys ensured one more game would be played at the 70,000-seat stadium with the big top-like roof.
These Falcons are only looking forward. They don't care what happened before.

Patriots vs. Steelers: At Foxborough, Mass., there are few things that Bill Belichick respects more than history in the NFL.
And few teams elicit as much praise from the Patriots coach as the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Part of it is the reverence that Belichick holds for the way Steelers founder Art Rooney and his family has operated a franchise that's remained among the league's best, winning multiple Super Bowl titles more than 30 years apart. It is a model emulated when Robert Kraft bought the Patriots in 1994 and six years later hired Belichick, who has nurtured a "Patriots Way" that has helped bring four Lombardi trophies to New England.
Those histories will collide when two of the most successful programs of the 2000s meet in Sunday's AFC championship game.
"They've been tough to deal with going all the way back to coach (Chuck) Noll in the '70s," Belichick said. "They were pretty consistently tough to deal with through that entire period of time, which has been all of my years in the league."
Either New England or Pittsburgh has been a part of nine of the 17 Super Bowls since 2000, winning six championships between them.
"They have a lot of wins over there," Patriots receiver Julian Edelman said. "It's nothing but respect for the Steelers. I went to school in Steelers Country over in Kent State. Half the school was in a Steelers jersey. I've known about that whole faithful for a while now."
But for all their individual successes, the teams have met only four times in the playoffs. The Patriots have won three of those matchups, including the last two in the AFC title games in 2005 and 2002 at Heinz Field. Both times New England went on the win the Super Bowl.
Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has been a part of both of the Steelers' recent championships, but the 34-year-old's only playoff meeting with the Patriots was the 2005 loss when he was a rookie.
He has spoken often about his respect for the Patriots and Tom Brady, which included him requesting a jersey from Brady prior to Pittsburgh's loss to New England back in October. Big Ben missed that game because of knee surgery. This is the latest opportunity to play in "the lion's den," he said.
"They are the best in the world," Roethlisberger said. "They are the gold standard, if you will.