We know that, in general, home teams are favorites in the postseason. But home teams are almost always the favorites in the division round, because those teams are coming off of a bye. In the wild card round, it’s not unusual to see road teams favored: that didn’t happen this year, but it’s easy to see why bad division winner can be an underdog against the best wild card team. It’s happened 20 times since 1990, and in 2015, three of the four home teams were underdogs in the wild card round, and the fourth was a one-point favorite. And all four home teams lost.

The conference championship game features, in theory, the two best teams in the conference; it’s not hard to understand that sometimes, the best team isn’t the #1 seed, and they can wind up being road favorites. It’s happened eight times since 1990, mostly recently two seasons ago. The Broncos were home underdogs to the Patriots in the 2015 AFCCG and won; New England was the better team on paper but lost a H2H tiebreaker for the 1 seed. The Falcons were home dogs in the 2012 AFCCG to the 49ers and lost; San Francisco was 4 points better in the SRS than Atlanta that year, but the Falcons won the 1 seed because they had a much easier schedule than the 49ers and outperformed their Pythagorean win total. The Packers might have been the best team in the NFC in 2010, but lost the NFC North by one game to the Bears; Green Bay won the Super Bowl and was a road favorite in the 2010 NFCCG in Chicago. In short, it happens.

But what rarely happens is seeing a top two seed coming off of a bye be a home dog. In fact, since the NFL expanded to 6 playoff teams per conference in 1990 and instituted byes for the top two seeds, it’s happened just three other times.

• In 2013, the best two teams in the NFC were both in the NFC West. Seattle went 13-3 and snagged the #1 seed, while the 49ers went 12-4 and were the 5 seed. The 49ers beat the Packers in the Wild Card round, and traveled to Carolina for the division round. San Francisco was the better team and the defending NFC Champions; Carolina had a bye, but this was the first playoff berth for the Newton/Rivera Panthers. San Francisco was a one-point favorite, and won 23-10.

• Two years earlier, the 49ers were the upstart playoff team. From 2003 to 2010, San Francisco didn’t post a winning record in a single season. In 2011, the 49ers shockingly went 13-3 and beat the Saints out for the #2 seed (the Packers went 15-1) on a conference record tiebreaker. New Orleans was just two years removed from the Super Bowl, and had scored 42, 45, 45, and 45 points in their previous four games before heading to San Francisco for the Division Round match-up. The Saints were the 3 seed and were 3.5 point road favorites in what turned out to be one of the best games in modern postseason history. The teams scored four touchdowns in the final 4:02, with each one a lead-changer. San Francisco ultimately won on a play immediately dubbed The Catch III, by the score of 36-32.

• If you are sensing a theme, you’re right. Young upstarts with great regular season records facing established Super Bowl teams are ripe to be home underdogs. Nowhere was this more clear than in 1996, when the Dallas Cowboys — winners of 3 of the last 4 Super Bowls — were 3.5-point road favorites in Carolina. The Panthers were in their second season of existence, which meant those Cowboys had more rings than those Panthers had years. Carolina had gone 12-4 in the regular season, but Dallas went 10-5 before sitting stars in the final game. The Cowboys won their Wild Card game 40-15 over Minnesota, leading to a sense that the Cowboys were back. They were not: the Panthers defeated them, 27-16.

Prior to 1990, there was just one other instance where a team coming off a bye was a home dog to a team not coming off of a bye.  That was in 1979, when the Eagles were road favorites in Tampa Bay.  The backstory there: The Eagles went 11-5 but lost a tiebreaker to Dallas; the two teams had the best records in the NFC. So the Cowboys picked up the #1 seed and the Eagles landed the #4 seed (there were three divisions at the time).

The next best records in the conference belonged to the 10-6 Bucs (#2 seed), 10-6 Bears (runner-up in the NFC North and #5 seed), 10-6 Redskins (missed playoffs), and 9-7 Rams (#3 seed and NFC West winner). Back then, all three division winners had byes, and the two wild card teams faced each other. Philadelphia beat Chicago, at home, 27-17, and then traveled to Tampa Bay for the second round of the playoffs. Why not Dallas? At the time, the NFL had a rule preventing two teams from the same division facing off in the division round, so the Eagles, as the remaining wild card team, faced the next highest seed, the #2 Bucs.

Philadelphia was a 4.5-point favorite to a Bucs team that had scored a total of 10 points in its last three games. But Tampa Bay won, 24-17, with Ricky Bell carrying the Bucs to an upset victory.

And now, this weekend, we will have just the fifth instance. That’s because the 13-3 Eagles, owners of the #1 seed in the NFC, are currently 3-point home underdogs to the 10-6 Falcons. Some of the same factors at play in Carolina/San Francisco, San Francisco/New Orleans, and Carolina/Dallas are at play here, too. The Falcons are defending NFC Champions and are the more established playoff team. Philadelphia hasn’t made the playoffs sine 2013. But those other games featured a 2 vs. a 5 seed that had the same record (2013), a 2 and a 3 seed that had the same record (2011), and another 2 vs. 3 seed (1996).

This game features a 1 and a 6 seed that, entering week 17, were separated by four wins (Philadelphia was 13-2, Atlanta was 9-6). The elephant in the room, of course: Carson Wentz is no longer the Eagles quarterback, and he’s being replaced by Nick Foles. There’s no question that the Eagles would be favored, likely by 5-8 points, if Wentz never was injured.

But instead, the Foles injury has swung the line by about 10 points. That feels like a lot, particularly when 3 of the 4 home underdogs in the division round still won. On the other hand, there’s no doubt where the momentum is right now: Atlanta has won by double digits against playoff teams (Carolina, Los Angeles) the last two weeks, while the Eagles while Foles in his last two games had 51 dropbacks and picked up just 177 yards, with one touchdown and two interceptions.