What has happened to home-field advantage in the NFL?
The long-accepted perception of the adversity an NFL team faces on the road — hostile crowd, unfamiliar conditions and so on — is somewhat nostalgic these days. In the 2024 regular season, home teams won 53.3% of the time, which basically equates to a 9-8 record over an entire season, a success rate that didn’t even get you into the playoffs last year.
That middling success continued a recent trend: 2024 was the fourth time in six years that NFL home teams won 53% of the time or less. There were just four such seasons in the previous 50 years, covering the entire Super Bowl era. The stadiums are largely the same, the weather is pretty much as hot or as cold as it used to be, and yet the advantage has lessened significantly.
Why is that?
The NFL strives for parity and competitive balance, constantly citing how close the average game is, how many playoff teams each year weren’t in the postseason the year before. So it stands to reason that a constant push for every team having a chance, for shortening the distance between good and bad, would also extend to blurring the old extremes of home and away.
The league will have seven games this season where the “home” team is actually playing on another continent, with international games counting as a home game for one team when both are truly on the road. But that’s just one small part of a leveling of the NFL over 272 games and four months of football each year.
Except in the playoffs
Comparing regular-season home-field advantage to the same in the playoffs can be misleading. In the playoffs, the home team is always the higher-seeded team, and while that doesn’t always equate to the better team, it usually does. As such, the home win rates are much higher: Instead of 53% for the 2024 regular season, last year’s playoffs saw home teams go 10-2, an 83% clip, the highest rate of any season in 50 years.
NFL home teams went 9-3 in the playoffs after the 2022 and 2023 seasons, so that’s three straight seasons winning at least 75%, after just three such seasons in the previous 15 years. There have been chaotic years when home teams have a losing record in the playoffs — 2005 and 2010 — but for the most part, the better team being at home keeps the home win rate high in the playoffs.
Home identities can change fast
You’d think a team’s home-field identity would be somewhat consistent from year to year, but sometimes that’s not the case at all.
Consider the Dallas Cowboys and famed AT&T Stadium in the past two years. In 2023, the Cowboys went 8-0 at home, outscoring opponents by 172 points, the best scoring differential in the NFL and in franchise history. In 2024? With Dak Prescott missing half the season due to a hamstring injury, the Cowboys went 2-7 at home and were outscored by 120 points, the worst in the NFL and worst in the Super Bowl era for Dallas. Strangely enough, the Cowboys still somehow outscored their opponents on the road last season.
Commanders coach Dan Quinn, formerly Dallas’ defensive coordinator, handed the Cowboys their seventh loss in nine home games last season. Washington beat Dallas 23-19 in the regular-season finale. (Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)
The only home season worse than the 2024 Cowboys in the past 15 years was by the 2023 Commanders, who went 1-7 at home and were outscored by a league-worst 144 points. That’s 19 points per game. And in 2024, with rookie Jayden Daniels leading a resurgence, Washington outscored opponents by 83 points at home, going 7-2 in games there.
Which teams have the biggest home/road splits?
We’ll use the last four years as a sample size, and ask a question: Which NFL teams do you think have the biggest difference between their home record and their road record? The answers might surprise you.
Two NFL teams have 11 more wins at home than on the road since the start of 2021. One is the Miami Dolphins, who are 24-10 at home and 13-21 on the road, not surprising for a team that plays in much warmer weather than the rest of its division. Some would say that Mike McDaniel’s offense works better at home, but the scoring split there is modest — eighth at home, 17th on the road — compared to Miami’s defense, which ranks seventh in points allowed at home but 28th on the road.
The other, more baffling team with the best home vs. road disparity? It’s the Cleveland Browns, who are 20-14 at home over the past four years, but a dreadful 9-25 on the road. The key difference, much like Miami, is Cleveland’s defense, which ranks 31st in points allowed on the road, but fourth in points allowed at home. The Browns have five home games in the last four years in which they held opponents to seven points or fewer, most in the NFL; they have only one such game on the road.
Kevin Stefanski’s Browns and Mike McDaniel’s Dolphins are very different teams with one key common characteristic: Their defenses play much better at home. (Photo by Nick Cammett/Diamond Images via Getty Images)
Next best? Buffalo, which has the NFL’s best home record over the past four years at 28-6, has eight more wins at home than on the road, though 20-13 on the road is nothing to be ashamed of. Denver is also at plus-8 home vs. road, and the Packers and Bears are plus-7, with the altitude and late-season cold helping them to natural advantages.
Some teams are good enough to be good everywhere. The Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, who have met in two of the past three Super Bowls, are perfect examples of that. Philadelphia is 24-10 at home and 24-10 on the road over the past four seasons, and Kansas City is close, going 27-7 at home and a league-best 25-9 on the road.
Which teams are just better on the road?
Whether they’re bad at home or good on the road, there are five NFL teams with a better record away from home over the past four years. Leading the way are the New England Patriots, who are 11-23 at home and 15-19 on the road since 2021. That’s all after Tom Brady left to finish his career with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. With Brady in New England, the Patriots had the best home record in the NFL, but they had the best record in nearly any splits in that span.
Two NFC West teams are next, each with three more road wins than home wins in the past four years — Seattle and Arizona. The Seahawks are surprising, because they built a reputation in their “Legion of Doom” peak as being one of the toughest places to play in the NFL. From 2012-14, Seattle went 22-2 at home, outscoring opponents by 14.9 points per game. But those days are gone. The Seahawks are 16-18 at home since the start of 2021, outscoring their opponents by five points, total, in that span.
Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.
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