Home Field Advantage NFL Playoffs

[NAn 39]

For anyone who's interested.

Just been hearing/reading about home-field advantage (HFA) more with the actual NFL playoffs approaching and may have been done before here but wanted to look at HFA specific to playoffs myself, here’s what I found.

Note: these figures exclude Super Bowl as considered a neutral field, only wild card rounds through conference championship rounds included

2003 – 2012

PLAYOFFS OVERALL

· Home Team won 60% of time

· Away Team 40%

Over these 10 seasons

· 7 yrs home team won more games

· 3 yrs away teams won more games

· 1 yr it was even

CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES

· Home Team won 60% of time

· Away Team 40%

Over these 10 seasons

· 3 yrs home team won more games

· 1 yr away teams won more games

· 6 yrs it was even

1993 – 2002

PLAYOFFS OVERALL

· Home Team won 75% of time

· Away Team 25%

Over these 10 seasons

· 10 yrs home team won more games

· 0 yrs away teams won more games

· 0 yrs it was even

CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES

· Home Team won 60% of time

· Away Team 40%

Over these 10 seasons

· 3 yrs home team won more games

· 1 yr away teams won more games

· 6 yrs it was even

1983 – 1992 (note 83-89 only 10 teams made playoffs instead of current 12)

PLAYOFFS OVERALL

· Home Team won 68.7% of time

· Away Team won 31.3%

Over these 10 seasons

· 9 yrs home team won more games

· 0 yrs away teams won more games

· 1 yr it was even

CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES

· Home Team won 70% of time

· Away Team won 30% of time

Over these 10 seasons

· 5 yrs home team won more games

· 1 yr away teams won more games

· 4 yrs it was even

OBSERVATIONS

· Though HFA in playoffs still holds true, in last decade (parity? other?) it’s not been quite as lopsided as previous 2 decades

· HFA for Championship Games (CGs) consistent last 2 decades

· Significant amount of seasons over last 3 decades where teams w/HFA won more games

Other observations?

RETURNING TO 2003 – 2012, MOST RECENT (RELEVANT?) DECADE

Assuming that most recent decade is the most relevant, I wanted to examine any specific trends so I looked closer at this decade:

· 1 seed made SB 40% (NE ’11, IND ’09, NO ’09, NE ’07, CHI ’06, SEA ’05, PHI ’04, NE ’03)

· 2 seed 20% (SF ’12, PIT ’10, PIT ’08, NE ’04)

· 3 seed 15% (IND ’06, PIT ’05, CAR ’03)

· 4 seed 15% (BAL ’12, NYG ’11, ARI ’08)

· 5-6 seed (wild cards) 10% (GB ’10, NYG ’07)

OBSERVATIONS

· Only 40% of time did top seed in either conference make it to Super Bowl (SB)

· Only 40% top seed NFC made SB

· Only 40% top seed AFC made SB

· Wild Card Team made SB 10% of time (GB ’10, NYG ’07)

· Team from Wild Card Round (3-6 seed) made SB 40% of time

· So just as likely to make SB if you play in WC round as if you have HFA throughout

· Yes, top seed more likely to make SB than other seeds but not by a significant margin and definitely no lock

Other observations?