Career News 24/7: What Home Field Advantage Means In The NFL

Thursday, November 8, 2012

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Thursday, November 8, 2012


	What Home Field Advantage Means In The NFL There's a rule of thumb that home field advantage is worth about three points in the NFL. However, a closer look at the numbers suggests that home field is not worth as much as it used to be. This season, home teams are winning 58.3% of the games. However, the average winning margin in the NFL is only 1.1 points per game for the home team. This would be the fourth season in the last seven in which the average winning margin for home teams was below 2.5 points per game. And only once during that span (2011) did home teams win by at least three points per game. In the last seven seasons (2006-12), home teams are winning 56.4% of the games with a winning margin of 2.2 points per game. In the ten years before that (1996-2005) home teams won 59.0% of the games and were winning by 3.0 points per game. It's unclear why teams are no longer dominating at home, although increased parity likely has something to do with it. But what is clear is that we might have to re-think that homefield rule of thumb... Data via Pro-Football-Reference.com Read »