The Death of Home Field Advantage

Let me pull 45 years of NFL game data and look at home team point margins by season.

The data tells a dramatic story. From 1979 to 2018, home teams averaged about 2.5-3 points better than away teams. But look at 2019 and 2020 — the advantage collapsed to nearly zero. In 2019 it was just 0.04 points. In 2020 it was 0.17 points.

Great catch. Let me break it down by conference to make sure this isn't a fluke in one part of the league.

Both conferences collapsed. In 2019, the AFC home margin dropped to 0.2 points and the NFC actually went *negative* at -0.1 points. That means NFC home teams performed worse than visiting teams. In 2020, the NFC stayed negative at -0.4 points. This isn't a statistical artifact — something real happened across the entire league.

Great question. Let me compare indoor vs outdoor games. Indoor stadiums are where crowd noise has the biggest impact.

The crowd effect is real. In 2018, indoor games had about +2 points home advantage. In 2020 with empty or limited crowds, indoor games showed a -0.9 point home *disadvantage*. That's a 3-point swing just from losing the crowd. But notice outdoor games also collapsed in 2019 — that happened with full crowds. The 2019 mystery remains.

Let me check home win percentage by season.

In 2020, home teams won just 49.8% of their games — the first time in recorded history that home teams lost more than they won. Even in 2019 it dropped to 52%, well below the historical 55-57% range. The partial recovery since 2021 suggests crowds matter, but we're still not back to pre-2019 levels. Something fundamentally changed.