• Home teams don’t play better in the regular season: Records at home are declining, and so is efficiency.

• The playoffs are a different story: Home teams have earned a higher overall PFF grade in 80.6% of matchups over the last three postseasons.

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The onset of every new NFL season brings changes in personnel, coaching staffs and even rules. But what remains consistent across freshly painted hashes are adages about the sport of football itself.

Chief among those is home-field advantage — the idea that teams actually perform better in their own stadiums vs. on the road. It’s why earning the No. 1 seed in the postseason is so coveted, and why teams encourage fans to crank up the volume to deafening levels.

The idea of a franchise being better at home has some logical backing. Playing in front of a higher proportion of your own supporters, players sleeping in their own beds and utilizing their own facilities and visiting opponents facing long flights or adverse weather all seem to tilt the scales toward the home team.

Despite the broad belief in home-field advantage being real, the last few seasons actually indicate that the phenomenon isn’t as clear-cut as it might seem, presenting nuance based on the situation.

The simplest way to gauge whether teams truly play better at home is to look at win-loss records. While those numbers don’t capture the nuance that advanced metrics provide, they remain the ultimate barometer of success—and, often, job security.

Over the past five seasons, home teams have gone a combined 714-625-4 (.532) in the regular season. At first glance, winning 53% of home games might suggest a slight edge. But a broader historical lens tells a different story. The graph below shows home teams’ win-loss records across five-year spans this century—and highlights how that advantage has steadily eroded.

Since 2010–14, teams have steadily performed worse at home during the regular season, casting doubt on the notion of home-field advantage heading into the playoffs. Over the past five years, only half the league has posted a winning home record — a clear reflection of the fading impact of playing on familiar turf.

One reason for this trend could be the widening talent gap between the NFL’s best and worst teams. Last year’s Titans, for example, would have been heavy underdogs against the Eagles, Chiefs or Lions — even at Nissan Stadium. On top of that, advancements in preparation, recovery and travel have leveled the playing field, reducing the edge that home familiarity once provided.

Another way to evaluate home-field advantage is through overall PFF grades — a strong indicator of how well teams perform relative to their opponents.

In 2024, home teams posted a higher overall PFF grade than their opponents in just 53% of regular-season games (excluding international and neutral-site contests). That figure closely mirrors home teams’ win rate and reinforces a key point: there’s little evidence in the data to suggest home squads consistently play better during the regular season.

When it comes to measuring team performance, EPA per play and success rate are two of the most respected metrics for assessing efficiency on both sides of the ball. Yet here, too, the case for home-field advantage remains murky.

Over the past five seasons, only 13 of 32 teams posted a better offensive or defensive EPA per play at home compared to other (non-international) stadiums. In other words, most teams actually earned higher EPA per play figures on the road, regardless of which side of the ball they were on.

Success rate, however, told a different story. From 2020–24, 23 of 32 teams recorded a higher offensive success rate at home than on the road, while 19 of 32 posted better defensive success rates in their own stadiums during that span.

One takeaway from these findings is that home teams tend to post stronger success rates than EPA per play, regardless of unit. But neither offensive nor defensive play stands out dramatically across either metric. This likely says more about the nature of these statistics than it does about any inherent advantage tied to location.

In short, there’s little evidence to suggest defenses are tougher at home or that high-powered offenses light up the scoreboard simply because they’re free from hostile crowd noise. When viewed through the lens of advanced analytics, NFL teams don’t appear to perform significantly better in their own stadiums during the regular season.

However, the story changes in the playoffs. Home-field advantage still carries weight when the stakes are highest.

Over the past five postseasons, home teams have posted a dominant 41–19 record (.683). And since the NFL expanded to a seven-team playoff format in 2020, a top-two seed has reached the Super Bowl six times.

Simply put, earning a higher seed still matters. The odds of winning three consecutive home playoff games are far better than having to navigate even one matchup on the road.

PFF data backs this up. Last postseason, 11 of 12 home teams earned a higher overall PFF grade than their opponents (excluding Super Bowl 59, which was played at a neutral site). Unsurprisingly, home teams went 10–2 through the conference championships — proof that once January arrives, home-field advantage comes back into focus.

Over the past three postseasons, 29 of 36 home teams (80.6%) earned a higher overall PFF grade than their opponents. The takeaway is clear: home teams — typically higher seeds — tend to compete at a superior level in playoff matchups, making them even more difficult to beat in their own stadiums.

As noted earlier, today’s higher seeds are often noticeably stronger than the rest of their conference. Facing them on the road — especially in hostile, cold-weather environments — has become an uphill battle for any challenger.

So while home-field advantage may be fleeting during the regular season, it remains a very real factor in January. But which stadiums have proven the toughest for opponents, no matter the time of year?

Since 2020, the Bills (42–9) lead the NFL in home record at Highmark Stadium. Close behind are the Chiefs (42–10), followed by the Packers (32–13), Eagles (32–14) and Dolphins (29–13).

Below, we break down the highest-graded offensive and defensive teams at home over the past five years, including postseason play.

The Chiefs may not crack the top five in offensive or defensive PFF grades at home, but their knack for clutch, late-game plays has helped them build one of the NFL’s most formidable home-field advantages. On the other hand, the 49ers rank in the top four in both categories yet have won just 56.5% of their games at Levi’s Stadium, a solid mark (13th overall) but lower than you might expect given their talent.

In the end, data from the past five seasons highlights a clear trend: teams don’t see a significant boost from home-field advantage until the postseason. And if they’re fortunate enough to get there, avoiding Buffalo, Kansas City and San Francisco might be their best bet.