NFL teams compete all season to set up the seeding that decides who gets to host playoff games and who has to go on the road to advance. In essence, teams battle for 18 weeks to determine who earns the easiest path to the Super Bowl.
And as another wild-card weekend of six games approaches, the fifth year of the expanded 14-team playoffs, it's a chance to look at the hard numbers and statistical trends.
Just how helpful is home-field advantage in the postseason?
The simplest answer over the past three years is that, at least on the opening weekend of the playoffs, higher seeds playing on their home field have a considerable advantage, going 14-4 in wild-card games. Of the four opening-weekend upsets since the 2021 season, only one — the sixth-seeded 49ers in 2021 — has advanced beyond the divisional round.
That isn't always the case, of course: In the previous three years, from 2018-20, nearly the opposite was true, with home teams going 4-10 in those wild-card rounds.
The NFL's current playoff model rewards only the top team in each conference with a first-round bye — the Chiefs and Lions earned those honors this season — and in three of the four years in that model, both top seeds have advanced to play the conference championship on their home field. The exception was a chaotic 2021, when the top-seeded Titans and Packers both lost by a field goal in the divisional round, sending a 2 seed, two 4 seeds and a 6 seed to the conference championship games.
Over the past four years, half of the No. 1 seeds have advanced to the Super Bowl, but only one — the 2022 Chiefs — has actually won, so there's an expectation of the unexpected. The last four Super Bowl champions included three teams not expected to make it past the divisional round based on seeding. Last year's Chiefs were a 3 seed, the 2021 Rams were a 4 seed, and the 2020 Bucs won as a 5 seed, winning three road games to get to the Super Bowl.
How big an advantage is home field in general? Less than you might expect. This past season, over 272 games, home teams went 145-127, which works out to a .533 winning percentage, about the same as a 9-8 team over the course of a full season. That advantage was down slightly from 2023, when NFL home teams went 151-121, good for a .555 win percentage, much like a 5-4 record.
In 2023, all eight NFL divisions had at least a .500 record at home, but this season, the AFC South went 14-18 at home, the NFC South went 15-21, and three other divisions were .500 at home. So in the 2024 NFL season, only three of eight divisions collectively had winning records at home.
Because the NFL gives division champs an automatic home game, the home team isn't necessarily the best team in some first-round meetings. The Vikings (14-3) have the most wins of any wild card in NFL history, so to no surprise, they're a 2.5-point road favorite at the Rams (10-7), and along the same lines, the Chargers (11-6) are three-point road favorites at the Texans (10-7). FOX Sports NFL Analyst Bucky Brooks' playoff team rankings have Minnesota at 4, well ahead of the hosting Rams at 9, and the Chargers are at 8, four spots above the Texans at 12.
[Read more: NFL playoff team rankings: Chiefs lead a stacked field headed into postseason]
Even more so in the playoffs, teams are judged by their quarterbacks. As a trivia question, how many of this year's 14 starting quarterbacks on playoff teams have winning records in the playoffs? Six of the 14 have zero or one win, and the correct answer is just two: Kansas City's Patrick Mahomes is way ahead at 15-3, Pittsburgh's Russell Wilson is 9-7 (with only one win since 2016), and the rest are all .500 or worse.
The records of even the best playoff quarterbacks ever show it's much tougher on the road. Tom Brady was 35-13 in his playoff career, but just 7-4 in true road games, compared to 21-6 at home and 7-3 in Super Bowls.
Tom Brady led the wild-card Bucs to the Super Bowl LV title as a 5-seed, winning three games on the road. (Photo by Simon Bruty/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
The shadow cast by Mahomes is enormous: He has more playoff wins than all seven NFC starting quarterbacks in this year's postseason combined (they're 13-14). Buffalo's Josh Allen is 5-5 in the playoffs and wouldn't go on the road this postseason until the AFC Championship Game, and Buffalo is ahead of third-seeded Baltimore, where Lamar Jackson could win his third MVP, but is just 2-4 in the playoffs.
The top four seeds in this year's playoffs — the Chiefs, Lions, Bills and Eagles — were a combined 31-3 at home this season, making it that much tougher for lower seeds to pull off extended playoff runs. But the first round could still go upside down, realizing the Bucs and Rams were only 5-4 at home and the Texans were 5-3. Houston hosts a Chargers team that was better on the road (6-3) than at home this season, and the Bucs host a Washington team that was 5-3 on the road.
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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