Playing at home is worth more in January than in September. From the 1999 through the 2025 postseasons, home teams won 181 of the 281 playoff games played at a home stadium, 64.4 percent. Across the regular seasons of the same years, home teams won 56.2 percent of games that were not played at a neutral site.
Home teams in each playoff round
| Round | Games | Home wins | Home win % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wild Card round | 119 | 70 | 58.8% |
| Divisional round | 108 | 75 | 69.4% |
| Conference championship | 54 | 36 | 66.7% |
Part of that playoff edge is really a seeding edge. The better team usually hosts, so a high home win rate says as much about the matchups as about the crowd. The Wild Card round pairs division winners with wild cards, and its hosts won 58.8 percent of the time. The Divisional round is where the rested top seeds enter: the top two in each conference before 2020, only the No. 1 seed since. Hosts won 69.4 percent of those games, the best rate of any round. Every Super Bowl in this period was played at a neutral site, so none of them are counted.
2020: home field without the crowds
The 2020 season, played largely in empty or partly filled stadiums, is the closest the league has come to a controlled test. From 1999 to 2019, home teams won 57.0 percent of regular-season games and outscored visitors by 2.4 points a game. In 2020 they won 50.2 percent, and the average home margin shrank to a tenth of a point. Since 2021 the home win rate has settled at 53.8 percent with a margin of 2.1 points, a partial recovery that has not reached the old level.
The decline did not begin with the empty stands. Counting every game by its listed home team, neutral sites included, home teams went 132–123–1 in 2019, already the weakest home season of the 1999–2019 run. In 2020 listed home teams went 127–128–1, the only season in the 1999–2025 archive in which road teams won more often.
Home results season by season
The best year for home teams was 2003, when they won 61.6 percent; the worst was 2020 at 50.2 percent. Each season links to its final standings where they are available.
| Season | Games | Home wins | Home win % | Avg. home margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 248 | 148 | 59.7% | +3.1 |
| 2000 | 248 | 138 | 55.6% | +2.8 |
| 2001 | 248 | 136 | 54.8% | +2.0 |
| 2002 | 256 | 148 | 57.8% | +2.2 |
| 2003 | 255 | 157 | 61.6% | +3.6 |
| 2004 | 256 | 145 | 56.6% | +2.5 |
| 2005 | 255 | 150 | 58.8% | +3.6 |
| 2006 | 256 | 136 | 53.1% | +0.8 |
| 2007 | 255 | 147 | 57.6% | +2.9 |
| 2008 | 254 | 145 | 57.1% | +2.6 |
| 2009 | 255 | 146 | 57.3% | +2.3 |
| 2010 | 254 | 142 | 55.9% | +1.9 |
| 2011 | 255 | 145 | 56.9% | +3.3 |
| 2012 | 255 | 146 | 57.3% | +2.6 |
| 2013 | 253 | 152 | 60.1% | +3.3 |
| 2014 | 252 | 144 | 57.1% | +2.5 |
| 2015 | 253 | 136 | 53.8% | +1.5 |
| 2016 | 252 | 145 | 57.5% | +2.6 |
| 2017 | 251 | 143 | 57.0% | +2.5 |
| 2018 | 253 | 152 | 60.1% | +2.3 |
| 2019 | 251 | 130 | 51.8% | 0.0 |
| 2020 | 253 | 127 | 50.2% | +0.1 |
| 2021 | 269 | 137 | 50.9% | +1.6 |
| 2022 | 265 | 149 | 56.2% | +2.1 |
| 2023 | 267 | 149 | 55.8% | +2.7 |
| 2024 | 267 | 140 | 52.4% | +1.7 |
| 2025 | 265 | 142 | 53.6% | +2.2 |
How we counted
We used final scores from the WHYNFL results archive for 1999 through 2025. International and other neutral-site games are left out because neither team was playing at home. Ties count as games but not as home wins. The average home margin is the home team’s points minus the visitor’s points, per game.
Related: NFL stadiums · NFL playoff history · current NFL standings
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