Is there still home field advantage in the NFL?

Home teams had a winning percentage of just .498 in 2020, the lowest figure since the 1970 merger of the NFL with the AFL
A funny thing happened on the third play of the Green Bay Packers’ 2020 season. Using the change in the cadence of the count to receive up the middle, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers caused the Minnesota Vikings defense to jump out of place to convert a third-down conversion. The same thing happened again a few minutes later.

Rodgers possesses one of the most effective change of cadence in NFL history, but this feat was unusual. It didn’t happen in his typical Lambeau Field setting, where the home crowd already knows when to be quiet to maximize its effect. Instead, it happened in a nearly empty U.S. Bank Stadium. Vikings fans, who otherwise would have drowned out Rodgers’ screams, forcing a silent count, were banned from the game in response to Minnesota’s COVID-19 protocols. The Packers came away with a 43-34 victory, capping off an NFL season that generally lacked home field advantage.

The league’s 32 teams are on track to resume full capacity for their fans in 2021, despite the unstoppable Delta variant, and ticket sales have been sky-high, based on league data obtained by ESPN. But the oddities of 2020, including a sharp increase in neutral zone infractions for home teams, should not be dismissed as random situations. Instead, they are best viewed as an accelerated indicator of a larger trend that, in fact, began to manifest itself before the pandemic.

Home teams had a winning percentage of just .498 in 2020, the lowest figure since the 1970 merger of the NFL with the AFL. But even with full stadiums in 2019, there had been the lowest mark (.518) since 1972, as well as the lowest percentage of teams covering against the line in betting (.437) since 1967.

To keen observers, those figures should warrant closer inspection of home-field advantage, as two seemingly opposing trends collide for 2021. Season ticket renewal across the league is 92 percent, the highest mark in five years, and associated revenues are up 73 percent. The masses will be fired up, but their impact on the game–especially as a rapidly maturing secondary market has spawned a less traditional collection of attendees–seems less clear than ever.

For a closer look at what we should expect this season, let’s first review the most obvious consequences of games without large crowds in the stands, a glimpse of what we saw in 2020.

It’s usually acknowledged that playing offense on the road is easier when the home team doesn’t have a “No. 12 man” on its side. Rodgers wasn’t the only quarterback to figure out how to tempt defenses offside in 2020 in situations where it probably wouldn’t have happened. The Chicago Bears led the NFL with seven neutral zone infractions caused as visitors, followed by the Cincinnati Bengals and Tennessee Titans with six each. Overall, 54.1 percent of those penalties were flagged against the home team, much higher than the 37.8 percent average from 2010 to 2019, according to league data.

“When you have a guy who is a master of cadence,” Packers head coach Matt LaFleur said, “that was a huge advantage for us from an offensive perspective.”

Meanwhile, the distribution of delay-of-game penalties, which normally affect visiting teams, was split at exactly 50 percent in 2020. From 2010 through ’19, 41.3 percent of such penalties went to home teams.

Offensive linemen were the biggest beneficiaries of empty stadiums, according to Packers left tackle David Bakhtiari, who started 12 games in 2020 before suffering a torn ACL. Being able to hear the cadence for the center of the ovoid, rather than having to turn and wait to see it in a noisy environment, was an advantage in both the ground and air game.

“The kickoff is very important,” Bakhtiari explained, “and if you take a little longer, you give the edge defender, outside linebacker or defensive wing, a better anticipation of the ovoid. That puts you at a definite disadvantage of winning on that block. So it was pretty good last year. Going to certain indoor stadiums that are very loud, it made my life easier. I was able to get a good look at the defense, instead of looking up the middle.”