Yesterday we took a look at how home field advantage has decreased in the NFL in recent years. This season in particular, home teams are winning games by an average margin of just 1.1 points per game, despite winning more games. One possibility is that home field advantage increases as the season moves along and this year's numbers are deflated because we haven't hit the colder months yet.
Below is a look at the winning percentage of home teams and their average winning margin by week for the last 20 seasons*. And in fact, the four most dominant weeks of the season for the home team are among the last five weeks of the season.
If we ignore week nine, teams win 58.7% of their home games in the first eight weeks of the season by an average margin of 2.4 points per game. In the final eight weeks of the season, the winning percentage is relatively unchanged (58.3%), but the average winning margin jumps to 3.0 points. And in the final five weeks, home teams are winning by an average of 3.6 points per game...
* 1993 was excluded from the data as the NFL used an 18-week season with each team receiving two byes. Data via Pro-Football-Reference.com
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