Determining the NFL’s True Road Field Advantage:

After revealing my annual True Home Field Advantage Ratings in pro football, I now move on to analyzing the road performance levels of teams.

Reiterating what I stated earlier this week regarding the importance of understanding how to assign home and road field points in football, anyone who is still assigning the base 3 to 3.5 points for home field for every game at either level is making a gargantuan mistake. This not only leads to errors in handicapping individual games on any given week, but it also compounds itself in the building of team power ratings, which take into account schedule strength and where a team has played its games. Because of this risk, my own experience on both sides of the counter has led me to build and maintain team-specific home and road field ratings. These are built into the formulas I use to calculate the Power, Effective Strength, and Bettors Ratings in PSW and on VSiN.com.

 

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I explained the many reasons as to why certain teams have more definitive home-field advantage than others. The same can be said for teams’ performance levels on the road. In my opinion, coaching/preparation level is the leading factor for teams who play best on the road. These teams typically have solid defenses and reliable quarterback play. The other factor that might not be as clearly defined, I feel that a lot of teams that don’t enjoy a massive home-field edge in atmosphere have a tendency to play better on the road as their performance level is more consistent across the board, and not as influenced by game location. Perhaps having more veteran leadership on a team always plays an important role.

To determine which teams hold the best true road field performance levels in pro football, I have taken the teams’ logs in true road games since the start of the 2021 season, or essentially the last 3-1/2 seasons. I compared their own average power rating in those games to their opponents’ average power rating, using my actual logged numbers during that span for every game. This margin would be considered the amount they should have won or lost by when meeting on a neutral field, or the expected margin. I then compared this amount to the actual point differential that the team accumulated in those games. Obviously, the teams that had a greater actual differential than expected differential played the “best” on the road. In the NFL, the top road field performance belonged to Buffalo at +1.2, while the worst rating went to Carolina at -7.

The numbers I showed earlier in the week suggest the actual true home-field advantage in the NFL is 2.0. As I indicated then, the home-field advantage does seem to be trending back upward since it bottomed out in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic and empty stadiums. If you’re using numbers larger or smaller than these, they are probably impacting your betting results negatively, as you’re not getting a true gauge for what it means to play games at home or away.

One important thing to note: I don’t specifically assign the road field ratings in accordance with the order of the True Road Performance numbers you’ll see below on the charts, as I also give strong consideration to the straight-up and ATS records. Otherwise, single games where a team won or lost big can falsely impact the overall ratings.

Keep in mind that as you interpret the results, as I noted last week in the home study, I have removed the two best and worst point spread losses for every team during the 3-1/2 year span from the calculations. These results are still noted in the SU and ATS records but they didn’t factor into the formulas or point/line averages.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the other highlights I have found from my pro football road field performance study.

NFL Home Field Advantage Study Highlights

  • Collectively, the division with the best overall True Road Performance rating is the NFC West, at -0.3. That is the only division (or conference in college) with almost positive ratings. In other words, it has actually been almost advantageous for these teams to be playing on the road over the last few seasons.
  • The divisions with the worst collective True Road Performance are the AFC South (-3.5) & NFC South (-3.3), with five of the eight teams with ratings worse than -3.0. The AFC East has also been a poor road division, with a combined average rating of -2.4.
  • There is just one NFL team that has lost fewer than 10 true road games over the last 3-1/2 seasons, and that is Kansas City. The Chiefs have a league-best 24-8 mark in their last 32 road games, while the Eagles are next best at 22-11. KC is at Carolina this week, while the Eagles are on SNF at the Rams. The next best-performing team in terms of road record and playing on the road this week checks in at #3, as San Francisco (21-12) travels to Green Bay on Sunday.
  • The worst outright record for any pro football team on the road since the start of the 2021 season belongs to Carolina, at 6-25. Chicago is only slightly better in that time span, at 6-24. Jacksonville is next in line, 8-22. Of those three teams, none are on the road this weekend. The lowest-rated team in terms of true road record and playing on the road this weekend is Denver (9-21), as the Broncos are in Las Vegas.
  • Three teams have compiled ATS records better than 60% in the NFL on the road since the start of the 2021 season and they are Detroit (22-10), Cincinnati (23-11 ATS), and Arizona (19-12 ATS).  Four other teams have gone 58% or better. The Lions and Cardinals have road games on Sunday.
  • Four NFL teams have been going under 40% ATS over the last 3-1/2 seasons on the road. They are Carolina (10-21 ATS), Chicago (10-18 ATS), the Jets (10-18 ATS), and Cleveland (11-17 ATS). None of the four are on the road this week, however.
  • The three teams that have played to the average biggest point spreads on the road in recent seasons are Kansas City (-4.6), followed by San Francisco (-4.1) and Buffalo (-3.1).
  • Four teams have been worse than 5.5-point underdogs on average in road games in recent seasons of pro football: NY Giants (+7.6), Houston (+6.8), Chicago (+5.9), and Carolina (+5.6).
  • There have been three NFL teams that have averaged more than 25 PPG in their road games over the last 3-1/2 seasons, they are:

Kansas City– 27.4 PPG
Buffalo – 27.1
San Francisco – 25.2

  • Four teams in pro football have allowed 20.5 PPG or fewer in road games since the start of the 2021 season. That list includes:

San Francisco – 19.7 PPG
New Orleans – 20.3
Philadelphia – 20.5
Baltimore – 20.5
New England – 20.5

  • The only three teams that have outscored opponents by 5 PPG or more on the road since 2021 are Buffalo (+6.2), Kansas City (+5.7), and San Francisco (+5.5). There is a bit of a misconception about the Bills & Chiefs and how tough they are playing at what are seemingly difficult home environments. The truth is that over the last 3-1/2 seasons, they have played arguably better on the road.
  • Using my formula comparing how much teams have won on the road as compared to how much they were supposed to win by based upon average power ratings, the top teams for true road performance in pro football over the last 3-1/2 seasons have been:
  • Buffalo +1.2
  • Arizona +0.6
  • Cincinnati +0.5
  • Dallas +0.3

Of those four teams, the Cardinals are on the road this week at Seattle, while Dallas has a tough tilt at Washington.

  • The teams with the worst true road performance ratings in all of the NFL based upon their road statistics over the last 3-1/2 seasons have been:
  • Carolina -7.0
  • NY Jets -6.0
  • Cleveland -5.5
  • Jacksonville -4.8
  • Chicago -4.4

You’ll have to wait until next week to take advantage of betting against any of these teams on the road.

You will find the entire list of all 32 NFL teams and their road performance here. They are sorted in order of true road performance rating.

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Steve Makinen
Steve Makinen
As one of the original founders of StatFox, Steve Makinen has been in the business of sports betting and data analysis for almost 25 years now. In his time in the industry, Steve has worked in a variety of capacities on both sides of the betting counter, from his early days of developing the StatFox business, to almost a decade of oddsmaking consulting for one of the world's leading sportsbooks, to his last seven years as Point Spread Weekly and Analytics Director with VSiN. Steve has always believed that number crunching and handicapping through foundational trends and systems is the secret to success and he shares this data with VSiN readers on a daily basis for all of the major sports.

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