Home field net point advantages - Seahawks best, Pats worst

[QuantumMechanic]

Ran across this today. Not clear to me how meaningful it is, but what the heck

Basically, for each current stadium the author computed the home team's total net points at home (since the stadium opened), the team's total net points on the road (over the same time period) and subtracted them to get the total home field net point advantage, and then divided by the number of seasons the stadium has been open to get the home field net point advantage per season.

Seattle come in first with a 79.7 points per season figure (in other words, Seattle rings up 79.7 more net points at home than they do on the road). Gillette comes in last at 16.1 points per season.

The table and the explanation is here:

The Seahawks and the NFL’s Best Home Field Advantage | The Harvard College Sports Analysis Collective

 

[signbabybrady]

That would seem more an indication of how well a teams offense does when it has to deal with being on the road rather then an indication of home field advantage. though it cant be a coincidence one of the loadest stadiums is at the top and one of the quitest is at the bottom.


Problem using points scored as indication of homefield advantage is that the homefield adavantage at least as noise is concerned comes when the home team defense is on the field.


Seems to me like this should have been done with points allowed on the road vs points allowed at home. At least as far as noise level as it relates to home field.

I guess a truer indication would be the combination of the two.

 

[everlong]

The three best cold weather teams with new stadiums are the only teams with + point differential on the road in NE, Pitt & Philly. Not shocking.

 

[QuantumMechanic]

Problem using points scored as indication of homefield advantage is that the homefield adavantage at least as noise is concerned comes when the home team defense is on the field.

It's not using points scored. It's using net points (aka point differential). So it does capture the home field advantage when the home defense is on the field (since presumably the away team will score less, which will increase net points).

 

[BradyManny]

That would seem more an indication of how well a teams offense does when it has to deal with being on the road rather then an indication of home field advantage. though it cant be a coincidence one of the loadest stadiums is at the top and one of the quitest is at the bottom.

Quoted for truth.

 

[JJDChE]

It's because we've played well at home AND on the road. Typically, Seattle just plays awful on the road, hence the large home field differential.

 

[Deus Irae]

The three best cold weather teams with new stadiums are the only teams with + point differential on the road in NE, Pitt & Philly. Not shocking.

Yeah, this seems much more like a stat about road disadvantage than home team advantage.

 

[Tunescribe]

Flawed study, conceptually. Next to meaningless.

 

[IllegalContact]

this stat is pointless

the only thing you can really say from that is that the pats rock on the road

another thing to put in the pipe and smoke is that the pats road numbers are better than the seahawks home numbers

 

[randomk1]

this stat is pointless

the only thing you can really say from that is that the pats rock on the road

another thing to put in the pipe and smoke is that the pats road numbers are better than the seahawks home numbers

Heh look at the point differential of some of those teams at away.

NE is at +664

SEA - 373


This seems to be more about what team is the most inconsistent and can't win road games. NE, team with the highest win % will obviously come last in that kind of a list.

The author also points out that BAL has the longest home winning streak currently at 13. But didn't Brady's record end at 36 or something last year?

 

[Palm Beach Pats Fan]

It shows what teams are well-prepared and mentally tough enough to not wilt on the road under a tough environment, overlaid with what teams of that type play home games in cold weather late in the season.

By my estimation it might be better to be low on the list rather than high.

Extremely flawed logic in saying that it tells what advantage a home crowd gives you.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Since 2002, Seattle's net point differential at home is +424. New England's net point differential on the road is +663.

The most amazing thing is that New England's home net point differential at home during that same period is +824. So they've netted by a combined total of 400 more points playing at home over the last ten years than Seattle has at home.

Any way you look at those numbers, I'd rather face Seattle at home than New England at home, or New England on the road.

 

[JMarr]

Most people agree that SEA can be by far the loudest, most intimidating stadium in the league, but this article is garbage. No way is NE at the bottom--Jerry World has that distinction by a mile. Watching Cowboys games is absolutely hilarious. You can hear a pin drop at crucial moments in games, and opposing fans make up from 30% to 40% of fans in attendance. The team usually plays like they're shell shocked in a hostile environment, lol.

 

[BradyFTW!]

What I take from this is that the Patriots do well on the road, and the Seahawks are pretty useless outside of Seattle. To be honest, I'm a little disappointed that such fundamentally ******ed analysis came from Harvard, of all places.

****, the Giants have a better road record than home record, by a pretty significant margin. How can any "worst home team" list not have them at or near the top?

 

[jmt57]

It's been quite a while since I took probability and statistics in college, but I can think of a few questions. I seem to recall that there was supposed to be a null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis to make sure that whatever your data showed really truly did support your hypothesis. Not to get all geeky with talk about coeffecient of correlation, a few things jump out to me.

The biggest thing is this: why is it that the only conclusion that there can possibly be is that this data will show who has the best home field advantage? How did we get from that Point A to Point B?


New Orleans is near the bottom, and anybody that has heard or seen the Saints play a home game in recent years must wonder how that is possible.

The telltale sign: they're using data going back to 1975 for the Saints. Newsflash: the Saints were really bad for a long time during that span. Result was sparse crowds, which led to low noise levels - which led to no home field advantage. I bet if you only use data over the last four years for the Saints then their rank changes.


When you look at the top ten venues, for the most part the connecting factor is that they have been bad more often than good during the time periods their data was collected. Perhaps (as previously stated by some) the data suggests more of a correlation between bad teams simply having a greater differential in performance at home than on the road, while in comparison good teams have a smaller differential in home and away performance.


Perhaps this is a bad analogy but it reminds me of when tv announcers so often used to regurgitate stats about how when a team runs X number of times they win (some very large number) percent of the time ... ignoring the very real reason that this happened so often was because teams with the lead tend to run the ball while those that are behind tend to pass much more often.


I will say that seeing Seattle (considered by almost everyone to be the loudest) on top and New England (considered to be the quietest) on the bottom gets your attention and probably creates credibility to the study (as does the name of the school). I'm skeptical; I think the biggest thing it shows is that bad teams can't win on the road but good teams do.