NFL 2023 – Home Field Advantage Values
In this article we will use the methods explained in the 2014 – 2023 study of home field advantage, to calculate 2023 home field advatage for each team based on the limited 2023 data we have. It will be interesting to see if the method can produce a reasonable home field advantage value for each team based on only about 7 home and 7 away games.
Want to see Home Field Advantage based on 10 years of data? NFL Home Field Advantage & Away Adjustment Chart
Home Field Advantage
Just like the 10 year data, neutral site games were excluded. Using standard deviation and normalization/standardization teams that perform better at home receive a larger home field advantage, while teams that perform poorly at home received a smaller advantage. The minimum advantage was set to 1 point and the maximum at 4 points.
The average home & away points for and against can be found in the chart below. The offense’s and defense’s home & away points differentials were calculated, as was the team’s point differential home vs away.
The Away Adjustment
If you look at the last column, you see it labelled Away Modifier(Which I later came to call Away Adjustment). If teams could have different home field advantage values, it would seem natural that they each would also have an Away Adjustment value based on how well they play on the road. Anyone who has watched NFL football can empirically see that some teams play well on the road, while others almost start the game with no chance of winning.
So let’s use the same methodology to calculate an Away Adjustment for each team based on its away stats. This scale will run from -3 to +3, though most teams will fall between -2 to +2.
- A negative value means the team plays better on the road compared to the other teams.
- A positive value means the team plays poorly on the road.
Home Field Advatage Matrix
Now let’s take the two values we have for each team and create a matrix. The sum of the home team’s advantage plus the away team’s adjustment will be the final home field advatage value to use in the spread.
The home team is the row, the away team is the column. Where they intersect is the calculate Home Field Advantage for the home team based on the past 10 years of data.
For example, if Arizona were to host Atlanta, the Cardinals home field advantage would be set at 3.6 points. The Cardinals are an average home team with a base home field advantage of 2.6 points. Atlanta is a poor road team with an Away Adjustment of +1.0. This leads to the Cardinals final value of 3.6 points when facing Atlanta at home.
If Atlanta were to host Arizona, Atlanta’s home field advantage value woulld be set to a hearty 5.5 points. The Falcons are a good home team with a base value of 3.0 points. The Cardinals are a horrible road team with an Away Adjustment of +2.5 points. This leads to the Falcons’ final 5.5 point home field advantage when hosting Arizona.
2023 Average Home Field Advantage
The one intersting statistic that came from both the 10 year study and the 2023 data was that the average home field advantage when calculated in this manner is 2.5 points. Average home field advantage was 2.5 points over 10 years worth of data, and it is 2.5 points looking at a fractional year’s worth of 2023 data. So if you want to use a single value for any home team in any game, 2.5 points would appear to be a safe bet.
