National Football League

Value of home field towards spreads; Neutral site odds impact on Bills-Chiefs

Published Jan. 13, 2023 11:56 a.m. ET

Home-field advantage in the National Football League has been a fascinating topic inside the sports betting community over the last few years.

For decades, most Las Vegas oddsmakers believed home field was worth around 2.8 points per game. So if two teams possessed similar power ratings and were said to be almost mathematical equals on a neutral field, a sportsbook would round up and make either team a 3-point favorite at home.

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But home-field ain’t what it used to be.

Those same oddsmakers are now leaning into newer methods, where advanced metrics and formulas calculate a lower edge for home teams. It’s proof that too much weight was being placed on home field.

"I’m closer to 1.5 with most teams," South Point sportsbook director Chris Andrews told FOX Sports. "Ed Feng [data scientist with a Ph.D. in applied math from Stanford] studied this for years, and he was way ahead of the curve. The analytics guys gobbled up those bloated road ‘dogs for years."

"Team power ratings supersede home field at this point," Westgate SuperBook vice president of risk management Ed Salmons explained. "We also learned during the COVID season that fans in the stands are overrated."

Many sharp bettors don’t care about which team is playing at home. They’re much more concerned about injuries. A quarterback’s health, a left tackle’s status and secondary depth are way more important to people betting thousands and thousands of dollars.

"It’s the little injuries you don’t pay attention to that change a line more than you would think," Salmons continued. "When a team is down an offensive tackle or two, it’ll move the line. Like the Kansas City-Tampa Super Bowl when the Chiefs were down two linemen and got destroyed.

"But those injuries aren’t popularized in the mainstream media."

NFL home teams against the spread:

2017: 134-122 (52.3%)
2018: 120-128-8 (48.3%)
2019: 108-140-8 (43.5%)
2020: 125-127-4 (49.6%)
2021: 130-138-4 (48.5%)
2022: 133-129-8 (51%)

"Modern technology and modern science work against home-field advantage," betting analyst Jay Croucher added. "And travel is so much easier now than it was 20 years ago. Home-field advantage obviously varies from team to team, but I use 1.5 to 2 points as a baseline. That’s the sweet spot. It’ll be interesting to see whether or not the decline continues."

The elephant in the room heading into the 2022 NFL Playoffs is that there’s a very likely scenario where the AFC Championship game is played without a true home field. When the Bengals-Bills game was canceled after Damar Hamlin’s collapse in Cincinnati, league officials eventually decided a Bills-Chiefs playoff game would be relocated to a neutral site.

What’s the line?

Legendary Vegas oddsmaker Kenny White has Buffalo and Kansas City so close in his power ratings that there wouldn’t be much of a difference.

"I’ve got Buffalo at 108.5 and Kansas City at 107," White told FOX Sports. "That’s easy math on a neutral. Buffalo is a 1.5-point favorite. Injuries to key players could certainly change the number, but it’s a coin-flip game."

Look no further than Minnesota being only a 3-point home favorite against New York and Dallas laying almost a field in Tampa Bay for further evidence that home-field advantage is no longer placed on the pedestal it once was.

"Dallas is a better football team," White said. "Tampa has Tom Brady, but Dallas is better across the board. We’ll see what happens if Tampa keeps it close and Brady can be Brady in the fourth quarter, but there’s a reason Dallas is favored.

"The math doesn’t lie."

Sam Panayotovich is a sports betting analyst for FOX Sports and NESN. He previously worked for WGN Radio, NBC Sports and VSiN. He'll probably pick against your favorite team. Follow him on Twitter @spshoot.

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