Is Arrowhead Stadium’s home-field advantage more myth than reality?
On a December evening in 1990, the noise reverberated through Arrowhead Stadium. The Chiefs had pinned the Broncos to their own 1-yard line, the crowd growing louder with each passing second.
Broncos quarterback John Elway made his initial complaint about the volume while in the huddle, turning toward the referee. The crowd amplified in response. Elway stepped under center but eventually pulled back, placed his hands on his hips and stared toward the referee once more. You could sense his plea.
Help.
“I have asked the defense to help lower the crowd noise,” the referee stated over the public address system. “Any further crowd noise problem will result in a charged timeout against Kansas City. Thank you for your cooperation.”
Almost 20 years later, that remains a lasting image of an atmosphere that has been passed down through generations in Kansas City, a setting that has survived losing seasons and playoff heartbreak, a raucous venue that has just one postseason win (finally!) to show for it.
The Guinness Book of World Records declares Arrowhead the loudest stadium of them all, no others capable of producing the 142.2 decibels the crowd reached during a 2014 blowout of the New England Patriots. It’s a place that Chiefs players and coaches appreciate with an authenticity, one that opposing players even go out of their way to compliment. Just last week, to best prepare for playing inside the stadium, the Green Bay Packers piped noise into their practices.
“This is the loudest place I’ve ever played. That’s no disrespect to Seattle,” Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger said after a 2017 playoff game. “It was deafening.”
For all the superlatives, for all of the pride, for all of the anecdotes, somehow one element is lacking.
The advantage.
The Chiefs have lost five of their past eight home games, including three straight this year, all the while excelling on the road. Truth be told, the franchise has only barely formulated a better winning percentage at home than away from it for more than a decade now.
So it’s time we ask: Is Arrowhead Stadium’s so-called home-field advantage more myth than reality?
NFL’s home-field advantage is waning
Home teams are losing.
Inside Arrowhead Stadium. Inside CenturyLink Field. Across the NFL.
The home teams have a losing record in 2019, sitting at 57-64-1 overall in the 32 venues. Dating back to 1970, home teams had won 56% of their games coming into the season. In the past, the advantage was so real that Vegas oddsmakers would set the line for a game as if it was on a neutral field ... and then add three points to the home team.
Times have changed.
“We have seen the home-field advantage factor being taken into account less and less over the last 20 years,” said Pat Morrow, the head oddsmaker at Bovada. “It is still something we take into account when setting the line but not as much as we once did.”
So, no, this is not a hit piece on Arrowhead Stadium nor the fans who comprise it. They’re unquestionably loud. Players love playing there. Even those from the opposition. Let’s get that out of the way.
Instead, the slow evaporation of home-field advantage is a league-wide trend. It’s happening almost everywhere, including the places you might least expect. Seattle is 4-0 on the road this year and just 2-2 at CenturyLink Field, the site in which Arrowhead Stadium swapped decibel level blows with.
The Chiefs are unbeaten in four road games this season. At home? They’re 1-3. And that’s after losing two of their final four at home last season, too.
To be fair, the home schedule (Ravens, Colts, Texans and Packers) has been tougher than the road slate (Jaguars, Raiders, Lions and Broncos).
But the website Football Outsiders takes difficulty of schedule into account when grading teams’ efficiency, using a statistic it refers to as DVOA. And for half a season, the Chiefs have been just plain better outside their familiar settings. Their offensive DVOA numbers are nearly identical home and away, but the Kansas City defense ranks 25th in home DVOA and fourth in road DVOA.
So what’s the real advantage to playing at home?
“I think I know where you’re going with that,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said when asked that question this week. “We have to do better at home obviously. We don’t have the wins we’d like to (have) at home. But we have a great crowd. They do a heck of a job helping us out.
“We gotta do better than what we’ve been doing there.”
They used to. Well, relatively speaking.
Since 2013, when Reid assumed the job in Kansas City, the Chiefs are 37-15 at Arrowhead Stadium and 33-19 elsewhere, a difference of just 7.7 points in winning percentage. That difference resembles Romeo Crennel, Todd Haley and Herm Edwards years, though each of those coaches obviously had far worse overall winning percentages than Reid.
But back in the day, the site carried significant weight. Dick Vermeil was 28-12 at home but 16-24 on the road. In two seasons, Gunther Cunningham finished 11-5 at home, 5-11 on the road. And then there was Marty Schottenheimer. The Chiefs steamrolled visitors in his tenure to the tune of a 60-20 record. But on the road? They were slightly under .500.
The discrepancy between home and road sat north of 30 points in winning percentage during the Schottenheimer, Cunningham and Vermeil years combined — four times what it is today.
To the recent Chiefs teams’ credit, a reason for the lack of a significant discrepancy lies within their ability to actually win games on the road. None of Reid’s predecessors over the past 30-plus years could do it. None of the previous six Chiefs coaches finished .500. Under Reid, the Chiefs win 63.4% of their games outside Arrowhead Stadium.
But doesn’t that kind of prove the point, too? Home-field advantage’s decline isn’t locally-restricted.
Investigating the causes
But ... why?
What has happened to the league’s — and specifically the Chiefs’ — home-field advantage? Why such a drastic change over the past two or three decades?
Depends on who you ask. Travel has become easier over the years, with chartered flights. And teams have put more emphasis on things like sports science and nutrition, better preparing their bodies for longer trips. That could play a role, to be sure.
In some cities, though it doesn’t appear to apply here in KC, fans have elected to stay home and enjoy an oft-improved user experience. They can track their fantasy football teams there. They can watch a full slate of games rather than just one. Jacksonville seems to accept that theory — at the Chiefs’ season opener there, two corner TVs played other games inside the stadium ... during the game. (Can you imagine Arrowhead Stadium doing that?)
And then there’s the most popular hypothesis: Officiating. Bending toward the home team on a 50-50 call was once the path of least resistance. With 40 camera angles now aiding a replay system, it is no longer. The emphasis is simply on getting the calls right.
“The most common misconception about home-field advantage is that the noise disrupts the opposing team,” Morrow said. “We do not believe that is the biggest home-field advantage. In fact, the factor that is the biggest factor in home-field advantage — and would explain why it has been decreasing in the last 30 years — is official bias.
“For some reason, it seems that officials are biased towards the home team, and most close or controversial calls would go the way of the home team. This started to change in 1999, when the current replay system was adopted by the NFL. From one season to the next, the referees were held to a higher standard, and it made for a more level playing field.”
It’s helped to trump conventional wisdom in the NFL. On Sunday, when the Chiefs host the Minnesota Vikings at Arrowhead Stadium, they will be trying to break a three-game losing streak there.
Yet, because of their road record, they still lead the AFC West. Still in the hunt fighting for some of the conference’s top postseason seeding. Still in the mix for a home game or two. Even still within reach of the presumed favorite, New England, in the race for home-field advantage.
If that matters.
This story was originally published November 1, 2019 at 11:43 AM.