NFL’s home-field disadvantage

The goal for the Washington Redskins on Sunday appears simple: beat the Philadelphia Eagles at home.

But victories at FedEx Field this season have been more elusive than a wily halfback; the team stands at 3-4 at home without a single win against a division opponent. The Redskins have not won at home since Oct. 19.

“Usually you can feel like if you win a good portion of your road games, then win the home games, it’s a lot easier,” Redskins coach Jim Zorn said. “But it hasn’t been that way for us this year. I don’t know what the reason for that is.”

The home woes have baffled the Redskins and their fans, but an analysis of data by The Washington Times suggests the struggles at home are indicative of a leaguewide, decade-long trend. Quite simply, teams don’t win at home as often as they used to, though the reasons for the decline are unclear.

What has happened to home-field advantage?

“There is none,” Redskins wide receiver Antwaan Randle El said. “Teams really enjoy going into someone’s backyard and winning. If you can go into another team’s yard and win, that says a lot.”

This season, teams are on pace to win about 57 percent of their home games, the sixth-lowest percentage in the last 20 years. Home winning percentage for the decade is also about 57 percent, down from about 60 percent in the 1990s. Roughly speaking, that means an additional home loss each season for one-fourth of the teams in the league.

In the 1990s, home teams had a winning percentage above 60 percent in five seasons. In this decade, only the 2003 season saw teams win more than 60 percent of their home games.

The decline in home winning percentages is leading some oddsmakers in Las Vegas and elsewhere to re-evaluate the role of home-field advantage when setting game lines. Richard Gardner, sportsbook manager for online gambling Web site Bodog, said he often does not consider the home field in games in which the road team is favored. Among games between two evenly matched opponents, home teams are given an advantage of between three and three-and-a-half points, but even that long-standing practice is being scrutinized.

“As linesmakers, we’re going to start to take into more and more consideration whether there is a home-field advantage,” Gardner said. “We have to study it on a bigger scale to see what the impact is.”

Even the playoffs have shown that playing at home doesn’t always help. While home teams have won 65 percent of playoff games this decade, only one Super Bowl winner - the New England Patriots in 2004 - didn’t need to win a game on the road. The New York Giants last season and the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2006 swept through the playoffs without playing a single home game. The Giants won 10 straight road games last season en route to the Super Bowl and extended that streak to 12 with two more road wins early this season.

The current season is also offering a pile of anecdotal evidence of a decline in home-field advantage. The Indianapolis Colts, for instance, began their season with two home losses despite opening a new stadium. The Patriots lost home games to the division rival Dolphins and Jets, and the AFC West champion Denver Broncos endured home losses to the Dolphins, Raiders and Jaguars. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Bills are in the midst of a four-game losing streak at home, while the Seahawks are 1-6 at Qwest Field, considered one of the loudest stadiums in the NFL.

Oh, and then there’s the Redskins’ home loss to the lowly St. Louis Rams.

“For some reason we just haven’t been able to win games at home,” Redskins running back Rock Cartwright said. “I don’t know why that is. We have great fans. It’s loud. … I don’t know whether it’s because when you’re on the road you have to be more focused. I don’t know. I really can’t put my finger on it.”

Indeed, the reasons for the decline in home winning percentage are a mystery. One theory blames the era of new stadiums. The opening of FedEx Field in 1997 began a boom of facilities that are larger and more open, with field surfaces that hardly differ from one city to the next. Meanwhile, ticket prices have shut out some of the more intense, blue-collar fans, a trend that some observers said will continue with new stadiums for the Giants and Jets in New Jersey and the Cowboys in Arlington, Texas.

“A lot of [stadiums] have gotten a little bit less hostile,” Gardner said. “You look at what’s going to be going on in Dallas and how much more corporate and how much more tickets are costing. … It’s not the same rowdy fans. Everybody’s trying to clean up the image, and when you clean up the image, you’re taking away some of the intimidation factor.”

But even that theory is not supported by the data. More than half of the teams with new stadiums since 1997 have home winning percentages better than the league average.

Merril Hoge, an ESPN football analyst and former running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers, said older stadiums like Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, the Astrodome in Houston and Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia held in more noise than the stadiums of today. He also said it has become more common for teams to make special preparations for road games by pumping in crowd noise or simulating other conditions during practices.

“Usually, it took us a quarter to settle down,” said Hoge, who retired in 1994. “But once we started doing that, we were settled right away.”

FedEx Field essentially has been league-average in terms of home-field advantage, with the Redskins winning 56 percent of their games in the 12 years since the stadium opened. Between 1985 and 1996, the final 12 seasons at RFK Stadium, the Redskins won 61 percent of games at home, but the team also was much more successful overall.

“It’s a good home stadium. We’ve got the crowd and everything,” Randle El said. “We’re not defending it too well, but you’ve 90,000 fans, it should be hard to come in and play.”