A quick word today on home field advantage. In my book I show where/how player performance is somewhat influenced by whether they play at home or on the road. The data in a vacuum isn't overwhelming, but the conclusions are meaningful when played out week after week, season after season.
This morning I woke up wondering whether home teams have any unusual advantages during most leagues' fantasy playoffs (weeks 14-16). Because when a team wins, that team's players (on average) are more likely to outperform the losing team's players. So it stands to reason that if home teams have a dramatic advantage late in the season, we should weight their players more heavily in rostering and sit/start decisions.
Historically, NFL home teams have won 57% of the time. So I decided to evaluate weeks 14-16 during the past 10 seasons: 2007-2016. That's 480 games--a decent sample size. As it turns out, home teams won 268 of those games, or 56% of the time.
Digging a bit deeper, Week 14 yielded the highest home winning percentage (59%), followed by Week 16 (58%). In Week 15 contests, home teams won only 51% of the time. I believe this separation is due to random scheduling. If we looked five years earlier, to 2003-2007, we'd find that Week 15 home teams won 58% of the time.
So what does this tell us? My hypothesis that home teams have a greater advantage late in the season is bunk, at least when considering the past decade. In fact, during this stretch home teams have performed slightly worse during weeks 14-16 than during the rest of the season.
And we can take this another step further (we can actually take this hundreds of steps further, but let's start with one). Although there isn't a greater-than-usual home field advantage during the fantasy playoffs, are teams scoring more points during these weeks? In other words, can we demonstrate that offensive players are likely generating more fantasy points than during other points of the season?
The simple answer: no. Teams on average scored 22.4 points per game from 2007 to 2016. During weeks 14-16, teams on average scored 22.2 points per game.
The "steps further" research might include research into the extent offensive touchdowns rose or dipped during the fantasy playoffs (vs. field goals and DST scores). We might also look at injury impacts--whether more teams in weeks 14-16 had 2-3 RBs rotating carries vs. 1-2 the rest of the season. There are, literally, hundreds of micro-examinations whose conclusions might shape future rostering and sit/start decision making.
But for now, keep this to your fantasy toolkit: home teams have an advantage over road teams, and on average, home-team players have a very slight advantage over road-team players. But these advantages are not at all accentuated during the fantasy playoffs. If anything, they're slightly muted.
This morning I woke up wondering whether home teams have any unusual advantages during most leagues' fantasy playoffs (weeks 14-16). Because when a team wins, that team's players (on average) are more likely to outperform the losing team's players. So it stands to reason that if home teams have a dramatic advantage late in the season, we should weight their players more heavily in rostering and sit/start decisions.
Historically, NFL home teams have won 57% of the time. So I decided to evaluate weeks 14-16 during the past 10 seasons: 2007-2016. That's 480 games--a decent sample size. As it turns out, home teams won 268 of those games, or 56% of the time.
Digging a bit deeper, Week 14 yielded the highest home winning percentage (59%), followed by Week 16 (58%). In Week 15 contests, home teams won only 51% of the time. I believe this separation is due to random scheduling. If we looked five years earlier, to 2003-2007, we'd find that Week 15 home teams won 58% of the time.
So what does this tell us? My hypothesis that home teams have a greater advantage late in the season is bunk, at least when considering the past decade. In fact, during this stretch home teams have performed slightly worse during weeks 14-16 than during the rest of the season.
And we can take this another step further (we can actually take this hundreds of steps further, but let's start with one). Although there isn't a greater-than-usual home field advantage during the fantasy playoffs, are teams scoring more points during these weeks? In other words, can we demonstrate that offensive players are likely generating more fantasy points than during other points of the season?
The simple answer: no. Teams on average scored 22.4 points per game from 2007 to 2016. During weeks 14-16, teams on average scored 22.2 points per game.
The "steps further" research might include research into the extent offensive touchdowns rose or dipped during the fantasy playoffs (vs. field goals and DST scores). We might also look at injury impacts--whether more teams in weeks 14-16 had 2-3 RBs rotating carries vs. 1-2 the rest of the season. There are, literally, hundreds of micro-examinations whose conclusions might shape future rostering and sit/start decision making.
But for now, keep this to your fantasy toolkit: home teams have an advantage over road teams, and on average, home-team players have a very slight advantage over road-team players. But these advantages are not at all accentuated during the fantasy playoffs. If anything, they're slightly muted.