Sean McDermott is hinting pretty strongly that he’ll be holding out key guys on Sunday. That doesn’t surprise me. The Bills could potentially lose the No. 2 seed (if the Steelers were to win at Cleveland) but I don’t think Dermott is too worried about potentially playing at Heinz Field.
First off, it probably won’t happen. The Steelers are definitely holding out a number of key players, including Ben Roethlisberger, Cam Heyward and T.J. Watt. And even if the AFC seeding were to change, is there a big difference between playing at Pittsburgh or Orchard Park is the stadiums are almost empty?
As the regular season comes to a close, we can see that the pandemic has dramatically reduced the value of home-field advantage. Crowds are a part of that, as can be seen by looking at the overall numbers.
Home teams this year have gone only 120-119-1. The previous 10 years, they’ve tended to go about 145-111 in home games.
Numbers are as follows …
| RECORDS OF HOME TEAMS | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | W | L | T | Pct |
| 2010 | 143 | 113 | 0 | .559 |
| 2011 | 145 | 111 | 0 | .566 |
| 2012 | 146 | 109 | 1 | .572 |
| 2013 | 153 | 102 | 1 | .600 |
| 2014 | 145 | 110 | 1 | .568 |
| 2015 | 138 | 118 | 0 | .539 |
| 2016 | 147 | 107 | 2 | .578 |
| 2017 | 145 | 111 | 0 | .566 |
| 2018 | 153 | 101 | 2 | .602 |
| 2019 | 132 | 123 | 1 | .518 |
| 2020 | 120 | 119 | 1 | .502 |
Note that there is a little bit of pollution in these numbers. The 49ers have played a couple of “home” games at Glendale, losing both of them (so that 120-119-1 record could be switched to 120-117-1). I don’t recall if there were other games moved by COVID ramifications. In each of the previous 10 years, there were multiple games played at international venues; they similarly could be reclassified as neutral sites, but not wanting to make an afternoon out of this project, I just left them as is – call them rounding errors.
Bottom line is I don’t consider home-field advantage is much of a factor this year. There’s been some talk about Lambeau Field, for example, and I’ll concede the Packers have more experience playing in lesser weather. But Green Bay has looked very comfortable in all of its dome games this year, winning comfortably against the Vikings, Saints, Lions and Texans. With Kansas City, that’s a tough offense, whether they’re playing in front of a few thousand fans at Arrowhead or going on the road.
Not a big year for home-field advantage.
—Ian Allan