Divisional Round Homefield Trends

The Wild Card teams continued their winning ways last week, going 3-1 against the homestanding division champs, now lets examine the importance of home field in divisional round, as the top two teams in each conference enter the fray. This is the 22nd season that the NFL has had this exact playoff format. Teams that have home field in the divisional round are 63-21, which means that on average home teams go 3-1, which was how they fared last year, but the last 4 years prior, home teams were just 7-9, so the first 16 years of this format the home teams were winning at an 83% clip. Anyways, all 4 home teams have won 6 times, and no more than 2 road teams have won 4 times, all 4 have happened in the last 6 years. 2 years ago was the first time that more than 2 home teams have ever lost during one weekend in this round. Here it is broken down further:

#1 Seed AFC- 13-8

#2 Seed AFC- 15-6

#1 Seed NFC- 19-2

#2 Seed NFC- 16-5

• 3 of the 8 teams that have lost as the #1 seed in the AFC have been coached by Marty Schottenheimer.
• AFC # 1 seeds that played on Saturday went 9-3, they went 4-5 on Sunday.
  
• Home teams are 35-7 (.833) on Saturday, 28-14 on Sunday (.667)
• Coincidentally the NFC home teams are 35-7 and the AFC home teams are 28-14
• Peyton Manning has played in 6 divisonal playoff games. In those 6 games the home team is 1-5. He is 0-3 at home, and 2-1 on the road.