Seahawks Conventional Wisdom: Home Field Dominance

Convention wisdom about the Seattle Seahawks says they are really hard to beat at home in CenturyLink Field, they are really hard to beat on primetime games, and they are really easy to beat when they are playing on the road outside of the Pacific Standard Time zone. I hear these believes echoed over and over again by TV broadcasters. The thing is most of this perception about the team is based on the Mike Holmgren era when the Seahawks became a national noticed team. Back then there were times when those Seahawks teams would lose 6-8 of their roads games. The Seahawks would destroy opponents in Seattle one week only to show up on the east coast the next week and get blasted. The thing is this era is long gone now, but the prevailing notion of the Seahawks hasn't changed. So, I decided to take a look at the Seahawks during Pete Carroll's time at the helm to see if the conventional wisdom needs updating or if it is still valid.

Pete Carroll has been the head coach since 2010, for six full seasons now. During that time his teams have gone 36-12 at home and 24-24 on the road. Over this span the Seahawks are 11-12 in morning games, 34-21 in afternoon games, and 15-3 in evening games. Just looking at these numbers it appears that the old and common belief about the Seahawks appears to be true. Their home record is way better than their away record and they have been mediocre in morning games and excellent in evening games.

Table 1

Stopping our analysis here is simplistic and these numbers do not capture the whole story. During the last six seasons the Seahawks have risen from mediocrity in 2010 and 2011 to elite from 2012 and on. This improvement can be seen in Figure 1 by looking at the teams winning percentage in each of those years. The Seahawks have clearly improved since 2010. The 2015 season was their worst season during this dominate run, yet they still managed to win 10 games good for a 63% win percentage. Seeing as how the team has improved in general over the last several season we should also look at how they have changed on the road, in morning games and in primetime. It is quite possible the early failures skewed the data to hide the present reality.

Figure 1

Let's start by looking at the conventional wisdom that the Seahawks are a dominate home team. I will address the other two topics in subsequent blog posts. Overall I will strive to answer if the Seahawks are still a team that can only win at home and is unstoppable in primetime.

Referring back to Figure 1 we can see a clearly rising trend for the Seahawks away game winning percentage. They have won at least 63% of their away games in each of the last three season. While the road performance has been improving the home game results have actually been dropping. That said they are still stellar. The Seahawks have won at least 63% of their home game in each of their last four seasons and have never won less than 50% with Pete Carroll as the head coach. Additionally the Seahawks home win percentage has been higher than or equal to their overall win percentage every one of those same years.

Another stat we can look at to determine if the Seahawks really are a dominate home team is average point differential, which shows us how close the final score of the Seahawks games are. Final score doesn't always accurately reflect the game player because of garbage tie TD, but in general it shows us how well the Seahawks have been performing in games.

Figure 2

For every season between 2010-2015 the Seahawks have had a positive average point differential at home. Surprisingly though this number has been dropping steadily since a high of 18.5 points in 2012. Even so the Seahawks are still winning by nearly a TD per game when at CenturyLink.

Couple these impressive home field margin of victories with their consistently high winning percentage and it appears that the conventional wisdom about Seahawks being dominate at home is true. Pete Carroll has maintained the level of excellence that was established under Mike Holmgren. His teams have continued to make Seattle one of the hardest places in the NFL for road teams to win.

Sources: Pro Football Reference