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In the wildcard round last season, all four road teams won.  It isn’t unusual to see a lower seed win in the wildcard round, as often you have the stronger team being on the road against a weak division winner.  That was probably the case when we saw KC beat Houston and Green Bay win in Washington last year; in addition, the Steelers upset the Bengals and Seahawks beat the Vikings.

Since then? Not a single road team has won a playoff game.  The four teams with bye last year — Carolina, Arizona, New England, and Denver — all won in the division round of the playoffs.  Then the #1 seeded Broncos and Panthers won, too, marking six straight home wins.  We skip the Super Bowl, although for trivia fans, the champion Broncos were in fact the designated home team.

In the first round of the playoffs this year, all four home teams won.  The “weak division winner” Texans were aided by a QB injury and beat the Raiders, while the 4 seed in the NFC (the Packers) rode a hot end-of-year streak to beat the Giants.  In addition, Seattle and Pittsburgh won as 3 seeds.

Then, yesterday, the 1 seeded Patriots and 2 seeded Falcons beat the Texans and Seahawks, respectively.  That runs the streak up to 12 straight wins by home teams in the playoffs.  That’s easily the most in NFL history.

In addition, if we include last year’s Super Bowl, that means the last 8 playoff games have been decided by at least 13 points.

Points
Tm Year Date
Time Opp Week Day Result PF PA PD
CAR 2015 2016-01-24 6:42 ARI 20 Sun W 49-15 49 15 34
DEN 2015 2016-02-07 6:39 CAR 21 Sun W 24-10 24 10 14
HOU 2016 2017-01-07 4:35 OAK 18 Sat W 27-14 27 14 13
SEA 2016 2017-01-07 8:15 DET 18 Sat W 26-6 26 6 20
PIT 2016 2017-01-08 1:05 MIA 18 Sun W 30-12 30 12 18
GNB 2016 2017-01-08 4:40 NYG 18 Sun W 38-13 38 13 25
ATL 2016 2017-01-14 4:35 SEA 19 Sat W 36-20 36 20 16
NWE 2016 2017-01-14 8:15 HOU 19 Sat W 34-16 34 16 18

There had never even been six straight games decided by at least 13 points, so this is also an NFL playoff record.

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