Road teams are favored. Crowds don’t matter. The game I played isn’t the game they’re playing.
The Washington Post ran a piece this week about how home-field advantage isn’t what it seems in the NFL playoffs. Road teams have more wins. Road teams are favored. In four of six matchups, Vegas likes the visitor. Mark Maske calls these “competitive games” and says nobody should be surprised if lower seeds advance.
Here’s what I took from that: home-field advantage NFL playoffs used to mean something. Now it doesn’t. And if you want to know what’s wrong with professional sports in 2026, start there.
When The Crowd Actually Mattered
I played the game. All-Conference Honorable Mention, 2006. And I can tell you, when we went on the road, you FELT it. The crowd noise. The hostility. Opposing fans knew your name—and not in a good way. One game at Lincoln High, a guy in the stands held up a sign about my tackling. Rattled me for a whole series. That’s what a hostile environment does.
These NFL players? They’ve got noise-canceling headphones before the game. They’ve got meditation apps. They’ve got “sports psychologists” telling them to visualize success. They’ve been so insulated from discomfort their whole careers that playing in Philadelphia feels the same as playing in Jacksonville.
That’s not mental toughness. That’s the absence of mental challenge.
The Analytics Problem
The article is full of numbers. Win totals. Seedings. Betting lines. You know what’s missing? Heart. Grit. The intangibles that don’t show up in a spreadsheet.
Maske writes about how the Panthers—a team with a LOSING record—are hosting the Rams because they won their division. He frames this as some kind of problem that the owners need to fix. Change the seeding system. Let wild cards host games.
Look. I’m not saying an 8-9 team should host a 12-5 team. But you know what used to happen when a worse team had home-field advantage? The better team had to go EARN it. They had to silence the crowd. They had to impose their will in enemy territory. Now we’re supposed to feel sorry for the Rams because they have to play in Carolina?
The Rams are three-point favorites ON THE ROAD. If home-field advantage NFL style actually existed anymore, that line would be different.
The Coaching Carousel
The article also mentions that eight teams are looking for new head coaches. Eight. That’s a quarter of the league. John Harbaugh—eighteen seasons in Baltimore—fired. Mike McDaniel—gone. And the season isn’t even over.
My high school coach, Coach Devlin, was there for twenty-three years. He built something. He developed men. He didn’t get fired because we went 6-4 one season. He got time to instill a culture.
These NFL owners want results NOW. They want a Super Bowl in year two or you’re out. And then they wonder why there’s no continuity, no culture, no home-field advantage that actually intimidates anyone. You can’t build a fortress if you’re changing the architect every three years.
What It Tells You
Home-field advantage mattered when the game was harder. When travel was harder. When players actually heard the crowd instead of their curated pre-game playlists. When coaches had time to build something opponents feared walking into.
Now? It’s all neutral sites in their heads. Every stadium is the same. Every crowd is just background noise. Every game is just another analytics problem to solve.
I’m writing this from Newswax headquarters, where I’ve been tracking these playoffs closer than anyone. And I can tell you: when road teams are favored in four of six games, the problem isn’t the seeding system. The problem is that nobody’s intimidated anymore.
They should be. But these guys today? They’re built different. And not in the way they think that means.
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