blog » Warm Weather NFL Teams Going Cold Late In The Season

Warm weather NFL teams going cold late in the season

Nov 8th, 2011 - Posted by Andrew in American Sports

BettingExpert Blog editor. Always taking the alternative route to finding the value.

Email : andrew at bettingexpert.com

How do NFL teams from warn weather cities perform late in the season when visiting the cold weather cities in the north? As we gear up for the tail end of the NFL season, Andrew breaks down the numbers and finds some interesting results.

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As someone who has grown up in a relatively moderate climate, I can remember the first time I really felt cold weather. Christmas Day, 1990 in Kansas City. That year myself and my family spent a few weeks in the U.S.

It was also the year that my beloved New York Giants, somehow managed to win the Superbowl with a career long backup quarterback. I remember watching the Divisional playoff against the Bears while sitting a hotel room in steamy Orlando and the next week watching the NFC Championship in a hotel room in freezing Chicago.

The great expanse of the North American continent enjoys and is subjected to a diverse range of climates. From tropical Miami to snowy Buffalo all the way across to stormy Seattle down to sunny San Diego.

Playing around with my NFL database the other day, I decided to look at how the weather might impact upon performance. So I divided the league into warm weather teams and cold weather teams, just to see what might happen when they squared off.

When these clubs face each late in the season, we see a distinctive, and possibly predictable trend.

Let's talk about the weather

So let's start by detailing which teams we will call Warm Weather Teams and Cold Weather Teams.

The following teams we will consider Warm Weather Teams:

Arizona
Atlanta
Dallas
Houston
Jacksonville
Miami
New Orleans
Oakland
San Diego
San Francisco
Tampa Bay

The following teams we will consider Cold Weather Teams:

Baltimore
Buffalo
Chicago
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Denver
Green Bay
New England
New York Giants
New York Jets
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Seattle
Washington

When Warm meets Cold late in the season

Playing around with the numbers, one clear trend developed in terms of betting lines and performance when Warm Weather Teams visit Cold Weather Teams in December and January. This is the time of the year where the weather is most vicious in the northern states of the U.S and clearly, when we look at the numbers, the shift in climate has had a dramatic impact upon the results in those games.

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Above we can see that late in the season, Warm Weather Teams have performed against the line quite poorly. In the months of December and January, with the winter at its bitterest, Cold Weather Teams are just on 60% against the line when hosting Warm Weather Teams since 1991 with a sample size of over 200 games.

Not one Warm Weather Team has a winning record against the line through this span, with Houston having the best record of 4-4, while both San Francisco and Oakland were a combined 14% against the line in this situation since 1991.

Further to this, the overall straight up win-loss record for home teams since 1991 is just under 59%, whilst for Cold Weather Teams hosting Warm Weather Teams in December and January, that figure climbs to almost 65%.

And just as a side note, the Over/Under record is just above 55% in favour of the Under in these games.