If there's one thing that everyone talks about a lot in sports, it's home-field advantage. Why not? It's a big deal to be playing in front of your own fans on your own field. The thought has always been that the Detroit Lions are best when they're in Ford Field in front of their fans. 

That could be the case in 2025. When you take a look at the Lions' home schedule, there are some real winnable games in there. But Pro Football Focus has a study out now that shows that the Lions might actually be better on the road in 2025 than they are at home. Even with the hard schedule. 

The idea behind the study is that there's a burgeoning trend that's seeing home teams beginning to win fewer home games in the last four years. It's really happening, too. 

You can see that this trend didn't just start recently; it's been going on since 2015, but it's really begun that stark drop since 2020.

There are a few other things that they noted. The first one is that travelling has gotten a little more advanced in recent years, and it's made the away team a little less flummoxed when they're on the road. 

The other thing is that home teams had better PFF grades at home just 53% of the time. So we looked at the Lions' PFF grades from 202,4 and here is what we found. 

Home PFF grades	Away PFF grades
78.7 vs Rams	78.5 at Cardinals
67 vs Buccaneers	90.4 at Cowboys
80.3 vs Seahawks	76.1 at Vikings
80.9 vs Titans	70.3 at Packers
91,8 vs Jaguars	77.4 at Texans
71.8 vs Bears	74.1 at Colts
72.1 vs Packers	76.0 at Bears
61.1 vs Bills	77.7 at 49ers
81.8 vs Vikings

You can see that the Lions actually performed better on the road last year if you go by PFF grades. The Lions have a cumulative 76.1 grade at home and a cumulative 77.5 grade on the road. The Lions were undefeated on the road and suffered all their losses at home. 

If you want to go even deeper, there's EPA. Here's a breakdown of how the Lions did with EPA in every category on the road vs at home.

EPA at home

• The Lions were second in passing EPA with 69.10
• The Lions were second in rush EPA with 21.31
• The Lions were first in receiving EPA with 96.73

EPA on the Road

• The Lions were third in passing EPA with 60.04
• The Lions were 14th in rushing EPA with 1.41
• The Lions were second in receiving EPA with 97.22

In this case, the Lions are better on offense at home, but not by a ton outside of running the ball. They're actually better at receiving on the road, and that likely correlates to how they're not as good at running on the road. 

The study does note that home-field advantage is still very much a thing when it comes to the postseason, and that this study is based on regular-season games played at home and on the road and not at international sites.

We'll see what happens here pretty soon, but it's worth noting that home-field advantage just doesn't seem to be what it once was anymore. It's worth noting that Lions fans seem to travel better than any team in the league right now. So, is any game really an away game? 

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