5 Toughest Places to Play in the NFL
EA Sports revealed its list of the Toughest Places to Play last Tuesday ahead of its highly anticipated College Football 25 video game release. The rankings, which naturally inspired great debate among college football fans, were based on “home winning percentage, home game attendance, active home winning streaks, team prestige and more.”
With those factors in mind, we applied those metrics to the NFL to find out which stadiums were among the toughest places to play in the pros.
Home Winning Percentage
Including regular season and playoff games, the Ravens (.674) own the best home winning percentage of all time, followed by the Packers (.664), Cowboys (.644), Dolphins (.642) and Vikings (.631). Since 2000, the Patriots (.744), have the highest winning percentage. The Packers (.713), Ravens (.704), Steelers (.694) and Seahawks (.670) round out the top five home teams this century after New England. And finally, over the last five years the Chiefs (.759) have the best winning percentage at home, followed by the Packers (.756), Bills (.735), Cowboys (.698) and Browns (.667).
Chiefs fans have had plenty to cheer about in recent years. Denny Medley/USA TODAY Sports
Home Game Attendance
The Cowboys have led the NFL in total home game attendance for the last 15 years. And “America’s Team” has done this despite AT&T Stadium ranking third in the NFL in stadium capacity behind MetLife Stadium (home to the Jets and Giants) and Lambeau Field (Packers).
The Jets, Giants, Broncos, Packers, Chiefs and Ravens are also typically among the league leaders in annual attendance. All seven teams play in stadiums that house at least 70,000 fans. Dallas, Green Bay, Kansas City and Baltimore all regularly make the playoffs while the Jets haven’t done so in 13 years. Denver hasn’t been in the postseason in almost a decade and the Giants have only two trips to show for the last 12 seasons.
Active Home Winning Streaks
Though Dallas was upset by Green Bay at home in the playoffs, the Cowboys have won 16 consecutive regular season games at AT&T Stadium. That’s tied for the 12th-longest regular-season winning streak of all time. The only other recent streaks in that stratosphere are the Packers’ run of 15 straight at Lambeau from 2020-22 and when the Patriots rattled off 18 in a row at Gillette Stadium from 2017-19. Cleveland finished last season on a six-game home winning streak and its 8–1 record at Cleveland Browns Stadium in 2023 was second only to Dallas.
Team Prestige
This is where the Chiefs begin to dominate the conversation. The back-to-back Super Bowl champions have the best home winning percentage over the last five years by far, and that gap only increases if you go back to 2018, when Patrick Mahomes took over as the starter. Since then, Kansas City has won 76.6% of its games at Arrowhead Stadium, which holds the Guinness World Record for the loudest outdoor stadium.
The Chiefs are also 12–2 at home with Mahomes in the playoffs, and their only two losses have come in the AFC Championship, which Kansas City has hosted for six seasons running. According to a poll of NFL players conducted by The Athletic in December, Arrowhead also had the highest percentage of players vote it as the best stadium to play in.
The Packers also fit the bill as far as prestige goes. Lambeau Field is the oldest stadium in the NFL and Green Bay is a perennial playoff contender with a fervent fanbase. One could also make a case for the Cowboys, though their NFC Championship drought hangs over the team like a dark cloud.
Toughest Places to Play
Based on the above criteria — and factoring in “and more” that EA mentioned as weather-based advantages — these five stadiums are the toughest places to play in the NFl:
- Arrowhead Stadium — Kansas City Chiefs
- Lambeau Field — Green Bay Packers
- AT&T Stadium — Dallas Cowboys
- Highmark Stadium — Buffalo Bills
- M&T Bank Stadium — Baltimore Ravens
Arrowhead is self-explanatory given the Chiefs’ decade-long run of regular season and playoff dominance at home. And just ask the Dolphins how cold it can get in Kansas City. Lambeau is on the list for similar reasons. Historically and recently, the Packers have been a tough out in Green Bay, which is where the coldest game in NFL history was played.
Though the Cowboys have not enjoyed the same playoff success in recent years as the Chiefs and Packers, AT&T Stadium is still a tough place to play. The last time Dallas lost a regular-season game at home was Week 1 of the 2022 season. While the dome gives both teams an even footing as far as weather goes, the Cowboys can count on home field advantage every Sunday thanks to their legions of fans.
The Bills have the third-highest home winning percentage over the last decade behind the Chiefs and Packers and their 23 total wins at Highmark Stadium over the last three seasons is second only to Kansas City. Buffalo has its share of inclement weather late in the year — the Bills-Steelers divisional round game was postponed due to a blizzard — and the Bills Mafia are a rowdy bunch.
Count M&T Bank Stadium as one of the two stadiums that forced Mahomes to switch to a silent count due to crowd noise. The NFL’s best quarterback commended Ravens fans for being some of the league’s loudest last season and historically, Baltimore has the best home winning percentage of all time.