When an NFL captain wins the coin toss, they face an immediate choice: take the ball and put your offense on the field, or decline — deferring first possession to your opponent and guaranteeing your team gets the ball to start the second half. For most of football history, teams received. Then something changed.

The data below shows one of the clearest strategic shifts in modern NFL history — a near-complete reversal in how teams use the coin toss, driven by analytics, coaching trends, and an evolving understanding of when possession is most valuable.

Why Teams Defer — and Why It Took So Long to Catch On

Deferring means giving up first possession but locking in possession at the start of the second half — the most strategically valuable point in the game. The team that receives the second-half kickoff gets to respond to halftime adjustments with the ball, and in close games, having the ball with two minutes left in regulation often matters more than first possession at 0–0.

The argument for receiving has always been: score first, set the tone, force the other team to play from behind. That logic made sense in an era when scoring drives were harder to come by. As NFL offenses became more efficient through the 2010s — and as analytics-driven coaching staffs started quantifying the marginal value of possession — the calculus shifted. The tipping point came around 2013, the first season in this dataset where a majority of toss winners leaguewide chose to defer (58%).

By 2025, receiving the ball is almost contrarian. The teams still doing it reliably are outliers — worth examining, because they're either philosophically committed to it or simply haven't fully embraced the consensus.

Teams That Defer the Most (All-Time)

These franchises defer at rates well above the historical league average of 71%. Some were early adopters; others shifted more recently.

All-time · Opening toss wins only · Regular season & postseason · Since 2010

Rank	Team	Defer %	Defers / Wins
1	Las Vegas Raiders	90%	52/58
2	Los Angeles Rams	88%	98/111
3	Buffalo Bills	87%	152/175
4	Seattle Seahawks	86%	146/170
5	New England Patriots	86%	142/166
6	San Francisco 49ers	84%	135/161
7	Cincinnati Bengals	84%	130/155
8	Baltimore Ravens	83%	140/168
9	Kansas City Chiefs	82%	148/180
10	New York Jets	78%	124/158

Teams That Receive the Most (All-Time)

These teams bucked the league trend — consistently choosing to receive. Whether by philosophy, habit, or personnel, they've diverged from the modern consensus.

Rank	Team	Defer %	Defers / Wins
1	Dallas Cowboys	43%	66/154
2	Atlanta Falcons	50%	82/163
3	Arizona Cardinals	53%	87/165
4	Detroit Lions	56%	90/160
5	Pittsburgh Steelers	56%	100/178
6	New Orleans Saints	59%	90/152
7	Indianapolis Colts	61%	94/155
8	Tampa Bay Buccaneers	61%	95/156
9	New York Giants	63%	105/167
10	Houston Texans	64%	99/155

League-Wide Defer Rate by Season (2010–2025)

Watch the number climb. The shift from a minority behavior to a near-universal one happened gradually then rapidly — a textbook adoption curve.