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Who's Your Pick? Eagles or Chiefs?
Eagles or Chiefs? Who's your pick to win the Super Bowl?
Anyone can make a guess, but can we predict the winner with some skill? At first glance, the Eagles were 14-3 during the regular season, but the Chiefs had a slightly better record at 15-2. Therefore, we should pick the Chiefs, right? As college football commentator Lee Corso would say, not so fast, my friend.
A game like chess has no luck at all. You might say you got lucky if your opponent made a poor decision, but that's really just human error. When I make a move like to castle kingside, that move always happens in the exact same way, with no luck involved. In football, however, there's a lot of random chance. A gust of wind might blow a field goal wide right, or a receiver might slip on a slick field and miss an otherwise easy pass. Or the officials might miss a call due to their own human error. Research shows that there's a lot of luck in football, and it doesn't always even out over a 16 or 17 game season [youtube.com]. If we want to predict the outcome of future games skillfully, we need a way to distinguish lucky teams from good teams.
The most accurate prediction systems rely heavily on margin of victory instead of a team's won-loss record. If the quarterback throws a pass to a wide open receiver, but the receiver slips on a slick field and doesn't catch the pass, it might prevent the team from scoring a touchdown on that drive. Luck might cost the team a touchdown, but it's a lot less likely for bad luck to cost that team two or three touchdowns. When teams win or lose games by larger margins, they're more insulated from the effects of luck. A team that wins a lot of close games might well be getting lucky, but a team that's blowing out their opponents is probably just a really good team. Strength of schedule also matters. If a team is winning a lot of blowout games but against lesser competition, they're probably not as good as their record or margins of victory might suggest.
Another factor is the pace of play. A team that plays quickly is going to run more plays during a game, and that will also result in more scoring. A good team that plays quickly will probably win by larger margins, but a bad team with a rapid tempo is going to lose by larger margins. Many good prediction systems also take this into account, as well as that teams also tend to perform slightly better when they're at home than on the road.
During the regular season, the Chiefs outscored their opponents by a total of 59 points, but the Eagles had a much larger scoring margin of 160 points. But what about their schedules?
Two of the best rating systems are ESPN's Football Power Index (FPI) [espn.com] and Jeff Sagarin's ratings [sagarin.com]. FPI shows that the Chiefs played the 20th toughest schedule, compared to the Eagles with the 23rd strongest schedule. Sagarin also has the Chiefs' schedule at #20, but the Eagles at #30. According to Sagarin, the average Chiefs opponent was 0.97 points tougher than the average Eagles opponent. Over the course of the season, this is worth about 16.49 points. If the Eagles played the same schedule as the Chiefs, we would expect the Chiefs to have a scoring margin of 75.49 points. That's a little better, but still not nearly as good as the Eagles.
The advanced metrics generally agree that the Eagles are the better team. If we subtract their FPI ratings, we would expect the Eagles to be favored by 2.1 points. Sagarin's ratings suggest Eagles by 4.08. On paper, the advanced metrics say the Eagles have a small edge over the Chiefs. But those predictions are actually the mean (or very close to it) of a statistical distribution of possible outcomes. FPI favors the Eagles by 2.1, but gives them a 56.1% chance of winning [espn.com]. Although we can predict football games with some skill, this is why we still have to play the games.
Who's your pick? Chiefs or Eagles?
