The Road To The Super Bowl

Theory Behind The Numbers

As any fan of the NFL knows, each year as we get closer to the end of the regular season, the odds of making the playoffs and the Super Bowl change dramatically with each game for some teams. With a 16 game schedule (soon to be more?), it gets quite complicated to figure out where each team stands. The purpose of the SSG (Statistical Scatter Graph) provided by this format is to solve this problem WEEKS before the various pre/post game shows attempt to provide analysis.

As you have no doubt guessed by now, the "odds" are based on a combination of real (games played to date) AND theoretical data as calculated by the THOUSANDS of computers (ha, ha) at Ob1gui, Inc. In order to perform this "amazing" feat, the following information is processed by the computer algorithms used:

The "official" NFL tie breaker rules for both conference and division ties between two or more teams (already applied to divisional statistics).

Regular and post season predictions based on calculated point spreads and score between matchups for remainder of the regular season.

"Computed clairvoyance" to allow for "upsets".

The computer algorithm then "plays" the remainder of the NFL season any number of times (100 iterations typical). This process then fills the scatter plot with the probable seedings for all teams likely to make the post season playoffs. This process is far better than a simple win/loss "mathematical" elimination because each team's opponent is examined and statistics are recalculated for each team on a game by game basis. Therefore, what can be deduced is a "probable" distribution grid of results such as:

Chance of each team making the playoffs - at all

Chance of each team winning the division

Chance of each team winning the Super Bowl!!!

Of course, these results are primarily based on the probability that good teams play well most of the time and bad teams play poorly most of the time. You can examine the results on a week by week basis, and as we get closer to the end of the NFL season, watch the grid carefully. I can already predict that the software will be "amazingly" accurate (of course this is because I wrote it!).

The bottom line is that this is still all guess work UNTIL the game is played. Hopefully, this will help you with your analysis of the post season many weeks before it actually happens.

Cheers!