Super Bowl Notes

A couple items came up during the Super Bowl that touch on posts I've made here in the past. First, it was repeatedly mentioned during the game broadcast that although Green Bay ended up with a somewhat mediocre record of 10-6, all their losses were extremely competitive. Green Bay never trailed by more than 7 points during any game at any point in the season, and their 6 losses were by 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, and 4 points, for an average of 3.33. This average is one of the all-time lows, and compares well to the teams mentioned in my Close But No Cigar post from a year ago.

The second item has to do with the endgame strategy surrounding Green Bay's field goal attempt at the end of the game. Holding a three point lead, Green Bay had fourth down from the Steelers' 5 yard line with just over 2 minutes left in the game. This is a classic situation where statisticians claim teams are routinely too conservative. Kicking the field goal hands the ball back to Pittsburgh, while going for it either wins the game with a touchdown, or pins Pittsburgh deep in their own end of the field.

That kind of analysis is not too unusual; similar arguments about 4th downs come up many times each season. However, on the Advanced NFL Stats site, an interesting addition to this argument appeared. That site has a "win probability" engine - for any given game situation, it provides the probability of each team winning, based on historical game outcomes from similar situations. For the game situation after the Green Bay field goal (~2 minutes left, in their own end of the field, down 6), the trailing team is expected to win 25% of the time. For the same situation, but with the team trailing by 3 instead of by 6, they are expected to win 21% of the time.

This looks like something along the lines of my 13 is worth more than 14 post from 2009. How can it be that teams trailing by 3 in this situation are less successful than teams trailing by more? It may be that teams trailing by 3 put too much value on reaching overtime, so they play to tie the game rather than to win it outright. When teams are further behind, they are forced to avoid this bad strategy. Also, on the other side of the ball, defenses may play differently as well, when they feel they have a safer lead. This may also be a poor strategy.

In any case, it's another interesting example of a counterintuitive statistic.