NFL Team Luck
How 1-score game results impact next years wins
Football is a game of weird bounces, questionable decisions by the head coach and disputable penalty calls by the officials. These things are hard to quantify from an impact perspective, but are usually reflected in the 1-score game record. I like to classify a teams performance in 1-score as luck, as it’s hard to duplicate those results year after year.
To demonstrate this, I built a scatterplot that shows a teams performance in 1-score games (win %) against the win change between current season and the following season. The chart uses the results from the 2017-2022 NFL seasons. I added some color and a trend line to make the chart easier to interpret.
I colored the teams that won more than 70% of 1-score games in red, and I used green for those that won less than 30% 1-score games. As you can see, if a team is lucky and wins a high percentage of 1-score games, they are more likely to lose more games in the upcoming season. The opposite is also clear, teams that perform poorly in 1-score games the prior season are more likely to win more games in the upcoming season.
Now that we know what to expect from the results, we can zoom in and put some numbers on the teams 1-score game performance. Here is a look at the teams that have Above Average luck in the prior season.
We already knew these teams did not have a tendency to fair well in the upcoming season, but now know how much decline to expect. On average a team lost 2.5 more games in the season following above average success in 1-score games. This is dragged down a big by the results from the 2019 season, and if you exclude that season from the results the decline is much closer to 3 games.
On the other side of the spectrum, teams that have below average success in 1-score games improve the following season, they just don’t improve as drastically as above average performers decline. You can expect the prior season teams with poor luck to win 1.5 more games the next season
And for full transparency, here is how teams that have average luck improve the next season. Oh wait, they don’t, they win just about the same amount of games the following season.
Now that we know how 1-score game performance impacts the upcoming season, we can focus on how each team did in the 2022 season. The chart to the right shows each teams total 2022 wins, but they are grouped by the 1-score performance. The lucky teams from last year are colored in red, and the unlucky teams from last year are colored in green. All other teams are in gray, and we should expect similar results this year from those teams.
Looking at the teams shaded in red, and I’m not surprised by a few. Both Minnesota and Dallas made early playoff exits, and that is where most lucky teams are exposed. I expected Philadelphia to have a better season than most last year, and they came through with 14 wins. I would expect them to take a step back this year as most Super Bowl runner ups do the following year, but they also have a top-10 easiest schedule this year, so if any of these teams can be an outlier, look to the Eagles.
If we turn our focus to the bottom of the chart and the teams shaded in green a few other things jump out at me. For starters, 2 of those teams have new head coaches, so Arizona and Houston’s new coaches should benefit from luck change alone. I know a lot of times teams show a win/loss improvement when they get a new head coach, now I wonder how many of them just inherited unlucky teams.
This is a great piece of information to factor in when deciding to place a futures bet on a team. Whether you’re looking at win totals or division winner bets, understanding what could drive the results need to be considered. The teams prior season performance in 1-score games is a key piece of information I use as I prepare for the upcoming season.
