Sunday, January 22, 2012

Football Mogul Predicts Super Bowl XLVI


It's that time of year again. Another Super Bowl between the Giants and Pats. To predict the result, we used Football Mogul to simulate the game 100,000 times.
Note: this year's version of Football Mogul is 100% free. No time limits. No strings attached. Please download it. :)
Bottom line: Pats have a 60.78% chance of winning. The most likely score is 31-27.

Here are the average results for each team:

New York Giants New England Patriots
Win Chance 39.22% 60.78%
Average Score 26.9 30.6
Most Likely Score 27 31
Pass Yards 278.3 319.2
Rush Yards 94.2 99.7
Pass TDs 1.98 2.44
Sacks (by defense) 2.15 2.02
Turnovers (committed) 1.20 1.16
Interceptions (thrown) 0.94 0.81

It's interesting that even though the Giants have a better running game, the Patriots average more rush yards. This is because they have a higher chance of being ahead in the 4th quarter, when their play-calling will favor plays that eat up the clock.

Some other interesting facts:
  1. The Giants have a 15.6% chance of getting 4 or more sacks. If they do, their chance of winning goes up to 67.3%.

  2. Tom Brady has a 47.1% chance of passing for 3 or more touchdowns. If he does, the Patriots' chance of winning goes up to 74.3%.

    Conversely, if the Giants can hold Brady to less than 3 TDs, their chance to win the game goes up to 51.4%.

  3. Brady has a 0.47% chance of passing for 6 touchdowns (matching his performance against the Broncos in the AFC Divisional Playoffs). Amazingly, the Giants still have a 4.3% chance of winning these games.
Have more questions about the data? Drop me a line in the comments section.

Clay

Related article: Super Bowl MVP Predictions

2 comments:

ElecSpec said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ElecSpec said...

I'm curious. What percentage of simulated outcomes was closer to the actual result than to the median result? A 3-D histogram of the results (Pats score, Giants score, frequency) would be an interesting way to view the data now that the result is known.