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Statistics guru Nate Silver has crunched the numbers, and he is expecting Super Bowl XLIX to be one of the most grind-it-out matchups in the history of the Big Game.
In fact, the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots are so statistically evenly matched that this Sunday’s showdown at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, could be — as Silver put it — “the worst Super Bowl ever” in terms of excitement. As he noted, great matchups haven’t historically meant great Super Bowls.
Writing on his FiveThirtyEight blog, part of ESPN, Silver said his “Elo” ranking system puts this year’s matchup at No. 2 among all Super Bowls since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. And if New England hadn’t dropped its Week 17 matchup to Buffalo, when the Patriots rested many starters, XLIX would rank the best in history.
Silver is predicting a Seahawks victory — but not by much.
It’s not only that the Seahawks and Patriots are strong teams: They’re just about evenly matched. The Vegas line opened as a pick ’em, and most sports books have the Patriots as mere one-point favorites. Elo, which loves the Seahawks, differs slightly here: It has Seattle as 2.5-point favorites. But that’s partly because the system, in its simplicity, punished the Patriots for their meaningless Week 17 loss against Buffalo. Without that game, the Patriots’ Elo rating would be 1756, which would make Seattle only one-point favorites and which would vault this matchup ahead of Super Bowl XIII into the top slot of all time. …
There’s one very encouraging precedent. The aforementioned Super Bowl XIII, played after the 1978 regular season, had a lot of parallels to this one. The Cowboys, like this year’s Seahawks, were a 12-4 team coming off a Super Bowl championship. The Steelers, like this year’s Patriots, were an aging dynasty hoping for one more ring. (As it turns out, they’d win two more.) The Steelers won 35-31, and the outcome might have different if not for a dropped touchdown catch by Cowboys tight end Jackie Smith. Super Bowl XIII ranks very well in the Excitement Index and even higher on subjective lists of the best Super Bowls, one of which has it as the best game ever.
Visit seattlepi.com for Seattle Seahawks news. Contact sports editor Nick Eaton at 206-448-8125, nickeaton@seattlepi.com or @njeaton.
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In fact, the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots are so statistically evenly matched that this Sunday’s showdown at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, could be — as Silver put it — “the worst Super Bowl ever” in terms of excitement. As he noted, great matchups haven’t historically meant great Super Bowls.
Writing on his FiveThirtyEight blog, part of ESPN, Silver said his “Elo” ranking system puts this year’s matchup at No. 2 among all Super Bowls since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. And if New England hadn’t dropped its Week 17 matchup to Buffalo, when the Patriots rested many starters, XLIX would rank the best in history.
Silver is predicting a Seahawks victory — but not by much.
It’s not only that the Seahawks and Patriots are strong teams: They’re just about evenly matched. The Vegas line opened as a pick ’em, and most sports books have the Patriots as mere one-point favorites. Elo, which loves the Seahawks, differs slightly here: It has Seattle as 2.5-point favorites. But that’s partly because the system, in its simplicity, punished the Patriots for their meaningless Week 17 loss against Buffalo. Without that game, the Patriots’ Elo rating would be 1756, which would make Seattle only one-point favorites and which would vault this matchup ahead of Super Bowl XIII into the top slot of all time. …
There’s one very encouraging precedent. The aforementioned Super Bowl XIII, played after the 1978 regular season, had a lot of parallels to this one. The Cowboys, like this year’s Seahawks, were a 12-4 team coming off a Super Bowl championship. The Steelers, like this year’s Patriots, were an aging dynasty hoping for one more ring. (As it turns out, they’d win two more.) The Steelers won 35-31, and the outcome might have different if not for a dropped touchdown catch by Cowboys tight end Jackie Smith. Super Bowl XIII ranks very well in the Excitement Index and even higher on subjective lists of the best Super Bowls, one of which has it as the best game ever.
Visit seattlepi.com for Seattle Seahawks news. Contact sports editor Nick Eaton at 206-448-8125, nickeaton@seattlepi.com or @njeaton.
Continue reading...