Skip to main content

Mathletics Super Bowl Prediction

If you like Football or math, this post is for you. As a follow up to Professor Kaplan and my weekly Mathletics NFL rankings, listed below are the final rankings of the 2011 season:League Avg: 22.26 Home Edge: 3.42

Team Off Rating Def Rating Off-Def
New Orleans Saints

10.66

-0.93

11.59

Green Bay Packers

11.47

0.04

11.43

New England Patriots

9.18

0.07

9.11

San Francisco 49ers

1.51

-6.66

8.17

Baltimore Ravens

2.68

-3.57

6.26

Detroit Lions

6.87

0.75

6.12

Pittsburgh Steelers

-0.70

-6.14

5.45

Houston Texans

1.49

-3.33

4.82

Philadelphia Eagles

2.93

-1.69

4.62

Atlanta Falcons

1.90

-1.82

3.72

Chicago Bears

-1.47

-3.19

1.73

Dallas Cowboys

0.57

-0.95

1.52

New York Giants

2.94

1.46

1.49

Miami Dolphins

-2.16

-3.22

1.06

Seattle Seahawks

-0.45

-1.37

0.93

San Diego Chargers

2.68

1.76

0.92

New York Jets

0.96

0.21

0.75

Cincinnati Bengals

0.76

0.12

0.64

Tennessee Titans

-2.11

-1.98

-0.13

Carolina Panthers

2.75

3.77

-1.02

Arizona Cardinals

-1.89

0.48

-2.36

Buffalo Bills

1.29

4.51

-3.23

Oakland Raiders

0.15

5.03

-4.87

Denver Broncos

-3.61

1.60

-5.21

Cleveland Browns

-7.10

-1.88

-5.21

Jacksonville Jaguars

-6.93

-1.55

-5.38

Minnesota Vikings

-1.77

4.06

-5.84

Washington Redskins

-4.35

2.90

-7.25

Kansas City Chiefs

-10.20

-2.15

-8.05

St. Louis Rams

-8.28

2.04

-10.32

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

-3.97

6.47

-10.44

Indianapolis Colts

-5.83

5.19

-11.02

Based on these ratings, New Orleans and Green Bay are the NFC favorites while New England is the AFC favorite. To take things a step further, Wayne Winston (the author of our textbook, click on his name for the detailed methodology) used a similar approach to predict the NFL playoffs and the probabilities are listed below:

NFC AFC Super Bowl
SF 0.223 0.000 0.115
GB 0.518 0.000 0.312
Det 0.031 0.000 0.015
No 0.178 0.000 0.107
NYG 0.023 0.000 0.007
ATL 0.028 0.000 0.012
Hous 0.000 0.019 0.004
Cinn 0.000 0.036 0.009
Den 0.000 0.005 0.001
Pitt 0.000 0.113 0.038
NE 0.000 0.564 0.276
BAL 0.000 0.263 0.106

Based on this, I'm predicting Green Bay to repeat over New England on Super Bowl Sunday. Feel free to leave your thoughts/predictions in the comments section.