A Quick Tangent
For the 27th straight season, the NFL is kicking off the playoffs by having the four best teams in the league not play.
Well done, NFL. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your product.
Do you mind if I rant for a minute? Thanks.
I know that football is different than baseball, basketball, and hockey. Those sports can be played on something of a daily basis. Football can’t.
Nevertheless, can you imagine if the NBA changed its playoff structure and Commissioner Adam Silver said something like this: “Hey, welcome to the postseason! We’re going to kick off the playoffs with two straight weeks of the four best teams in the league doing absolutely nothing! #GoRatings!”
Technically, that last paragraph should’ve ended with a question mark . . . but it wasn’t really a question. The NBA would never do anything like that.
As it is, the NFL playoffs start later today, and the first two quarterbacks we get to see are Brock Osweiler and Connor Cook.
The NFL doesn’t make it easy on us.
Something of a Disclaimer?
Because I’m a boring person and my wife is out of town, I just did a lot of historical research on the wild card round of the playoffs in order to explore questions like these:
• What are the historical Vegas trends of wild card weekend?
• What do the seeds historically look like?
• What should I list here as a third item?
After doing this research, I realize that I might’ve just wasted a lot of time — but I’m going to write about my findings anyway, because what this world needs most right now is more noise.
Disclaimer: The data that follows might be more descriptive than predictive. It’s for you to determine how to incorporate this data into your decision-making process.
Wild Card Weekend: The History
Here’s some historical filler that I find fascinating but you might not. Feel free to skip the next thousand words if you’re the type of person who doesn’t care about knowledge that isn’t immediately useful.
The NFL Championship Game
The NFL’s first ‘postseason’ was in 1933. It consisted of one game: The NFL Championship Game. The Bears hosted the event because they were the champions of the Western Division and had the league’s best record. They defeated the Giants, the Western Division champs.
From 1933 to 1966, that was the basic structure of the playoffs. Occasionally there would be some supplemental play-in games to break regular season ties — but the playoffs themselves were confined to one game in which the best team from one division/conference would play the best team from the other division/conference:
• Divisions (1933-49): Eastern and Western
• Conferences (1950-52): American and National
• Conferences (1953-66): Eastern and Western
After the 1933 game, the divisions/conferences alternated hosting the event. Win-loss record played no part in whether a team had home-field advantage.
The First Super Bowl
Following the 1966 season, the NFL champion Packers played against the AFL champion Chiefs in the first Super Bowl. The Packers won, and their fans have been insufferable ever since.
Super Bowls I-IV (1966-69) had this format: The champions of the NFL and AFL would play against each other in one inter-league contest.
With the creation of the Super Bowl in 1966, the playoffs as we think of them weren’t born, but they were conceived: National vs. American.
Conference Championship
In 1967, the NFL expanded to 16 teams and once again realigned, splitting its conferences into divisions:
• Eastern Conference: Capitol and Century Divisions
• Western Conference: Central and Coastal Divisions
With more teams in the league, the NFL decided to hold an actual postseason. Round 1 featured two conference championship games in which the division winners played against each other. Round 2 was the NFL Championship Game featuring the conference champs.
And, of course, from 1967 to 1969, the winner of the NFL Championship Game would play against the AFL champ in the Super Bowl.
The Merger and the Wildcard
In 1970, the NFL and AFL merged. The NFL continued to exist as the large umbrella organization, the AFL was subsumed, and what had previously been thought of as the NFL and AFL became the NFC and AFC.
With the merger, the league decided to split its two conferences into three divisions each:
• NFC: Eastern, Central, and Western Divisions
• AFC: Eastern, Central, and Western Divisions
In creating this structure, the NFL decided that all three division champions would compete in the conference playoffs. Joining them to round out the field would also be a fourth-team: The wild card.
In total, eight teams would compete in the playoffs.
In Round 1, the divisional champs and wild card teams would play each other. This round of the playoffs became known as “The Divisional Round.”
In Round 2, the winners of the divisional round would play each other in the NFC and AFC championship games — hence, “The Championship Round.”
And then the NFC and AFC champs would face each other in the Super Bowl, the winner of which would be crowned the champion of the NFL.
Although the seeding system was a little random (partially nonexistent) back then, from 1970 to 1977 the basic architecture of our current playoff system was in place.
The Wild Card Round
In 1978, the NFL expanded its regular season from 14 to 16 games, because that money isn’t going to make itself, amirite?
With this expansion, the NFL decided to enhance the format of the playoffs by adding two additional teams — wild card teams. From 1978 to 1989, the NFL featured a 10-team field in the playoffs.
To accommodate the introduction of the second wildcard, the NFL created an extra round of the playoffs: “The Wild Card Round.”
In Round 1, the six division winners would have a bye and the four wild cards would play each other. The winners of the wild card round would advance to the divisional round, and the playoffs from there were structured exactly as they had been since 1970.
The 1980 Oakland Raiders became the first wild card team to win a Super Bowl.
The Wild Card Round Expanded
In 1990, the league expanded the playoffs once again, this time to 12 teams. Thus, two more wild card teams were added to the playoffs, and the basic format that we still use today was born.
At this point, the wild card round was expanded from two to four games. The six wild card teams and the lowest-seeded division champions would play against each other while the four highest-seeded teams had a bye. The four winners of the wild card round would advance to play the four bye teams the following week in the divisional round.
The Houston Texans Ruin Everything
In 2002, the Houston Texans were created and the NFL realigned once again. Gone were the old divisions. In their place, four new divisions were created.
• NFC: East, North, South, and West Divisions
• AFC: East, North, South, and West Divisions
With this realignment came some adjustments to the playoffs. Gone were the third wild card spots. From each conference, four division winners and two wild cards would appear in the playoffs, with the two wild cards playing the two lowest-seeded division winners.
We are entering the 15th year with this format.
The 2016-17 Wild Card Weekend
So here we are. We have 14 years of data under the current format.
Here are the game for this year’s wild card weekend:
NFC
• Sat., 8:15 PM ET: No. 6 Lions (9-7) at No. 3 Seahawks (10-5-1)
• Sun., 4:40 PM ET: No. 5 Giants (11-5) at No. 4 Packers (10-6)
AFC
• Sat., 4:35 PM ET: No. 5 Raiders (12-4) at No. 4 Texans (9-7)
• Sun., 1:05 PM ET: No. 6 Dolphins (10-6) at No. 3 Steelers (11-5)
Let’s get it on.
Wild Card Weekend: The Data
I’m about to drop some data on you like it’s hot.
Over/Under
Over the last 14 years, the average over/under for a wild card game has been 44.19 points. I’m looking in our Player Models right now and see that the live over/under average for this weekend’s games is 42.88. Without the 37-point over/under for the travesty that’s the Raiders-Texans game, the average would be a respectable 44.83.
Here are two data points that collectively paint an intriguing picture:
• The average final game total is 44.95, which means that teams on average are scoring enough to exceed the Vegas over/under by 0.76 points.
• 33 of the 56 games — 58.93 percent — have hit the under.
Here we have a classic divergence of averages and frequencies in NFL scoring. When it’s not boring us with marked underperformance, the wild card weekend can be . . . wild.
Most of the time, in Round 1 we get games that disappoint. But every once in a while we get massive games that skew the averages positive:
• 1/4/2014: No. 5 Chiefs (11-5) at No. 4 Colts (11-5), 48 O/U, 89 final total
• 1/8/2011: No. 5 Saints (11-5) at No. 4 Seahawks (7-9), 46 O/U, 77 final total
• 1/10/2010: No. 5 Packers (11-5) at No. 4 Cardinals (10-6), 48 O/U, 96 final total
• 1/5/2008: No. 5 Jaguars (11-5) at No. 4 Steelers (10-6), 40 O/U, 60 final total
You get the idea. Those are the four games from the last decade in which the Vegas over/under was exceeded by at least 20 points.
You might’ve noticed a couple of patterns in those games:
• All of them feature the No. 4 and 5 seeds.
• Correlated with that: All of them feature a visiting team with a record that is equal or superior to that of the home team.
And here’s another item on these four games: In all of them, the road team was favored. That last point might not be relevant — but it’s certainly intriguing.
Back to the big picture: These games fail to surpass the over/under 60.7 percent of the time (33 unders plus one push) — but sometimes we still see massive blowouts on wild card weekend.
Division/Non-Division
Of the 56 wild card games under the current format, 46 of them have been non-divisional contests. This weekend, we have four non-divisional contests.
In the regular season, division games tend to have limited scoring. In the wild card round, however, divisional games have an elevated average over/under of 45.6 — and the games themselves average a final total of 47.1. The sample of divisional wild card games is small (10) and may be unrepresentative because of the particular teams — but that’s the data.
The upshot is that the non-divisional wild card games have even lower numbers: 43.88 O/U, 44.48 final total, 60.87 percent on the under.
Home Favorite
In 40 of the 56 games, the home team has been favored. This year all four home teams are favored:
NFC
• No. 3 Seahawks (-8)
• No. 4 Packers (-5)
AFC
• No. 3 Steelers (-11)
• No. 4 Texans (-3.5)
In these games — and this might mean nothing — the larger divergence we see between average and frequency is gone. As a cohort, these games underwhelm: The final total falls short of the O/U by an average of 1.23, and 57.5 percent of the games hit the under.
Non-Divisional Home Favorite
In the 46 non-divisional games, 32 have featured home favorites. Combining the non-divisional and home favorite trends from above, this cohort of contests especially underperforms: The final total falls short of the over/under by 2.22 points, and 59.38 percent of games hit the under.
No. 3 vs. No. 6
In the 28 contests between the No. 3 and 6 seeds, the higher seed has had an inferior record only twice. Rather, 78 percent of the time the No. 3 seed has the better record. On average, the No. 3 seed has 10.97 wins; the No. 6 seed, 9.79.
Also, as the better team and the home team, the No. 3 seed has been favored in 82.14 percent of these games, in which we see the same general trends: Sad underperformance.
In those five games in which the No. 6 seed has actually been favored, we see catastrophe: 41.6 O/U, 35.4 final total, and 80 percent of contests on the under.
No. 4 vs. No. 5
In the 28 contests between the No. 4 and 5 seeds, the lower seed has had the better record 18 times. It’s not uncommon for a 10-6 division winner to host an 11-5 wild card. That’s actually normal. On average, the No. 4 seed has 9.54 wins — fewer wins, in fact, than even the No. 6 seed. The No. 5 seed averages 10.64 wins.
So here we have an intriguing dynamic: Inferior home team vs. superior road team. Which one does Vegas usually favor?
If we look at the 18 such games featuring home teams with inferior records, Vegas has favored the home team only eight times (44.44 percent).
Caveat: The sample is small.
In those eight games, the over/under has been missed by -3.81, and the under has been hit 62.5 percent of the time. Also, the favored team has covered in 75 percent of the games, suggesting that the dog has been bad — which is entirely the case: On average, the dog has underperformed its implied total by 5.44 points . . . and it was implied to score only 19.56 points in the first place.
What Does All of This Mean?
Let’s consider each of this weekend’s games.
Sat., 4:35 PM ET: No. 5 Raiders (12-4) at No. 4 Texans (9-7)
The world is dead, and it doesn’t know it yet. The Texans have the vastly inferior record — and yet they’re 3.5-point home favorites.
True to form, this game has a disgustingly low 37.5-point over/under. The Texans are implied for 20.5 points; the Raiders 17.
In such games — in which the No. 4 seed is favored despite having the lesser record — the home favorite has on average outperformed its implied total by 1.63 points. It has also outperformed its seasonal point total by 2.16 points and its seasonal yardage average by 19.33 yards.
And the road underdog with the better record has totally f*cked itself, underperforming its implied total by (the aforementioned) 5.44 points, its seasonal point total by 8.61 points, and its seasonal yardage average by 84.22 yards. The underdog has covered in only 25 percent of the games.
For the purposes of daily fantasy football, the Texans tentatively seem not awful. The Raiders seem awful.
Sat., 8:15 PM ET: No. 6 Lions (9-7) at No. 3 Seahawks (10-5-1)
This one feels pretty straightforward. The team that scored eight more points and allowed 66 fewer points than the other team has the higher record and is a home favorite.
The Seahawks are eight-point favorites implied to score 26 points. The Lions are implied for 18. The game has a 44-point over/under.
Only twice when the No. 3 seed has had the superior record has it not been a favorite. Both times, the No. 3 seed was Adrian Peterson’s Vikings. Both times, the under was hit. Make of that what you will.
In the 20 games in which the No. 3 seed has had the better record and been favored, the outcome of the game has been uninspiring. This is not to say that we can’t see shootouts — but the home favorite has hit its implied total only 35 percent of the time, on average falling short by 1.04 points.
The road underdog has done marginally better, hitting its implied total 40 percent of the time and averaging just 0.29 points below the over/under.
Of course, it should probably go without saying that the home favorite outplays the road dog, scoring 24.45 points to 19.35.
This game seems likely to play out the way that most of these games do.
Sun., 1:05 PM ET: No. 6 Dolphins (10-6) at No. 3 Steelers (11-5)
Once again, the team that scored more and allowed fewer points during the season has the better record and is a home favorite in the postseason.
Although such games tend not to be overly productive, I’ve noticed that the home favorites who have hit their implied totals (unsurprisingly) have tended to be those with strong QBs and/or a high scoring average during the season: Drew Brees’ 2011 Saints and Peyton Manning’s 2002 and 2004 Colts, for instance.
The home favorite has won 70 percent of these games, and the Steelers — led by the handsome Super Bowl-winning cheerleader Mike Tomlin — have won seven straight games.
The Steelers are slate-high 11 point favorites implied to score a slate-high 28.5 points. The Dolphins are implied for 17.5 points. The over/under is a slate-high 46 points.
When No. 3 favorites have hit their implied totals, they’ve crushed: 25.75 implied total, 38 final total. In these games, the underdogs have been implied to score 19.75 points, and they actually scored 18.43.
The Steelers are No. 10 in both points forced and allowed. They have the potential to crush. The Dolphins . . . meh.
Sun., 4:40 PM ET: No. 5 Giants (11-5) at No. 4 Packers (10-6)
This game is similar to the Raiders-Texans game in that the team with the inferior record has the higher seed and is favored.
The Packers are five-point favorites implied for 24.75 points; the Giants, 19.75. The over/under is 44.5.
This game has the potential to underwhelm. For starters, the forecast currently calls for a temperature of 10 degrees Fahrenheit. And, historically, these games just tend to underwhelm anyway.
At the same time, the Packers are fourth in scoring with 27.0 points per game, and the Giants play at the league’s fastest situation-neutral pace (per Football Outsiders).
Of the eight No. 4 home favorites with inferior records, six of them hit the 24-point threshold. And the No. 5 Giants could put up some points. They’re 7-2 since their Week 8 bye, and the Packers are allowing 24.3 points per game.
However this game turns out, we shouldn’t be surprised. For what it’s worth, the home team with the inferior record has historically won this game 75 percent of the time.
There have been only two road dog winners in this scenario:
• 2015 Packers
• 2007 Giants
Naturally. Both teams easily surpassed their implied totals.
Wild Card Weekend: The End
If you’re reading this sentence, this piece probably wasn’t a complete waste. If this article underwhelmed you, I’m sorry — but it’s wild card weekend. Get used to disappointment.
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