The AFC Was a Mirage

A few weeks back, I published an article for this lovely publication on the statistical asymmetry in the conferences in the NFL — especially the hard truth that the wealth of “great” teams in the AFC was simply a mirage. Unfortunately for the AFC, this has been borne out by the games played. With Miami missing the playoffs at least we were spared the weakest playoff team (by SOS) since at least 2009.

Here is the cleanest graphic:

X axis is seasons, size is wins squared, color is success

For review here are the key statistical axioms:

A. Strength-of-schedule at Christmas can tell you a lot about how good or not good an NFL team really is. Typically, if your quarterback isn’t Tom Brady, if you aren’t in the top ten, you aren’t going to win the Super Bowl.

B. NFL upsets are not true upsets, but results of SOS artifacts. Correcting this is also a great way to write your NCAA bracket.

C. There are multiple statistical signals that the AFC this year was weird. Bimodal distributions are rare, as are 10-win third place teams.

Here is how it went down:

In the AFC:

2 Buffalo (SOS 16) defeated 7 Indy (SOS 30)

5 Baltimore (SOS 9) defeated 4Tennessee (SOS 29)

6 Cleveland (SOS 28) defeated 3 Pittsburgh (SOS 27)