Win Probability Charts Are Stupid And We Need To Stop Them
If you have watched a second of football this season or scrolled Twitter during a football Sunday, it’s likely that you’ve seen some chatter about win probability stats. Maybe it’s just because there have been some crazy NFL games to start off the season (mainly the Falcons finding new ways to blow games every week), but I feel like there’s been more win probability charts shoved down our throats than ever this year.
Here are a couple from yesterday’s games.
And from Cowboys-Falcons the week before
Now don’t get me wrong, the Falcons having win probabilities of 99.9% and 99.6% in back to back weeks and somehow blowing both is pretty astonishing. They had a 99.7% win probability in Super Bowl 52, and we all know they blew that as well. All of this really means is one thing - win probability charts mean absolutely fucking NOTHING.
Look, I like statistics. The moving graphics look cool and all. I get that it’s crazy to say “Wow the Falcons had a 99% chance to win and still somehow lost.” But the thing is these graphs are just completely pointless. A team with a big lead has a high probability of winning. The other team scores and that probability goes down. I’m sure there are complex formulas backing all this up, but all the numbers just end up looking completely arbitrary and random.
I don’t think we need every broadcast updating us on win probability stats throughout the game. Yesterday's Bills-Rams game was a perfect example. The Bills were up 28-3 and had a super high chance of winning. Then the Rams scored a lot of points and all of a sudden the game was a coin flip. No shit? Don’t need people creaming themselves over win probability graphs to figure this out.
I have zero idea why there’s such a stick up my ass about this. Maybe it’s just because they tell me the Giants are likely to lose every single game, throughout every single game, and they do nothing to change that. But I’m officially leading the trend to end the love fest over win probability charts.
(On the complete other side of things, Scorigamis are awesome and I'm obsessed with them).