The Bengals Have a 32% Chance of Winning the Superbowl

[MTBengalsFan]

(02-11-2022, 02:01 PM)Science Friction Wrote: Or so says the statistical model of Nate Silver, Jay Boice, and Neil Payne of  fivethirtyeight.com  .

Their model uses something called an Elo rating ,  a measure based on head-to head results and quality of opponent. Here are the Elo's for their top eight NFL teams. (Ratings were last updated after the Rams-49'ers NFC title game)

KC                   1701
Buffalo             1669
LA Rams           1656
Green Bay        1645
Tampa Bay       1634
SF                   1615
Cincinnati         1606
Dallas              1600


So, Nate's model  says it's   68%  to  32%  in favor of the Rams  .

Pretty similar numbers to another projection they made on Nov, 8, 2016 :   Check it out.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/

538 picked the Bengals to go 7-10 at the start of the year and ranked Burrow as the 20th best QB in the NF! They also ranked the Bengals with a 20% of making the playoffs, a 7% chance of winning the division, and a 1% chance of winning the Super Bowl.

Here's to hoping they're as accurate on their Super Bowl pick as they were with their season picks!

Who Dey!

[*Go Cards*]

Don't think the Rams are that much better than Bengals and if not for Bengals O-line, don't even think the Rams would be favored.

But any pool hustler will tell you that in a race to one anything can happen. This is not the best 3 out 4 where the better team should win anyway. It's a race to one and turnovers could play a big role among many things.

Yet I believe there is a 100% chance of victory for the Bengals and am glad everybody is overlooking them and fueling their fire.

[Science Friction]

(02-11-2022, 07:05 PM)MTBengalsFan Wrote: 538 picked the Bengals to go 7-10 at the start of the year and ranked Burrow as the 20th best QB in the NF! They also ranked the Bengals with a 20% of making the playoffs, a 7% chance of winning the division, and a 1% chance of winning the Super Bowl.

Here's to hoping they're as accurate on their Super Bowl pick as they were with their season picks!

Who Dey!

In all honesty, though, I doubt if 1 in 5 people on this board at season's beginning,  predicted us to go to the playoffs.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

(02-11-2022, 07:28 PM)Science Friction Wrote: In all honesty, though, I doubt if 1 in 5 people on this board at season's beginning,  predicted us to go to the playoffs.

Dunno why. Talent was all over the roster, and Joe Burrow exists.

I sure as hell didn't expect a Super Bowl though.

[Nepa]

(02-11-2022, 06:13 PM)Science Friction Wrote: Does anyone know what our win probability was when we were down 21-3 at Arrowhead?  As crazy as it sounds, I think , going into halftime, our players still fully expected to win the game.

I read in an ESPN article (I actually find what I am to write hard to believe) that the Bengals had less a chance at that point (down 21-3 at Arrowhead) than KC had with 13 seconds to go in the Buffalo game. Yeah, doesn't make sense, but that was what was written. I suppose I could try and find that but I must have read 100 articles since then.

[fredtoast]

(02-11-2022, 07:38 PM)JaggedJimmyJay Wrote: Dunno why. Talent was all over the roster, and Joe Burrow exists.

Joe Burrow also existed in 2020.

But I always said that we had enough talent to win.  I was just concerned with the coaching.  But they have definitely gotten the job done.

[leonardfan40]

(02-11-2022, 05:39 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: I'm not sure if this is your intention, but these conversations always go down a road where it becomes condescending and it becomes rather frustrating. 

What says the Rams are better is their on-field performance - that's how you judge a team. Probably the top statistic used is EPA per play. You can derive a teams expected points scored by taking their field position and various other factors. It's an efficiency metric and is used to figure out which teams are using their limited resources (I.E. downs) better. You can use this to figure out who is better over the course of a season or within any given time frame. Various models may use various metrics, but EPA is the golden standard within the analytics community. All of the situations you mentioned can be accounted for in some way. There are programs that can watch game film and break down what coverage the defense is running and provide plays to counter it based on success rate, break down tendencies etc. 

I'm not sure what to say regarding this point. Again, that just isn't how it works. If you think it is easy and meaningless, I guess go work for an NFL team in their analytics department lol. In all seriousness, no NFL team is going to have a 99% chance of victory against another NFL team. Maybe if a team was favored by 20 points, I guess. Most WP models account for the Vegas spread, because it is fairly accurate. If a model is just consistently wrong, then the model is probably bad. However, if the model has a strong correlation to victories, then it is a good model (again, the Vegas spread is pretty good). 

And these conversations usually end up with something along the lines of "math nerd" or "data nerd" or some other variation of nerd thrown around. It isn't very creative. I'm not going to engage this part - you're pretty dug into your stance. So, one team will win this weekend and I hope it is Cincinnati. WHO-DEY! 

No I’m not trying to attack you. Just saying that these percentages don’t mean anything. They are all flawed. What you can do is put these out there then make excuses when they are wrong, rinse and repeat week after week and year after year.

You can’t account for all of the situations I posted and the millions of others that affect a person/teams performance all the way down to their mood that day or if they had a fight with their wife the night before. There is no calculation that will accurately predict how the relationship between Zac and McVay will affect the game. Nobody knows which of those coaches has a better grasp for the others tendencies or game plan. Nobody but those two know exactly how their relationship worked and how much they coordinated on play design and calls. Nobody can calculate that.

Even if you did “account” for those there is no perfect calculation for each one when you get down to the very personal stuff. you’d be relying on a human to try to decipher which ones will apply. There are no perfect models for NFL games.

You can say oh they just messed up on one game but when you see year after year one team going against the “odds” game after game after game that should tell you how flawed they really are. When the playoffs and super bowl are on the line they have missed on two specific teams badly over and over for the last two years.

This year the Bengals were underdogs in the divisional round with 34% chance to win, followed up with 19% chance the next week. Won both and have a chance to beat the “odds” again this week for the third time in a row. If the Bengals do it 3 times in a row are they really just beating odds three times in a row? Or were those odds wrong? Were they missing something that can’t be calculated? It’s easy to say no the odds are right and the team just got lucky. They didn’t get better, they weren’t better than we thought, they just hit on their slim chances time and again.

What about if the same thing happens to the eventual Super Bowl winner two years in a row? Last year the Bucs were given 30% chance to win the divisional game, then 37% to win the conference, then underdogs again in the Super Bowl. If these models are so good how are we this close to them being that wrong in the biggest games of the year in back to back seasons?
The Bucs were the best team last year and proved it, odds be damned.
The Bengals have a chance to go out there and PROVE they are the better team, odds be damned. If the bengals win the models can say all they want that the Rams were the better team. Bengals win head to head in the super bowl the bengals are the better team.

Odds said bengals wouldn’t beat the Chiefs the first time this year. We did. Then odds said we wouldn’t beat them again. We did. Are the chiefs the better team if we played again? Or were the models not just wrong but failed to learn for the mistake the first time around? The Bengals are better than the Chiefs even though odds would surely be for KC again if they met.

Two years in a row the team in conference finals with lowest shot of winning (of the 4 teams) could very well be the SB champs. Maybe these models are imperfect and don’t know what truly goes into making a champion.

[*Nately120*]

(02-11-2022, 08:09 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Joe Burrow also existed in 2020.

But I always said that we had enough talent to win.  I was just concerned with the coaching.  But they have definitely gotten the job done.

That's pretty much my stance.  ZT....you got the job done.  I hope I never have to see you coach without Burrow before the year 2046 (and even at that point, we may as well keep him around for a few more years), but you got the job done.

[leonardfan40]

(02-11-2022, 05:55 PM)Science Friction Wrote: Hey now, I'm one of those math nerds(turds).   lol

No offense! I was once a math nerd in my school days. I love math, just these “models” masquerading as indisputable math that bothers me.

[HarleyDog]

(02-11-2022, 02:46 PM)jj22 Wrote: The disrespect is crazy to see given how wrong everyone has been throughout the playoffs. But I still prefer this position (underdogs, sleeper) then going into this with everyone expecting us to win and big time favorites. I think they are putting a ton of pressure on the Rams.

I prefer it. This is the type of shit that fires Burrow up. He loves the underdog narrative. 

[*Nately120*]

(02-11-2022, 08:27 PM)HarleyDog Wrote: I prefer it. This is the type of shit that fires Burrow up. He loves the underdog narrative. 

He has like, 2 more days to be the underdog, so he's going to have to learn how to win when everyone knows he will win.

[kalibengal]

forget all that and just look at this sex panther clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ccp-lEmoAE

[Science Friction]

(02-11-2022, 07:28 PM)Go Cards Wrote: Don't think the Rams are that much better than Bengals and if not for Bengals O-line, don't even think the Rams would be favored.

But any pool hustler will tell you that in a race to one anything can happen. This is not the best 3 out 4 where the better team should win anyway. It's a race to one and turnovers could play a big role among many things.

Yet I believe there is a 100% chance of victory for the Bengals and am glad everybody is overlooking them and fueling their fire.

I agree with you. And were it not for our OL, I think we would win by two TDs or more(AND WE MIGHT ANYWAY).  This is a hungry bunch of Tigers.

[Nicomo Cosca]

One banger after another from the OP… :rolleyes:

[Science Friction]

(02-11-2022, 08:24 PM)leonardfan40 Wrote: No offense! I was once a math nerd in my school days. I love math, just these “models” masquerading as indisputable math that bothers me.

Oh, no offense taken whatsoever.   And I agree, any model that tries to comes off as certain mathematics is absurd.   Sagan said it best:



“Every time a scientific paper presents a bit of data, it's accompanied by an error bar – a quiet but insistent reminder that no

knowledge is complete or perfect. It's a calibration of how much we trust what we think we know. "  ---CARL SAGAN

[Science Friction]

(02-12-2022, 12:10 AM)Nicomo Cosca Wrote: One banger after another from the OP…

What are you talking about?  Not a fan of math or statistics?

I teach it at a university so anytime I see mathematical models related to football, I enjoy reading and sharing. Anything wrong with that?

[Nicomo Cosca]

(02-12-2022, 12:32 AM)Science Friction Wrote: What are you talking about?  Not a fan of math or statistics?

I teach it at a university so anytime I see mathematical models related to football, I enjoy reading and sharing. Anything wrong with that?

Every thread you’ve made over the past week or so has been doom and gloom. It’s obnoxious.

[Science Friction]

(02-12-2022, 12:45 AM)Nicomo Cosca Wrote: Every thread you’ve made over the past week or so has been doom and gloom. It’s obnoxious.

You don't read enough posts then. I have consistently stated that I think the Bengals are the better team and I think that if Joe plays every snap from opening drive to kneel down that the Bengals will win by 8-17 points. I've said that in about every thread I've written or posted in. The Rams aren't all that, in my opinion. Good but not great. 

The prediction model that I posted is Nate Silver's, not mine. I would put the Bengals' chance of winning much higher than 32%. I do worry that LA may try to cheap shot Joe to get him out of the game, but barring that I think we win. How is that being doom and gloom?

[IsaacCurtis]

Completely made up. Fictional.

[Science Friction]

(02-12-2022, 01:16 AM)IsaacCurtis Wrote: Completely made up. Fictional.

No, actually it's not. They use mathematical modeling. We can disagree with their models but they aren't just made up out of nowhere. Not everything is fake news.