If you are inclined, as I am, to worship at the altar of advanced statistical analysis after high priest Nate Silver’s 50-for-50 election sweep, you should be feeling pretty good about our Seattle Seahawks.
Two years ago, Priest Silver himself called the Seahawks the worst playoff team in NFL history, based on a statistic developed by the guys at Football Outsiders (“geniuses,” according to Silver).
Times have changed. According to that same stat, the Seahawks are the second-best team in the NFL and one of the best teams of the past 20 years.
Before his career as a political prognosticator, Silver created a groundbreaking projection system for baseball. Then, the average baseball pundit was as math-challenged as Karl Rove. Still, the baseball world was a Math Olympiad compared to football.
In baseball, at least, the things we measure are basically even. Most hits are as valuable as other hits, outs about as valuable as other outs. Football is completely different. Performance is usually measured by yardage gained–a statistic that’s nearly meaningless out of context. If you complete a five-yard pass on 3rd and 4, you keep the ball and have a much better chance of scoring. But that same five-yard pass on 3rd and 8 is a flat-out #FAIL.
Measured by the football stat most media members and old-school football types rely on, the Seahawks aren’t spectacular. By yardage, the Seahawks are third in total defense and 21st in total offense. Decent, but nothing to throw down a Super Bowl bet over.
The Football Outsiders measure not just yardage, but the value of the yards. Think of it as the difference between the national poll numbers and the electoral college tallies predicted by the state polls. The first is nice to know, but the second is what really matters. Football Outsiders’ metric, DVOA, assigns a value to every play based on how much closer it got a team to scoring, then normalizes it based on the performance of the rest of the teams in the league.
According to DVOA, your Seattle Seahawks are #2 in the NFL, with a DVOA of 43.9 percent — that is, they are 43.9 percent better than the average team. The Patriots have a slight lead over the Seahawks, but both teams possess two of the highest DVOA ratings of the past 20 years. As Football Outsiders’ Aaron Schatz puts it: “If there’s one thing right now that FO readers should be telling other football fans, it’s this: Don’t sleep on the Seattle Seahawks.”
Because of the Seahawks’ slow start and some close losses, they are unlikely to secure home-field advantage in the playoffs. So despite being ranked as the second-best team, Football Outsiders thinks they’re only the fourth-most likely team to win the Super Bowl, with just an 11.9 percent chance. Still, those are pretty interesting odds considering that Vegas has the Seahawks at 18-1.
If you didn’t already triple Junior’s college fund taking money from overconfident Republicans on InTrade, with the benefit of Nate Silver’s advice, you may have another chance. Consider the New York Giants. According to Football Outsiders, they are half as good as the Seahawks–but Vegas has them as more than twice as likely to win the Super Bowl.
The Seahawks currently have the the first of two wild-card berths into the NFL playoffs, but likely must win at least two of their final three games to hold on to it. They play the Buffalo Bills in Toronto on Sunday (where PSY will perform at halftime!), in a domed stadium that will likely be half-empty. For a road game you could hardly imagine a better setting.
Then it’s home to face San Francisco–if the Seahawks win Sunday and the Niners lose at New England, the game would be for first place in the NFC West. The Hawks stay at home for the final game of the year against St. Louis. All in all, a very promising schedule. If Football Outsiders is as right as Nate Silver was, the Hawks should storm into the playoffs with an 11-5 record, ready for a run at the Super Bowl.
