Is there Room for Luck in Football?

Football games are an aggregate of many plays and high-leverage situations. How those situations pan out, greatly affect the result of the game. When you play teams that make errors in those high-leverage moments, you get a team with few losses and copious amounts of luck. Yes, luck.

Luck is a component in everything we do. It is how we quantify variance in the world around us. Whether we find a ten-dollar bill on the ground, Karter hits an anytime touchdown scorer prop, or when Young goes a game without throwing a pick-six, luck fills the gaps between normalcy.

In a football sense, luck helps us bridge the gap for each team who may not perform well, but still manages to win. As I am explaining this, I am sure there are a few teams that pop into your head. The one that comes to my mind is the Philadelphia Eagles. I have been at it with the Philly fans before, and it is a situation I want to avoid. I have no vendetta against Eagles fans, but Philadelphia is the best example of a team getting lucky and winning football games.

“But Dylan, the NFL is about winning games! THE EAGLES ARE WINNING GAMES!”

Come on guys, I never said that the Eagles aren’t, “winning games”. That is indisputable. I am concerned with answering the question, “How good is each team in the NFL?”. We all know that the team with the best record isn’t always the best team. EXHIBIT A: In 2021 when Illinois beat Penn State in 12 OT. This would be a very long blog if we went through every example of a team with a worse record beating their better-record counterpart.

Now Eagles, I will talk about you guys for the entirety of this blog, because I feel that Philly has been the luckiest team in the NFL to date. Let’s start with yesterday’s game in Kansas City. Remember, I am not discrediting your win. I am only expressing that this performance (and the performances against Dallas, the second game against the Commanders, and the Patriots) were instances where Philadelphia got lucky.

Eagles @ Chiefs Recap

There were plenty of high-leverage situations in this game, but I am going to hit on the two obvious ones. I will start with the dropped pass from MVS with two minutes left in the game. Had this pass not been dropped, the Chiefs would have taken a 24-21 lead with 1:40 left. Now, you could say, “Dylan, the Eagles would have just scored and forced OT/won the game!”. Well sure, but they didn’t have to. An unforced error by Kansas City made securing this victory much easier for Philly.

Another pivotal moment in this game was Kelce fumbling in the red zone. You could argue that Philly forced that fumble and it is a reflection of their skill. I would give some credence to that statement. However, The Eagles will not be able to force a fumble in the red zone and do it as a reliable play moving forward. That is a huge swing in momentum during a high-leverage moment. It is not something to seriously consider when assessing a team’s skill, because it is not a likely occurrence every given week. It was a great play by Philadelphia, but can we consider that play as a constant when assessing the overall talent of NFL teams? I say no. The location of this fumble matters greatly too. The Chiefs all but had three points locked up, but a fumble in this high-leverage situation swayed that. It is a big play that was made at the right time, but it won’t happen every game.

Action's Luck Rankings and my Power Ratings

I would be remised if I did not mention Nick Giffen’s luck rankings at Action Network. He and the predictive analytics team do a great job of quantifying luck every week. They also turn luck into an actionable stat. I would highly recommend checking it out if you want a better idea about how luck works in the NFL.

I want to reiterate, that the Eagles are a great football team. I currently have them power-rated as the 5^th best in the NFL. With that being said, the Bills +3.5 is a five star play for me. This is a great time to buy low on the Bills and fade an Eagles team that has been winning, and getting lucky.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Have a great holiday weekend!

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