When it comes to football, I don’t really want to think about math.
(When it comes to math, I don’t really want to think about math, either.)
Analytics has its place. The problem is it’s now everyplace. Last night, for example, I didn’t need to know, and didn’t want to hear, that Amazon AI said the Cowboys needed to score by 3:17 (give or take a second or two) to get the ball back again, with the number being pushed on the audience as if the words were being spoken from a burning bush.
How about we just watch the game and see what happens instead?
When it comes to the overall playoff chase, it’s the most mathematical time of the year. Percentage this, percentage that, percentage va fungool.
Case in point: The NFL’s NextGenStats said that, with a loss on Thursday night, the Cowboys’ chances of making the playoffs would plummet to six percent.
I prefer to look at the bigger picture.
First, the Cowboys need to run the table, beating the Vikings, Chargers, at Commanders, and at Giants. Easy? No. Possible? Yes.
Second, the Eagles have to go 2-3 down the stretch. Their schedule goes like this: at Chargers, Raiders, at Commanders, at Bills, Commanders.
Impossible? Not at all, not with a team that has lost two in a row and could be in the opening stretch of a 2023-style free-fall to end the regular season. (After starting 10-1 two years ago, Philly lost five of six.)
Is the chance of that happening six percent? Who knows? What is the number even in relation to? How is it calculated?
It’s far from a Gospel truth, but fans are expected (it seems) to regard it that way.
From time to time, a team with a supposedly snowball’s in-game percentage chance of securing victory pulls it off. And it seems to happen more times than the dire one- or two-percent calculations would seem to suggest.
As to the Cowboys’ playoff chances, screw the numbers. Win the next four, and hope the Eagles go 2-3. That would make the Cowboys 10-6-1, and the Eagles 10-7.
And it would give the Cowboys the NFC East crown.
The official chances as of Week 1 of the Cowboys having a plausible chance to secure a division title with four weeks left were probably a lot less than six percent.
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