I am a Buffalo Bills fan and watching the Kansas City Chiefs this year has been downright painful. They seemingly pull victories out of nowhere. The Chiefs have a) won a game on a last-second field goal block and b) won a game on a last-second field goal that hit the upright and went in.
It just always seems the ball bounces Kansas City’s way, as they’ve gone 12-1 through their first 13 games.
After looking into it, the Chiefs, it turns out, are the luckiest 11+ win team through 13 games in the Super Bowl era. History says that probably makes them less likely to win the Super Bowl, but the sad part for me as a Bills fan is that history also says their luck may never run out.
What do I mean?
Let’s start with simple math. The Chiefs have only outscored their opponents by 56 points over the course of the season. In the average game, they’ve won by a little over four points.
I decided to look back at every team who won at least 11 of their first 13 games since the first Super Bowl season (1966-67). By my count, there have been 107 of these teams.
The Chiefs rank 107th of 107 in terms of point differential – points scored minus points given up. That is dead last in the Super Bowl era.
This year alone, the Minnesota Vikings and Philadelphia Eagles – both sitting at 11-2 on the year – have outscored their opponents by 99 and 108 points respectively. The 12-1 Detroit Lions have scored 183 points more than the opposition, which is more than three times as much as the Chiefs.
The Chiefs have seemingly been extremely lucky. Take the last five games as an example: they’ve won four games by scores of two points (vs. the Denver Broncos), three points (against the Carolina Panthers), two points (vs. the Las Vegas Raiders) and two points (against the LA Chargers). They also suffered their one loss of the season by nine points to my Bills. All told, they’ve broken even on point differential and somehow come out with a record of 4-1.
This might be the point where you’d expect me to say that the Chiefs’ luck is about to run out. After all, I’m a Bills fan and I hope it does run out.
Well, it is more likely to be the case that the Chiefs don’t win a Super Bowl, but that’s not a guarantee.
I cracked the numbers thanks to my friend and sports genius Neil Paine. Among the 11+ win teams with the 25 best point differentials historically, 36% won the Super Bowl. Among the 11+ win teams with the 25 worst point differentials, 12% of them won the Super Bowl.
This is the good news for folks like myself.
The bad news can be seen by looking at the New England Patriots.
The 2003 Patriots are the team with the second-worst point differential among those that won at least 11 of their first 13 games. They outscored their opponent by a mere 60 points, or a little less than five points per game.
The ‘03 Patriots would go on to win the Super Bowl with a playoff run in which they won the average game by a little over five points.
The 11+ win team with the best point differential to this point? The 2007 Patriots, who had outscored their opponents by an incredible 281 points – or 22 points per game – to this point. They won every game until they lost the Super Bowl.
This fascinated me because I expected a stronger connection between point differential and a team’s fate. I thought maybe I was missing something like the strength of a team’s opponent.
The 2024 Chiefs, after all, have played a relatively weak schedule. Their average opponent has won just 46% of its games, while the average team overall has won 50% of its games. Again, with the help of my friend Neil, I was able to look at this factor.
It turns out that winning by a lot versus good teams as compared to bad teams doesn’t really tell us much about a team’s Super Bowl aspirations, once you look only at 11+ win teams.
Among eventual Super Bowl winners who had won 11+ games at this point and had a point differential in the top half among all 11+ game winners, the average opponent had won 45% of all games. Among those who didn’t win the Super Bowl, the average opponent had won 44% of all their games.
Perhaps, the fact that the Chiefs have been so lucky and could easily continue to be lucky shouldn’t be so surprising to me. It’s not like the Chiefs tore it up last year. They had a worse point differential than every team they beat in the postseason.
Still, the stats are on my side and their luck will probably run out. But given the sometimes magic and sometimes depressing unpredictability of sports, I’m not sure I feel so secure about that, however.
