Lola Gayle, STEAM Register
If you’re a New England Patriots fan, please look away.
“The Atlanta Falcons will defeat the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 51.” That’s the prediction made by a University of Pittsburgh researcher who backs his claim with seven years of National Football League (NFL) data and statistics.
“Increasingly, we are seeing NFL coaches and executives embracing analytics to improve their overall knowledge of the game and give them data-driven competitive advantages over their opponents,” said Konstantinos Pelechrinis, an associate professor in Pitt’s School of Information Sciences. “I believe this study is yet another step in that direction.”
Pelechrinis performed an in-depth analysis of 1,869 regular and postseason games from 2009 to 2015, identifying key in-game factors — turnover differential and penalty yardage, among others — that directly correlate with winning probability. He found that committing one fewer turnover than the opposition equated to an average 20 percent gain in winning probability. Additionally, he found that a 10-yard advantage in penalty yardage correlated to a 5 percent difference.
From there he used a probability model to create a Football Prediction Matchup (FPM) engine to compare the two teams’ performance in those key in-game factors during the 2016 regular season. Finally, Pelechrinis ran 10,000 simulations of the game in order to draw his conclusion: The Atlanta Falcons have a 54 percent probability of prevailing in Super Bowl 51.
“We are confident that it will be the Atlanta Falcons walking away with that franchise’s first Vince Lombardi Trophy,” Pelechrinis said.
More information about this analysis and even more predictions can be found on the University’s website. Pelechrinis partnered in this study with Evangelos Papalexakis, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Riverside. Results are published in PLOS ONE.
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