Consider these four things: 1) The Patriots rank 31st in total defense (yards allowed) in the NFL this year. 2) The Packers, another juggernaut, ranked 32nd and lost earlier in the playoffs. 3) Defense wins championships, "they" say. 4) The Super Bowl Prediction System loves defense. This must mean the Patriots are going to lose, making the New York Giants the next Super Bowl champ. Wrong. Or at least the Super Bowl Prediction System doesn’t think so. The Patriots rank 31st in total yards allowed but it’s not yards that count in the score, it’s points. In points allowed, they’re in the top half of the league ranking 15th (allowing 342 points during the regular season) while the New York Giants rank 25th (allowing 400 points). The Super Bowl Prediction System was off its game last year picking the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Green Bay Packers beat the Steelers 31-25. But the system still has a great track record. It has picked 16 of the last 21 winners (76 percent). This year, the system thinks the Patriots will avenge their Super Bowl XLII loss to the Giants. Back then, the Pats had seven indicators but the Giants won the Lombardi Trophy thanks to a miraculous catch by David Tyree. This time around Tyree is retired and the Patriots have 8 of the 12 indicators. The track record of the system shows a distinct difference between having less than eight indicators compared to having eight or more. In the history of the system, it’s 7-7 if a team has less than eight indicators (with four ties where indicators were 6-6). Teams that win at least eight indicators win 78 percent of the time (21-6). The record is 5-1 for teams that have exactly eight indicators. Vegas odds makers agree with the system and currently have the Patriots as three point favorites in Indianapolis. The Super Bowl Prediction System has 12 different indicators and each one correctly predicts the Super Bowl winner 55-65 percent of the time. Evaluated collectively, the system is 76 percent in the last 21 games. Here are the 12 indicators:
A while back, in the 1990s, we used to include regular season matchups as an indicator but found that it’s not a very good predictor and removed it from the system. The winner of an in-season Super Bowl preview has only won the Super Bowl 5 out of 12 times. History suggests that the Giants' victory over the Patriots in New England in Week 9 (24-20) has no bearing on the outcome of the Super Bowl.