This doesn’t make me feel any better.
I will never be a good time to try and make us feel better about that Super Bowl loss, but I know it’s helping many of you by saying the Chiefs got “lucky.”
Now look, saying a team got lucky rather than “was better” is poor form. Almost as bad as “You didn’t beat them, they beat themselves.”
Except, there might be some truth to that. The Athletic’s David Lombardi got some data on teams in the playoffs since 2018 from Tom Bliss who finds all sorts of weird stats. Bliss did a run on the 80 teams in the NFL playoffs from 2018, there’s 80 total…look who’s number 1:
Let’s shatter an incorrect narrative….
There have been 80 playoff teams since 2018. In @DataWithBliss‘ data-driven measure of luck (fumble recoveries, opponents’ drops/FGs), here are the “luck” ranks of those 80:
2023 Chiefs: #1
2023 49ers: #69Aiyuk’s NFCCG catch included
— David Lombardi (@LombardiHimself) February 13, 2024
Considering the Chiefs recovered six of seven fumbles on the ground, I tend to agree luck was on their side, but that’s football and the 49ers still got beat. It doesn’t seem like officiating factors into the luck score, but even if it doesn’t, I can’t even customize my characters in a JRPG to have a luck stat that good.
Saying the “Chiefs got lucky” is still a poor take, but there’s actually some factual evidence behind it if we look at the above. Basically the 2023 49ers, one of the unluckier teams in the last six years lost to the luckiest team in that time span.
Notice how this starts in 2018. I’m curious if they go further back where the Seattle Seahawks rank on the list. The Chiefs played eerily similar to some of the weirdness we saw with those Seattle teams. Then again, Seattle won a Super Bowl in the last two decades and the 49ers haven’t.
The 49ers had some jaw dropping games on offense and even on defense at times, but there wasn’t much luck on their side. Guess it’s better to be lucky than good.
About the Author: Insidethe49
