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With the start of the 2015 NFL season less than 24 hours away, the Winning Stats want to get into the prediction game. Like previous years, we can use the Winning Stats to predict games, run a bunch of season simulations, and come up with a percentage chance of a whole bunch of things, such as winning the Super Bowl, winning the conference, or even making the Playoffs as a Wild Card. Because we run them such a large number of times (50,000), we get a pretty good estimate of every percentage.
Each week I'll have an article on Wednesdays that'll talk mostly about how the Colts are doing, then a general overview of Super Bowl odds for the entire league, which is what I'll do here as well. But each week I'll have every team updated in one place, which can be found here:
Stampede Blue's Winning Stats Playoff Odds
You can also find this link under "Library" in the header of the site. I don't want to bog down these articles with a bunch of tables that I don't talk about, so I'll just link to everything and if you're interested you can go check it out.
Here are the odds for the AFC South, where the Colts are pretty overwhelming favorites.
| AFC South | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team | Wins | #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | Div | Bye | WC | Total | |
| Colts | 11.3 | 35.9% | 17.5% | 10.8% | 6.5% | 12.4% | 5.8% | 70.8% | 53.4% | 18.2% | 89.0% | |
| Texans | 9.7 | 11.1% | 7.6% | 5.7% | 4.0% | 22.4% | 12.5% | 28.4% | 18.7% | 34.8% | 63.2% | |
| Jaguars | 5.2 | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.2% | 0.3% | 0.6% | 1.0% | 0.6% | 0.1% | 1.7% | 2.2% | |
| Titans | 4.8 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.1% | 0.1% | 0.3% | 0.6% | 0.2% | 0.0% | 0.9% | 1.2% | |
You can see the Colts have an 89% chance of making the Playoffs this season, second only to the Seahawks (93.1%), and almost 71% chance of winning the division, which in my opinion seems about right, with the Texans at 28% and the Jaguars/Titans combining for less than a 1% chance of winning the AFC South. The Colts also have the best shot at Home Field Advantage throughout the Playoffs at 36%, with the Broncos coming next at just 13%, so much like the national media, the Colts expectation should be that #1 seed in the AFC. As a fun note, in 9 of the 50,000 seasons, the Titans had the #1 seed. So technically there's a chance...
| AFC | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team | Div. Title | Wild Card | Div. Round | Conf. Champ | Win Conf. | Win SB |
| Colts | 70.8% | 18.2% | 75.9% | 48.2% | 29.7% | 16.0% |
| Broncos | 58.2% | 11.7% | 51.9% | 28.0% | 14.4% | 6.8% |
| Bills | 41.1% | 17.9% | 40.8% | 20.6% | 9.9% | 4.5% |
| Texans | 28.4% | 34.8% | 41.2% | 19.3% | 9.3% | 4.1% |
| Patriots | 35.9% | 18.4% | 36.6% | 18.1% | 8.5% | 3.7% |
| Bengals | 39.3% | 14.7% | 35.9% | 17.5% | 8.2% | 3.6% |
| Ravens | 33.2% | 15.1% | 30.5% | 13.6% | 6.1% | 2.4% |
| Steelers | 25.6% | 13.4% | 23.8% | 10.4% | 4.5% | 1.8% |
| Chargers | 18.2% | 12.5% | 16.7% | 6.7% | 2.6% | 1.0% |
| Jets | 16.5% | 13.8% | 16.6% | 6.7% | 2.6% | 1.0% |
| Chiefs | 14.8% | 10.9% | 13.7% | 5.4% | 2.2% | 0.7% |
| Raiders | 8.8% | 7.6% | 7.7% | 2.7% | 0.9% | 0.3% |
| Dolphins | 6.5% | 6.9% | 6.4% | 2.2% | 0.8% | 0.2% |
| Browns | 1.9% | 1.5% | 1.2% | 0.3% | 0.1% | 0.0% |
| Jaguars | 0.6% | 1.7% | 0.7% | 0.2% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Titans | 0.2% | 0.9% | 0.3% | 0.1% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
As far as winning the Super Bowl goes, the Colts have the best chance in the AFC at 16%, only trailing the Seahawks (24%) in the entire NFL. Much has been made of the Colts getting one step farther in each of the past three seasons, and the Colts have slightly less than a 1 in 3 chance of doing just that by getting to the Super Bowl. You can see the Colts are followed by the Broncos, Bills (!?), and Texans (!?!) before you see the Patriots show up at just 3.7%. The Winning Stats were really high on the Bills last year as well, and they were within a game of making the Playoffs, so we'll see right away, in the Colts case, if their continued good play carries over into 2015.