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Nate Silver predicts Seattle and New England in the Super Bowl

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2K views 40 replies 20 participants last post by  J3000 
#1 ·
Anybody who paid attention to the blog 538.com and in the New York Times during the last two presidential elections knows that Nate Silver is the same kind of whiz kid statistician that Billy Bean relied on in the movie Moneyball.

Well Nate's ventured beyond politics and is now calling for the Seahawks to meet the Patriots in the Super Bowl. See him explaining why to a very skeptical panel at http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=8831714

We'll see if his prediction holds up as the Hawks try to advance to the next step this Sunday.

K
 
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#4 ·
I think both Nate and the Hawks run out of luck on Sunday. Road games 3,000 miles away on consecutive weekends and the next one an early game at that spells trouble for any team no matter how good. Throw in the loss of their best pass rusher and their kicker and you have a situation that I wouldn't bet any of my hard earned money on. If they can get by Atlanta they may go all the way although either of the teams they would meet in the 3rd round would have tremendous incentive to beat them. And this ain't politics-you actually have to perform to win.

Ive
 
#6 ·
Duly noted Ive. Since you seem pretty pessimistic about the Hawks' prospects Sunday, wanna put a favorite lake fly where your mouth is on the outcome?! They lose, I'll send you a Gray Hackle. They win, you send me . . . ?

K
 
#8 ·
I like the sort of interpretations of statistics he was referring to. DVOA is the new way of gauging team play, but there are a lot of unpredictable things in this game. I think the Seahawks have something really interesting going right now, and I'm not so sure injuries at key positions can stop them.

If in fact the injury to Clemons unravels the D, it would be the first major deficiency on an otherwise stellar unit. They are solid and deep, and the reserves have shown consistently they can step up and play. The Hawks have shown an ability to win in all sorts of fashion and can overcome adversity. The Falcons are a great team, but the two teams have played vastly different schedules. Our team has the best strength of victory in the league, while their team had the easiest regular season schedule. My biggest concern would be the freshness of our team vs. theirs, 10 am PST games are tough for west coast teams.

I still think the Hawks are gonna win, and the Falcons offense is gonna get pantsed.
 
#9 ·
I don't think last week's game was so much about the Seahawks ability to come from behind as it was about RGIII falling apart. At the beginning of the game the Seahawks had no answer to the other team's drive and versatility. As the other team succumbed to their injuries and the lose of their leader the Seahawks were able to capitalize on it.

For the last two games the Seahawks defence didn't seem to have quite the same discipline and organization as in the two previous games. You can be as big and aggressive as you want but all that goes to waste without a well conceived and strictly followed play by play plan with contingencies drilled into their heads so no thought is needed. A bunch of big aggressive line men running around ad-libbing isn't going to prevail in a closely matched game, which is something they haven't had for a while.

That said, I do wish they would go all the way to the Super Bowl.

TC
 
#11 ·
Tim, I'd heard the same thing about RGIII's injury and exit from the game last Sunday. While that might explain why the Redskins didn't score another TD after their first two, it doesn't explain why the Hawks scored 24 unanswered points afterwards.

K
 
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#13 ·
Tim, I'd heard the same thing about RGIII's injury and exit from the game last Sunday. While that might explain why the Redskins didn't score another TD after their first two, it doesn't explain why the Hawks scored 24 unanswered points afterwards.
It may have something to do with that M word jimmydub mentioned. Momentum. It can effect the whole team. Both offence and defence.

TC
 
#16 ·
While that might explain why the Redskins didn't score another TD after their first two, it doesn't explain why the Hawks scored 24 unanswered points afterwards.

K
Ummmmm, huh? They would have scored more but they wouldn't have?

If cousins had come out in the second half it would have been a different game. That said nobody want to face them right now, kinda like the Giants have done the last couple years.
 
#12 ·
I think the Redskins lost a bunch of momentum when the Seahawks started getting shots on RGIII, which began in the first quarter. You don't want to hurt a guy, but you want to make him pay for trying to go big. RGIII and Shanahan went really big and went home in an ugly way because of the way the team prepared for the game. Also, the Seahawks D played the first two drives flat footed, and once they started moving around they completely shut down the Redskins on offense.
 
#15 ·
Anybody who paid attention to the blog 538.com and in the New York Times during the last two presidential elections knows that Nate Silver is the same kind of whiz kid statistician that Billy Bean relied on in the movie Moneyball.

Well Nate's ventured beyond politics.....
Actually, it's a return for him. Nate Silver first gained recognition by creating a career prediction model for MLB players. He then managed the uber-stathead publication "Baseball Prespectus" before turning his attention to election prediction models. And in fact, 538 has a history of looking at sports (often the Yankees due to the NYT ownership) when election news is slow.
 
#22 ·
Speaking as someone who is professionally handy with statistics, I'm surprised Nate didn't admit that predicting elections and predicting the winner of a sports event are like comparing apples to burritos.

An election unfolds slowly over time, across 100+ million people all doing a single very similar task (choosing candidates and voting for those candidates). The important thing in elections is that the 100+ million voters' actions all happen in parallel - meaning, they are not dependent on each other. Sure, individuals are influenced by each other and the crowd's choices ebb and flow together somewhat, but not that much. This makes predicting elections a more systematic endeavor, and thus Nate was able to produce a prediction about it with a high degree of statistical confidence. Near the end of the election cycle, Nate was up to something like 93% chance of Obama winning, and he got all but one state's results correct.

Games (or in the playoffs, a series of a few games) are entirely different. Games are a linear series of plays with a small number of players on the field on each side. The actions of players are somewhat predictable based on past player and team statistics, but there is still huge variation in the success and failure of those actions: Did the QB complete the 40 yard pass, or did the receiver have butter fingers? Did the linebacker sack the QB, or did he get away to keep the drive alive? Did the punt returner hold onto the ball when tackled, or did he fumble at his own 10 yard line? Etc. Lots of random stuff happens, each of those random things effects the ensuing line of events, and that makes prediction hard. Plus, the statistical sampling is just far smaller than 100+ voters. That's not to say Nate (and the guys on ESPN, etc.) can't make predictions based on some data, but it does mean that getting to anything like the statistical confidence of an election prediction is impossible. In the end, I'm guessing Nate's confidence underlying his Super Bowl prediction is very low.
 
#23 ·
An election unfolds slowly over time, across 100+ million people all doing a single very similar task (choosing candidates and voting for those candidates). The important thing in elections is that the 100+ million voters' actions all happen in parallel - meaning, they are not dependent on each other. Sure, individuals are influenced by each other and the crowd's choices ebb and flow together somewhat, but not that much. This makes predicting elections a more systematic endeavor, and thus Nate was able to produce a prediction about it with a high degree of statistical confidence. Near the end of the election cycle, Nate was up to something like 93% chance of Obama winning, and he got all but one state's results correct.

Games (or in the playoffs, a series of a few games) are entirely different. Games are a linear series of plays with a small number of players on the field on each side. The actions of players are somewhat predictable based on past player and team statistics, but there is still huge variation in the success and failure of those actions: Did the QB complete the 40 yard pass, or did the receiver have butter fingers? Did the linebacker sack the QB, or did he get away to keep the drive alive? Did the punt returner hold onto the ball when tackled, or did he fumble at his own 10 yard line? Etc. Lots of random stuff happens, each of those random things effects the ensuing line of events, and that makes prediction hard. Plus, the statistical sampling is just far smaller than 100+ voters. That's not to say Nate (and the guys on ESPN, etc.) can't make predictions based on some data, but it does mean that getting to anything like the statistical confidence of an election prediction is impossible. In the end, I'm guessing Nate's confidence underlying his Super Bowl prediction is very low.
The cool thing about the advanced metrics in football is that they do seem to be showing patterns. The most overrated team in football this season was Indianapolis, despite their winning record. They went out in a hurry. The Hawks are the best team to end a season over the last decade based on weighted DVOA, and were among the best teams in the league this year even before they started annihilating opponents. DVOA has been set up to account for variables that otherwise don't show up in box scores or player cards. When Marshawn Lynch fumbled at the goal line, his DYAR took a serious nosedive, as did the DVOA for the rest of the team. It wouldn't have been as big of an impact if it were nearer the fifty yard line. Those kinds of things are accounted for, and show up in the advanced stats. Any time the offense fumbles the ball, it goes against their DVOA.

While there are certain things that DVOA doesn't account for, it does measure a team's efficiency very well. When it comes to evaluating a team and how they'll perform under pressure, that's when good old fashion football culture takes over. DVOA can't predict how players play each other, but the Seahawks have played a really good sampling of games as far as different schemes are concerned. It's not a perfect system, but it's the best I've found.

If you watch the video of him on ESPN, he actually says he would bet on the Seahawks based on the line that Vegas is putting out for the Super Bowl. That would tell me he does have confidence in the outcome, between the statistics he's viewing and the results he's seeing on the field.
 
#24 ·
Hahahaha!! I would like to see the Hawks win it... My dad told everybody that if they win, he will shave his head and beard (always had hair on his head, I have only seen him with out a beard twice in 29 years).
We are guessing if he does it, it wont come back...
 
#32 ·
Seattle media is reporting this morning that Lynch missed a couple days of practice with a sprained foot and listed as 'probable' tomorrow. That could be bad news for us - or misinformation intended to mislead others. Hmmm....

K
 
#33 ·
Kent, I'm going with bad info...but who knows.

A bigger concern, what if (a really big what if) somehow the Ravens made it to the Super Bowl? Forget the Hawks winning anything at that point, they'd just give the game to Ray Lewis, I mean... it would be a real bummer to see Ray Lewis go out on a loss, I mean... I think it would be really close, oh who the heck am I kidding. They'd call in the old Steeler refs and just let it go at that. :eek:
 
#41 ·
This is why I don't put much stock in advanced metrics. Especially for football.
Meh, metrics for a given game or offseason are always going to be sketchy at best. Particularly in the NFL. The overall equality and the "any given sunday" aspect make playoff predictions a very iffy proposition.

Oddly enough though, the vegas line was almost exactly correct for this game.
 
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