I came across this interesting bit of trivia recently, and I think it drives home how small the margin between victory and defeat is in the NFL. Take a look.




Margins of Victory Since 2002

Since 2002, the most common margin of victory in the NFL has been 3 points with 418 games out of 2,668 games. This is equivalent to 15.67% of games finishing with a 3 point difference between the winner and loser at the end of the game.


Below, we take a look at the frequency of margins of victories across all 2,668 games to find some interesting trends:


Margin of Victory # of Games % of Games

1 92 ............ 3.45%

2 92 ............ 3.45%

3 418 ........... 15.67%

4 138 ............ 5.17%

5 79 ............ 2.96%

6 148 ............ 5.55%

7 258. ............ 9.70%



Almost half of all NFL games are decided by 7 points or less. Minimizing mistakes and turnovers are keys to victory, obviously.

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Thanks for posting this. Very interesting.

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“It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.”
― Albert Camus

Not surprising but still cool to see. Excepting cases of great teams against bottom half of the league teams like the patriots against the Jaguars of the last few years the games are usually all about which team can actually get a stop in the fourth quarter and which teams can avoid being stopped in the fourth quarter.

 

The Jaguars allowed an average of 8.1 points in the fourth quarter in 2015. Houston allowed an average of 4.

 

Doesn't seem like a big difference, but in close games the Houston defense gave a bad QB the possibility of holding on to wins while the Jaguars in close games continually let Bortles down and made it very hard for him to pull out wins.

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Unfortunately the Jaguars of the past too many seasons have skewed these numbers way more then an average NFL team should have.

 

Why does it stop at a 7 point margin?

 

I would have liked to see it go to at least a 10 point margin of victory.

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I survived the Gus Bradley Error.

link the article

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