The Kansas City Chiefs are the luckiest good team ever
 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/12/sport...spt/index.html

I am a Buffalo Bills fan and watching the Kansas City Chiefs this year has been downright painful. They seemingly pull victories out of nowhere. The Chiefs have a) won a game on a last-second field goal block and b) won a game on a last-second field goal that hit the upright and went in.

It just always seems the ball bounces Kansas City’s way, as they’ve gone 12-1 through their first 13 games.

After looking into it, the Chiefs, it turns out, are the luckiest 11+ win team through 13 games in the Super Bowl era. History says that probably makes them less likely to win the Super Bowl, but the sad part for me as a Bills fan is that history also says their luck may never run out.

What do I mean?

Let’s start with simple math. The Chiefs have only outscored their opponents by 56 points over the course of the season. In the average game, they’ve won by a little over four points.

I decided to look back at every team who won at least 11 of their first 13 games since the first Super Bowl season (1966-67). By my count, there have been 107 of these teams.

The Chiefs rank 107th of 107 in terms of point differential – points scored minus points given up. That is dead last in the Super Bowl era.

This year alone, the Minnesota Vikings and Philadelphia Eagles – both sitting at 11-2 on the year – have outscored their opponents by 99 and 108 points respectively. The 12-1 Detroit Lions have scored 183 points more than the opposition, which is more than three times as much as the Chiefs.

The Chiefs have seemingly been extremely lucky. Take the last five games as an example: they’ve won four games by scores of two points (vs. the Denver Broncos), three points (against the Carolina Panthers), two points (vs. the Las Vegas Raiders) and two points (against the LA Chargers). They also suffered their one loss of the season by nine points to my Bills. All told, they’ve broken even on point differential and somehow come out with a record of 4-1.

This might be the point where you’d expect me to say that the Chiefs’ luck is about to run out. After all, I’m a Bills fan and I hope it does run out.

Well, it is more likely to be the case that the Chiefs don’t win a Super Bowl, but that’s not a guarantee.


I cracked the numbers thanks to my friend and sports genius Neil Paine. Among the 11+ win teams with the 25 best point differentials historically, 36% won the Super Bowl. Among the 11+ win teams with the 25 worst point differentials, 12% of them won the Super Bowl.

This is the good news for folks like myself.

The bad news can be seen by looking at the New England Patriots.

The 2003 Patriots are the team with the second-worst point differential among those that won at least 11 of their first 13 games. They outscored their opponent by a mere 60 points, or a little less than five points per game.

The ‘03 Patriots would go on to win the Super Bowl with a playoff run in which they won the average game by a little over five points.

The 11+ win team with the best point differential to this point? The 2007 Patriots, who had outscored their opponents by an incredible 281 points – or 22 points per game – to this point. They won every game until they lost the Super Bowl.

This fascinated me because I expected a stronger connection between point differential and a team’s fate. I thought maybe I was missing something like the strength of a team’s opponent.

The 2024 Chiefs, after all, have played a relatively weak schedule. Their average opponent has won just 46% of its games, while the average team overall has won 50% of its games. Again, with the help of my friend Neil, I was able to look at this factor.

It turns out that winning by a lot versus good teams as compared to bad teams doesn’t really tell us much about a team’s Super Bowl aspirations, once you look only at 11+ win teams.

Among eventual Super Bowl winners who had won 11+ games at this point and had a point differential in the top half among all 11+ game winners, the average opponent had won 45% of all games. Among those who didn’t win the Super Bowl, the average opponent had won 44% of all their games.

Perhaps, the fact that the Chiefs have been so lucky and could easily continue to be lucky shouldn’t be so surprising to me. It’s not like the Chiefs tore it up last year. They had a worse point differential than every team they beat in the postseason.

Still, the stats are on my side and their luck will probably run out. But given the sometimes magic and sometimes depressing unpredictability of sports, I’m not sure I feel so secure about that, however.

"the stats are on my side"

is 18-1 a stat?

Is this worth reading or pointless drivel?

Another way to look at it is the Chiefs have been unlucky, and that is why they've been in so many close games when several of them should've been blowouts in favor of KC.

This is where I stopped reading.

I got that far.

Holy shit Donger made a football post.

BOO FRIGGEN HOO.

I've sat through the losses so flukey and unbelievable that we have nicknames for them (the kicker who shall remain nameless, the no punts game, the six field goals game, the forward progress game, etc).

I think it's the way the Chiefs coaching plays the game, mixed with some performance and some fate, that finds KC in a close game at the end, but ultimately it's the team who wis the game.

Chiefs blocked that kick.
Chiefs made that Field Goal.
Chiefs got that first down to kill the clock.
Chiefs got that TFL to end the game on 4th down.
Chiefs recovered that fumbled snap.

players executed when it mattered.

This is what winning looks like when you don't get three turnovers per game.

I could argue that winning this way is the hardest way to win, not the luckiest.

so STFU.

Drivel, you knuckle dragger.

It’s a great read.

Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.

And didn't trim out the fat....

Just more crying from other teams fans about how there's no possible way we should be this good because our point differential isn't north of +100 like Detroit or Buffalo.

The next article I read that talks about how good this team is in spite of losing goddam near every starter will be the first.

I swear, I hope that we get the threepeat by winning every single game by 1 point at the very last second. And then next year we get the fourpeat by skull ****ing every single team by 30+ points. They ****ing hate us enough already, I want entire GENERATIONS of fans telling their kids about how they could have been champs if it weren't for those goddam Chiefs.

Gotta keep up with appearances.

Just more whining that it's not FFFFFFFFAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

ETA - The article should also contain the background information that the Chiefs have defeated the Bills in the playoffs in 3 of the past 4 seasons and they feel like they were entitled to win some of the games just "because." It should also note that they feel like they would have won each of those games if only some event had happened or hadn't happened. That's all just whining. The Chiefs won those games because they did what needed to be done to win and the Bills failed to do what needed to be done to win. That's how competition works. If you don't like it, walk away.

Yeah I quit after that

Don;t hate me because I'm beautiful.

And of course it’s a post criticizing our Chiefs!!!

It’s a pretty pro-Chiefs statistical analysis looking beyond our low point differential, actually.

Solid 65% chance Andy and Spags are keeping their powder dry from the playoffs. 35% were just marginally better and luck could run out in the playoffs.

People keep doing this not realizing that the "luckiest team ever" just recently added Pacheco, Omenihu, and Humphries, with Hollywood, Nelson, and possibly Watson returning too.

The fact that this "luckiest team ever" is adding all of that talent this late in the season should scare everybody, not make them feel any better.

Luck, was it, when Leo Chenal blasted through a weak lineman he'd been owning all game to block the field goal?

Luck, when the hardest working front office in the NFL had a kicker they'd already scouted on speed dial when their kicker went down?

Luck when they had ANOTHER kicker who had already played for them ready to go in case of emergency?

Was it luck when a team fighting for the worst record in the league couldn't mount a comeback with their backup up quarterback? Luck that a bad team played bad?

Luck that a backup tight end couldn't make an EXCEPTIONAL play?

Luck is the wind picking up at the right moment.

Luck is great players having freak accidents. Luck is the unexpected happening without provocation or reason.

Skill is repeatable, dependable ability. That's what you're watching, you dumb sack of donkey cum. You're watching the best team in the NFL for the last decade continue it's dominance against opponents playing at the bleeding edge of their ability.

The Chiefs are a Ferrari. The Opponents are a Mazda. You can push that Mazda to 120 MPH, sure. But one tiny mistake and you fly off the road. The Ferrari can handle mistakes at 120 MPH. The Mazda can't. That's why the Chiefs are winning close games. But keep calling it luck, dipshit.

Skill:technology::Luck:Magic.

Maybe the Kansas City Chiefs are the goodest lucky team ever?

They should look at the least the Chiefs era when Reid was coach. This team doesn't blow any team out.

Because Reid wants it that way.

No one ever wants to talk about how year over year we have terrible turnover luck and are basically always in the negative in turnover differential. Teams aren’t supposed to routinely win like that, yet we do.

Dribble. Other teams have won may close games in a season and never been treated with microscope we are under. The 2000 Ravens literally won 7 games without the offense getting a td.

Bills fans (much like many other football fans including CP) spent two decades convincing themselves the Patriots weren't that good, and now they get to do the same with Mahomes and the Chiefs.

Seems like 90% of the Chiefs' reddit is posts trying to defend the Chiefs from this idiocy, so I'm sure this will get posted over there and they'll just eat it up... it's quite the loser mentality to care so much about the haters though.

They will always hate, and if you aren't hated in competition, it just means you aren't good enough.

Yes

Remember when Dick Vermiels Chiefs would be up by 3 touchdowns in the first quarter of reg season games and then go 1 and done in the playoffs?

Dribble?

As TEX has said elsewhere -- embrace the hate, because it means the Chiefs are doing something right.

Such as 9 straight AFC West titles, 6 straight AFCCG appearances, and 4 SB appearances. Not too bad, at all.

The pointless kind

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Exactly. The quickest way to blowout the opponent is to get a bunch of turnovers on them. Broncos got two Pick 6's and an interception in Denver's end zone on Jameis Winston. That is a 21 point swing in 3 plays for Denver. Despite this massive swing in their favor, Denver only won the game by 9 points. The Chiefs are probably not gonna have a 21-point swing gift wrapped to them like that.

Your garage disproves this

4 corners with no shot clock?

"They only outscored their opponents by.... TUNED OUT

Chiefs content interrupted Wronger's daily injection of CNN.

Lucky teams don’t lose one game in almost 365 days, four of which were playoff games.

Defining "luck" as "point differential" is asinine. It implies that all close games are a coin flip and that end-game performance (aka "clutch gene") doesn't exist.

The author of this waste of time article is a Buffalo Bills fan.

https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_t...i3yaeM9hWn.jpg

You got further than me. This is where I stopped reading:

https://i.postimg.cc/bNtW2qjY/Screen...2-195951-2.png

I am so thankful you posted this. Because I wasn't sure what the author of this article meant when he wrote, "I am a Buffalo Bills fan...".

You wasted your time reading this article?

Sucks to be you.

Also, bruh goes into stats about Chiefs having an easy schedule.

This season we will play EVERY AFC TEAM that is probable to be in the post-season.

Pretty funny to hear a Buffalo fan talking about an easy schedule. They had 9 games on their schedule against terrible opponents: 6 really bad division games, plus 3 really bad opponents in the AFC South on their schedule. At least the Chiefs have 2 teams in their division with solid performance (Broncos/Chargers).

Plus KC played one of the toughest teams with a losing record in the Bengals. I guarantee the Bengals would give Buffalo a hard time. They always do when those teams go at it, just like KC & Cincy is always a tough battle.

Exactly.

For a small sample size, it might be luck. At some point, it is not.

It's also harder to beat teams when they all have you circled on their calendar and are busting out new gameplans just for this game.

4 Super Bowl victories to 0 Super Bowl victories - only story about Buffalo vs KC I need to know.

Not sure he wants it that way. Or if he's got a set point like a thermostat he's helpless to control.

<a href="https://imgflip.com/i/9dkzay"><img src="https://i.imgflip.com/9dkzay.jpg" title="made at imgflip.com"/></a>

THIS POST WINS THE ****ING THREAD!

Oversight or autocorrect.

Pfft.

You don’t know the right word. It’s ok.

This was almost Iowanian-ish!

For those of you who skipped the article.. this one part is actually interesting to me.

If anything, the NFL is lucky that RR, HB & XW haven't all been on the field the majority of this season.

58 Super Bowls Bills won 0. Let's just ignore this stat

Language is for communicating ideas to others. As long as your words accomplish that task, corrective action is entirely unecessary.

He’s not going to burn a bunch of plays that aren’t on tape just for a blowout.

It is not good news for any other team that a team that is not clicking and will be slowly adding huge pieces to the team is winning close games in spite of that