Is there something different about the Super Bowl game? It’s watched by more people, of course, and there are all the extra hoopla before, after and during the game. But does this translate into different things actually happening with the teams?
I mention this because safeties historically have shown up far more often in these games, which I can’t explain. (Maybe there’s no need to explain anything, and it’s just a statistical oddity).
Three years in a row, there’s been a safety in the Super Bowl. Tom Brady got caught intentionally grounding against the Giants. The Ravens intentionally took one at the end of their win over the 49ers. And that first snap inexplicably went flying by Peyton Manning on the first play last year.
This shouldn’t happen. Safeties are rare. In this century, there have been 3,824 regular-season games, and there have been only 238 safeties – about one every 16 games. In none of those years was there more than a safety every 12 plays. Yet in the Super Bowl, they’ve happened in four of the 15 games since 2000.
Overall, there’s been 9 safeties in 48 Super Bowls, when the odds indicate there should have been about three.
| SAFETIES IN REGULAR SEASON | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Safeties | Games | Pct |
| 2000 | 16 | 248 | 6.5% |
| 2001 | 10 | 248 | 4.0% |
| 2002 | 12 | 256 | 4.7% |
| 2003 | 21 | 256 | 8.2% |
| 2004 | 15 | 256 | 5.9% |
| 2005 | 11 | 256 | 4.3% |
| 2006 | 12 | 256 | 4.7% |
| 2007 | 18 | 256 | 7.0% |
| 2008 | 21 | 256 | 8.2% |
| 2009 | 14 | 256 | 5.5% |
| 2010 | 13 | 256 | 5.1% |
| 2011 | 21 | 256 | 8.2% |
| 2012 | 13 | 256 | 5.1% |
| 2013 | 20 | 256 | 7.8% |
| 2014 | 21 | 256 | 8.2% |
Anybody have any plausible explanation for what’s going on? You could argue that the game’s mean more and teams start doing crazy things, but that doesn’t seem to be adequate in my eyes. All of those other games are plenty important as well.
More notably, over the last two years, there’s been a safety about every 12 games. Can anybody assure me that in the next 12 Super Bowls, there will be only one safety? The way they’ve been flowing, it seems like there will be more than that for some reason.
You can bet on this kind of thing. You can bet on almost anything with the Super Bowl, so I checked the odds at bovada.com. If you bet $10 that a safety will occur, they’ll give up $55 back. That doesn’t seem particularly good. If you made that bet on each of the next 13 Super Bowls and you were right twice (way higher than the NFL average), it would be a wash. You would lose $10 on 11 of those bets, and you’d win $110 total on the other two.
Using the bovada odds, it also doesn’t make much sense to bet against a safety. They’ve got the deal slotted at a 9-1 rate. You must make a $90 bet to win $10. If you made that bet in each of the next 10 years, you’d have to be right on all 10 of them to come out ahead. If there was one safety (in the 10 games) it would be a wash. (You would lost $90 on that one loss, and you’d win $10 on each of the other nine.)
—Ian Allan