Nate Silver Says Lions Have Less Than 1% Chance To Win The Super Bowl
By: Evan Jankens
@kingofthekc
The Cleveland Cavaliers won a NBA Championship and the Chicago Cubs won the World Series -- so does that mean the Detroit Lions will win the Super Bowl?
According to Nate Silver, the statistical guru and founder of fivethirtyeight.com, they have a 2 percent chance to make it to Houston and appear in Super Bowl LI and less than a 1 percent chance to win the ball game.
How this works: Our forecast is based on 100,000 simulations of the season and updates after every game. Our model uses Elo ratings (a measure of strength based on head-to-head results and quality of opponent) to calculate teams' chances of winning their regular-season games and advancing to and through the playoffs.
Along with the Lions, the Texans and Dolphins also have less than a 1 percent chance to win the Super Bowl as well. The New England Patriots are the heavy favorite right now. They have a 55 percent chance to make the Super Bowl and a 35 percent chance to win it.
If you're wondering what percent chance the Lions have to beat the Seahawks and make the Divisional Round of the playoffs, Nate Silver puts that at a 29 percent chance, with a 9 percent chance to make the Conference Championship.
Note for the sake of full disclosure that Silver, known widely as a numbers genius, was dead wrong about the recent presidential election, predicting basically up to Hillary Clinton's concession speech that she was going to handily carry most of the states in the union.
In the words of Lloyd Christmas from "Dumb and Dumber," "so you're telling me there's a chance!"
