Creating an NFL Dynasty: There Is Always Next Year

• Activity Number: 263
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 5, 2013 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Sports
• Author(s): Raymond Mooring*+
• Companies: Analysis Made Easy
• Keywords: NFL Dynasty ; Odds Ratios ; Sucess ; Persistence ; Proportions ; Parity

Abstract

The National Football League (NFL) has gone to great lengths to ensure that there is parity in today's game. Since NFL teams have to deal with salary caps, with free agency, with higher rated recruits going early in the NFL draft, and common scheduling with division and conference rivals, is it even possible to create an NFL "dynasty" in today's game? To study this, the results of the last 11 seasons were analyzed using odds ratios, the phi coefficient, difference of proportions, the Mantel-Haenszel statistic, and the Fisher's Exact Test. The motivating question for this research is this: is it possible to predict before a season starts how a team will perform based on their performance in the previous season?

Our results show that, compared to teams that did not make the playoffs, teams that made the playoffs are 45 times more likely to make the playoffs, 104 times more likely to win their division, and 28 times more likely to win their conference title the next season. Similar analyses were completed for the regular season divisional champions and conference champions. In each case, teams with success the previous season were more likely to succeed in the next season.