2010-02-06: Superbowl XLIV


Regardless of which team you are rooting for this is going to be a good football game. Both teams have explosive offenses captained by quarterbacks that are destined to be indoctrinated into the Hall of Fame.


Peyton Manning is one cool character and if he can figure out the Saints defense the Colts are going to pull away and not look back. The Colts have been consistently good all season and they have a good chance of continuing that trend on Sunday. If the Colts have a weakness, it is their running game. Both offensively and defensively the Colts run game has performed below the league average.

The Saints with Drew Brees, have the leagues best offense without question. They have more yards per attempt and less interceptions than the Colts. They can pass and run the ball very well and if they want to win they had better use it to their advantage. The Saints handicap is their defense. They are below the league average and the Saints secondary against Peyton makes me shudder. That being said the Saints Defense has a magical ability to force a turnover and make a play that wins the game.

Most of the models we use take the home team into consideration. For the Superbowl neither team is really the home team so I ran the models with once with each team as the home team to see if it made a difference and and surprisingly it did not. Looking at the numbers both teams are closely matched and I thought that something like Home field would tilt the difference but all of the models stayed the same no matter which team was considered at home.

Now for the Superbowl predictions.


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-- Greg Szalkowski

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