It’s looking like the weather could be a major storyline in this weekend’s round of NFL wild-card games. The Miami Dolphins will play the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium, where temperatures will likely plunge to single digits (Fahrenheit, for you sticklers) by Saturday evening. The outlook for Buffalo, where the Pittsburgh Steelers will travel the following day, isn’t as cold (mid-20s), but forecasts call for 15 mph winds with gusts up to 30 m.p.h. (with possibly 1-2 feet of snow falling over the course of the weekend).
Advertisement
Ah, football in a literal playoff atmosphere, with elite defenses out to brutalize opponents under difficult conditions. We all know what that means.
Or do we?
Last week, we searched for keys to underdog success in the NFL playoffs by looking at the (non-)importance of late-season momentum. Now, we are extending our analysis—and we’ve been surprised by the signals we have found.
We’ve made our mark by studying upsets in March Madness, and that work has uncovered one key principle: In a one-and-done scenario, variance helps underdogs. We’re looking for high-ceiling teams because the floor doesn’t matter — whether they lose by two points or 42, the season is over. That’s why we call a puncher’s chance “a puncher’s chance.” You want to back an underdog with the tools to knock out a better foe when things break right.
Variability, volatility… and Tyreek Hill
At first, we thought volatility might be similarly important in the NFL playoffs. Coaches, fans and sportswriters love to tout “consistency,” but at this time of year, steadiness only helps favorites. Think about it: A team like the San Francisco 49ers wants a straightforward game to assert dominance over an inferior roster. Anything that detracts from that advantage works against them. On the other hand, while an inconsistent quarterback can spell doom if he plays to the wrong tail of his bell curve, that’s just the kind of guy you want piloting an underdog. Just look at Eli Manning and Joe Flacco and their Super Bowl rings.
Now, there is one team whose inconsistency stands out like a sore thumb from this year’s pack of underdogs. Miami won one game this year by 50 points (and two more by 30 apiece) but also lost contests by 37 and 28. The spread in the Dolphins’ scoring, as measured by the coefficient of variation, is the widest among playoff teams, and the variability of their points allowed ranks second (behind Dallas). All else being equal, that should make any Goliath even more scared than the Dolphins’ overall record would indicate.
Advertisement
But as you’ve probably already started thinking, there are confounding factors at work. The Dolphins are so wrecked by injuries that it’s not useful to compare their recent play — Braxton Berrios, Chase Claypool and Julian Hill all got multiple targets last Sunday night — to what they were rolling out earlier in the season. Moreover, there’s a huge split in Miami’s performance this season by the quality of the opponent. The Dolphins went 10-1 against clubs that didn’t make the postseason but are just 1-5 vs. playoff teams, who outscored them by a margin of 196-107.
Playoff teams records vs. other playoff teams in 2023
These details don’t disqualify Miami as an underdog. But when you’re assessing the Dolphins-Chiefs game, they mean you shouldn’t rely on an argument we usually love to make for a distinctive longshot: that they could beat anyone on a good day.
Fortunately, other trends are more worth your time. Here’s what we’ve learned.
Fair-Weather Fans?
Back to those games in Buffalo and Kansas City this weekend. The instinctive reaction to cold and windy conditions is to expect a low-scoring game. But that’s already baked into the totals that bookmakers set — perhaps to an overblown degree. With the help of the Bet Labs tool, we can look up all sorts of trends with point spreads and totals. To test the cold-weather theory, we examined all playoff games with an over/under of 45 points or fewer and temperatures below 25 degrees (the Kansas City and Buffalo games both fit those criteria). Over the past two decades, betting on the over in those matchups produced a 14-4-1 record.
So much for cold weather hampering offense in the playoffs. But what about really cold weather, like we’ll get in Kansas City? The over was still dominant when we lowered the temperature to 15 degrees or less with 45 or fewer points (5-2). Most recently, the Bills scored 47 points in those conditions in routing the Patriots two years ago.
Advertisement
Related: Jake Ciely’s strategy guide to weather and more
And wind? We know heavy gusts can wreak havoc on passing attacks and the kicking game, so we’d expect those games to tilt toward the under as well. There have actually been very few playoff games over the past decade with temperatures below freezing and wind gusts of 15 mph or greater — just four, not much of a sample size. But when you include regular-season games, the over is 14-8-1 over the past two decades, including a 7-5-1 mark when the over/under is very low (below 40). For reference, the over/under in the Steelers-Bills game currently sits at 36.5.
In other words, you would have made a healthy profit betting overs in bad-weather playoff games over the past two decades. But even if you don’t buy the trends, they should at least make you recognize that weather conditions have already been accounted for — and then some — in sportsbooks’ totals.
Fish Out of Water?
There’s another myth that persists when it comes to weather: Teams from warm climates supposedly collapse amidst the harsh elements of winter. To test that, we looked at how teams from those cities, as well as those that play in domes, have performed in road playoff games in cold weather.
Once again, it turns out that conventional wisdom is vastly overrated. Over the past 20 years, when dome/warm teams have traveled to play a playoff game with a temperature below 32 degrees, they are 11-13-1 against the spread — just barely below .500, or not worth any sort of profit. When the temperature is 25 degrees or below, they are 5-6-1. So even if they are somewhat uncomfortable in colder climates, that is already factored into the spread.
And that makes sense. Tyreek Hill used to play for Kansas City. Was he better suited to play in cold weather during those years? And now that he has joined the Dolphins, can he no longer perform in those same conditions? Certain passing attacks may only function well in ideal conditions, and some quarterbacks don’t grip the ball well when it’s wet. But we forget that players aren’t intrinsically linked to the city where they currently play. In many cases, they have spent several seasons in cold environments, either in college or with other NFL teams.
More on Momentum
Last week, we crushed the idea that momentum matters going into the playoffs. It turns out that’s also true when it comes to point spreads.
It’s rare for a team to be playing especially poorly entering the playoffs — after all, you can’t qualify without winning a lot of games. But this year, the Eagles are sputtering, having lost five of their final six regular-season games. Does that mean they’re doomed when they face Tampa Bay on Monday night?
Advertisement
Nope.
Once again with the help of Bet Labs, we looked at how playoff teams did in their final five regular-season games. Over the past two decades, only five teams made the playoffs after winning no more than one of their final five games. But those teams went 3-2 against the spread in their first playoff game. That includes last year’s Dolphins, who went 1-5 to finish the regular season but then gamely battled Buffalo (with Skylar Thompson at QB!) before falling 34-31 (and covering the spread).
If you expand the list to include teams that went 2-3 to finish the season, struggling teams went 19-14-2 in the wild-card round, including 14-9-1 as underdogs. So, not only should you not automatically disqualify those slumping teams, but you would actually have made a profit betting on them over the past two decades. There it is, Eagles fans: your glimmer of hope.
Better Lucky Than Good?
Don’t you love teams that just know how to win? The ones who get outgained, but escape with narrow victories? The ones who gut it out despite not playing their best? Those are the teams that you want to back in the playoffs, baby!
Ha!
Luck is real. And over time, statistical indicators of strength and weakness can’t be ignored. That’s called regression to the mean.
What’s interesting is that regression seems to come quickly and consistently in the playoffs. Just look at last year’s Vikings. They somehow went an absurd, and unsustainable, 11-0 during the regular season in one-score games. Over the long haul, you would expect that luck to even out (which was why, despite winning 13 games last season, their over/under for wins entering this season was just 8.5). But karma came even quicker than that, as a pedestrian New York Giants team beat the Minnesota Vikings in last year’s wild-card round, 31-24.
Advertisement
We can use statistics to measure a team’s expected winning percentage, often known as a “Pythagorean record.” Bet Labs includes a metric called Pythagorean +/-, which measures the difference between a team’s expected and actual records. And it turns out that teams that were lucky in the regular season tend to fall apart in the playoffs. Those with a -10 percent Pythagorean +/- or worse (meaning their actual record was significantly better than their expected record) went 39-67-1 (36.8 percent) against the spread in the playoffs. The effect was even more pronounced when those teams played on the road, as they went 12-28 (30 percent) ATS. That doesn’t bode well for the Steelers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the only two current teams to fit the lucky criteria.
The opposite also holds true. Teams that were unlucky in the regular season tend to find their footing in the playoffs. Teams that were at least 10 percent in the unlucky direction in Pythagorean +/- over the past two decades went 27-16-1 in the playoffs. This year, that applies to the Cowboys and Bills. And considering that Buffalo faces the luck-fueled Steelers, it’s probably worth a long, hard look at that point spread, even as it is 10 points.
So stop listening to the same old platitudes. Consider going in the opposite direction: It just might make you some money.
GO DEEPER
With Bill Belichick out, 10 potential candidates for the Patriots' head-coaching job
(Photos: Cooper Neill, Patrick McDermott / Getty Images)