Getty Image / Steph Chambers
The Kansas City Chiefs defied NFL odds/trends on Sunday night en route to winning Super Bowl LVIII, their second in a row and 3rd in the past 5. Mahomes also picked up his 3rd Super Bowl MVP award along the way despite Travis Kelce putting the Chiefs on his back in the second half.
Disclaimer: if you thought this was going to be a ‘hater post’ on how the Chiefs only won because they got lucky, you will be disappointed. The Kansas City Chiefs didn’t use trickery to win Super Bowl LVIII, they just played the better game.
That said, the Chiefs were lucky in Super Bowl LVIII. Some might even say they were incredibly lucky when you look at the odds. The Chiefs recovered 6 of 7 fumbles in the game. The odds of an NFL team recovering a fumble is close to 50%, or a coin flip. In individual cases, it certainly doesn’t appear that way, but on average NFL offenses recovered fumbles 53.16% of the time in the 2023 season according to a math-drive post on Reddit.
That same post ran the math and found the odds of the Chiefs recovering 6 of 7 fumbles in the Super Bowl were right around 7%. According to the post from ‘practialist,’ the math works out to:
“P(X = 6) = (7C6)(1/2)6(1/2)1
= 7 × 1/64 × 1/2
= 7/128
= 5.47%
In truth the offense recovers about 53.16% of fumbles in 2023, so the true % chance of recovering 6 of the 7 fumbles is probably around 7%”
San Francisco lost the turnovers battle. Jake Moody had his PAT blocked despite coming into the game 67-of-68. And the Chiefs’ 57-yard FG came dangerously close to being blocked but it wasn’t.
While the Chiefs did get lucky recovering 6 of 7 fumbles, the Niners also appeared to have luck go against them. That said, they should’ve known the overtime rules for the Super Bowl. That was a colossal blunder on their behalf.
San Francisco has all the pieces to make it back to the Super Bowl next season. Coach Shanahan would be wise to highlight the randomness and ‘luck’ that went against them to keep the players focused.