Orb Analytics Conference Championship Results
We have our Conference Champions! Congratulations to our readers from the Philadelphia and Kansas City areas. Sunday was a tale of two models for the Orb as our spread models got the Commanders +6.5 extremely wrong but our moneyline models successfully predicted both the Eagles and Chiefs to advance to the Superbowl.
In a pro-Philadelphia sentiment, I think the models were more wrong about the Eagles than they were the Commanders. That was the most impressive game I have seen them play all season. Hurts looked completely unaffected by last week’s knee injury and had one of his stronger passing performances. Combining that with seven (7) rushing touchdowns is going to be tough to beat (or cover against) regardless of how many years your quarterback has played in the league. The data told us the Eagles were one of two teams above playoff average on both sides of the ball according to EPA and they backed that up Sunday with a dominant win.
The moneyline models were on the Chiefs to win, but Model C predicted a tight game and for the Bills to keep it within the 2-point spread, so we were one model shy of giving out what would have been a Chiefs -2 pick. Given how close some of the scores in this matchup have been in recent years, it was reasonable for a model to feel confident about the moneyline prediction but not the spread even if it is such a small number. So in this case it cost us what would have been a winning spread pick, but overall this modeling strategy has saved us far more than it has hurt us. In terms of the game itself, this has become a yearly tradition. The Bills have an awesome season, it feels like the whole country is rooting for them, and then they lose to the Chiefs in late January. Allen can do it in the regular season, but now falls to 0-4 vs. Mahomes when it matters in the playoffs. I feel bad for Bills fans but have no idea what this team needs to do to finally get it done vs Kansas City.
Here is how each pick performed on Sunday:
Spreads
Commanders +6.5 ❌
0-1, 0%, -1 unit
Moneyline
Eagles ✅
Chiefs ✅
2-0, 100%, +1.145 units
Overall a +0.145 unit performance.
Ultimately, the models find themselves on the wrong side of the knife edge, now sitting at 2-3 against the spread in the playoffs compared to the more ideal 3-2. It is impossible to gain meaningful insights from a sample size of 5 picks, but it has been interesting to see how model performance ATS has worsened as we get further from updated team-level data from Week 18. Of course, we would prefer if our models had gotten all 5 spread predictions correct. However, identifying a significant performance drop when up-to-date predictors are unavailable would weirdly be a strong argument for the predictive power of our models during the regular season.
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It's crazy how fast the entire season has gone by. We now only have one game left and one more prediction to make. Our models will need to hit their Superbowl spread prediction just to get back to the dreaded 50% mark against the spread, which is never a good place to be. They have performed well in Superbowls so far, so hopefully, the Orb can keep that streak alive in two weeks!
- Team Orb Analytics
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