Skill or Fortune? How Inches Define Success in the NFL

The Kansas City Chiefs are back-to-back Super Bowl Champions and are currently 12-1, the best record in the NFL. On the other side, my New York Giants are tied for the worst record in the NFL at 2-11 with fans already talking about the draft, which normally takes place in the end of April, in November. The Chiefs have an incredible roster, there’s no denying it. In fact, I’ll probably put out a post sometime in the near future about how they’re able to be so dominant. But are they really that much better than the Giants? Well, the answer is both yes and no. Roster wise, Brett Veach and the Chiefs front office have done an amazing job at acquiring talent which dominantly and consistently win football games. However, despite their talent, they’ve still gotten extremely lucky. 13 inches to be exact. Now it might seem like a far-fetched idea, but in this video, Youtuber Isaac Punts breaks down the first 9 games of the season and explains how the Chiefs were a combined 12 inches from starting the season 4-5 instead of their undefeated 9-0. Factoring in the most recent 4 games including a field goal bouncing off the post and in by an inch and Aidan O’Connell turning his head around a second too late and dropping the snap, and they are 13 inches and one second away from being a lowly 5-8, a far-fetched cry from the monstrous 12-1 they are today. On the contrary, while the Giants have been a mostly miserable team to watch so far this season, we’re an inch away from our most recent game being taken to overtime where we potentially win it as opposed to the tipped field goal spiraling off-track and costing us the game. Just to clarify once more, the Chiefs and the Giants are not even comparable at this point of time. But as to how crucial luck can be to the success of an NFL team, the teams with the best and worst record 14 weeks into the season at 12-1 and 2-11 with a 9 win difference, are a combined 14 inches and one second away from being 5-8 and 3-10 with a 2 win difference. So does a team always need to get lucky to be good? Of course not! In 2007 when the Patriots went undefeated in the regular season, they won by an average of 20 points, making inches inconsequential. But sometimes you fight just hard enough to put yourself in a situation to win, and getting a little lucky never hurts.