The wild AFC playoff picture

With two games remaining in the NFL season, eight teams are vying for two AFC wildcard spots. The Ravens and Broncos are tied at 8-6, and the Jaguars, Dolphins, Jets, Steelers, Texans, and Titans sit at 7-7.

Undoubtedly, fans of these teams would be interested to know their team's playoff chances. Fortunately, (as I have blogged about twice before), there is a site for that: Sports Club Stats.

If you assume each team has a 50% chance of winning their games, the probabilities (estimated by markov simulations) look like this:

Ravens 65%
Broncos 54%
Jaguars 28%
Dolphins 20%
Jets 18%
Steelers 14%
Texans 6%
Titans 4%

However, if you weight the chances based on past performance, the probabilities look like this:

Ravens 87%
Broncos 67%
Jets 13%
Dolphins 12%
Jaguars 11%
Steelers 10%
Texans 3%
Titans 1%

Sports Club Stats tells you all kinds of other interesting things. You can see at which seeds teams are most likely to finish, and you can compare probabilities based on hypothetical records. For example, I know that if the Steelers win their next two games, they have a 48% chance of making the playoffs; but if they win only one, their probability falls to 1%. I also know that the games that matter the most next week are the Patriots vs. Jaguars and Steelers vs. Ravens.

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Out of curiosity, I compared the probabilities above to the probabilities estimated by HubDub prediction markets:

Ravens 72%
Broncos 57%
Titans 34%
Dolphins 22%
Jaguars 16%
Jets 14%
Steelers 11%
Texans 9%

If you add these probabilities, you get 235%, which makes no sense when there are basically only two spots available. I was especially shocked at the Titans' inflated probability.

However, when you consider how few people are betting in these markets -- about 60 each over the lifetime of the bet -- it is remarkable how similar they are to the SCS probabilities.

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On a side note, this morning I had a great breakfast with Ken, the founder of SCS. It was great to learn some background on the site and to hear some of his plans for improvements. Once he gets bored with SCS, I am hoping I can convince him to work with me on a new project.