Despite complaints about other sports, the NFL has become the most predictable league in America

There's nothing more predictable than fans complaining about sports, and particularly, how much better things used to be. Well, there may be one thing more predictable: the modern NFL.

Much of the online discourse over the past few months in the sports world has centered on the supposed decline of competitive balance in Major League Baseball. Primarily because the Los Angeles Dodgers have spent money in an attempt to improve their roster, or used their top tier farm system to acquire Tarik Skubal. Combined with LA's back-to-back World Series wins, this has given rise to concerns that the Dodgers are unbeatable. That other teams can't hope to compete with their superior talent. That sailing through the postseason is a foregone conclusion.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers just wrapped a stretch where they went 2-11 against likely playoff teams such as the Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, Arizona Diamondbacks and Milwaukee Brewers. Several of those games were started by Skubal, with LA now 1-2 in games he starts. The one win coming against the last place Kansas City Royals.

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Fans quick to hand wave those concerns off as "meaningless games" don't seem to realize that securing a bye through the first round, as well as home field advantage throughout the playoffs, is very meaningful. Or don't seem to remember that teams aren't able to magically become superhuman in October, as evidenced by the Dodgers winning 104 games in 2017, 106 games in 2019, 106 games in 2021, 111 games in 2022, and 100 games in 2023, only to lose in the postseason each year. It's not that easy to sail through the playoffs in baseball, because the gaps between teams is so small.

Over the course of a season, the best team in baseball might win 60-61% of their games. Meanwhile, the Cubs, headed for a wild card spot, have won 58% of their games. The gaps between teams just aren't big enough for predictable dominance.

They are in the NFL. Though nobody seems to care, for several, frankly ridiculous, reasons.

First, some context. Starting in the 2013 season, the last 13 years, just seven NFL organizations have won the Super Bowl. Out of 32 teams. Over that same time frame, just 11 organizations have even reached the Super Bowl, out of 32 teams. In fact, 10 of the last 13 Super Bowls have been won by the New England Patriots, Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles or Seattle Seahawks. One of the other three? Tom Brady's win with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

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All told, just 22% of the NFL has won the Super Bowl since 2013. Only 34% of NFL teams have reached the Super Bowl in the last 13 seasons. The Chiefs and Patriots alone have made up 13 of 26 Super Bowl teams over that time frame.

MLB, which is the sport supposedly lacking in competitive balance, where the two World Series teams are reportedly predetermined each year, has been much less predictable. Since 2013, nine organizations, out of 30 teams, have won the World Series. In all 30% of MLB has won a championship, outpacing the NFL. And 17 MLB teams have reached the World Series, or 57%.

So 22% of the NFL has won the Super Bowl since 2013, and 34% have reached the Super Bowl, while 30% of MLB has won a title and 57% have reached the World Series. Which sport has the predictability problem again?

But that's only part of the story. The other, arguably even worse, side of it? The relationship between the regular season in the NFL and reaching or winning the Super Bowl.

Again, some context. The best teams in baseball generally win around 60-61% of their games. In the NFL, the best teams routinely win 80+% of their games. The last two seasons, the best record in the NFL has been 14-3, an .824 winning percentage. Meanwhile, the Green Bay Packers, a playoff team, won just 56% of their games. The gaps between teams in the NFL is so large that the ultimate outcome, which franchises reach the Super Bowl, is much easier to predict.

That's not an opinion, it's fact.

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Since 2013, again, the past 13 seasons, the average Super Bowl participant has ranked second in the NFL's regular season winning percentage. On average. The median rank? Literally one. More than half of the Super Bowl participants had the best record in the regular season. 15 of 26 teams, or 58%, had the best record in the NFL. So 23 of the 26 teams had a top-5 record. 20 of the 26 were in the top three in winning percentage. Some of that is because of ties, meaning teams that had the same records, but it indicates the severity of the problem: have one of the best records? Reach the Super Bowl.

Two of the three outliers, with records outside the top-5, were Tom Brady teams, the 2018 Patriots and 2020 Buccaneers. The other? The 2021 Cincinnati Bengals, one of the flukiest appearances in recent memory after beating the Raiders, Titans, and getting a 27-24 overtime win over the Chiefs. They promptly lost to a team with a top-3 record.

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Let's compare to baseball. Again, over that same time frame, the relationship to regular season winning percentage is much lower. While the average NFL team to reach the Super Bowl had the second best record, in baseball it's 4.5. The median rank of a Super Bowl was one, in MLB it's four. Only eight of 26 teams to reach the World Series had the best record in baseball. That's just 26%, compared to 58% in the NFL.

Not one NFL team that finished outside the top nine in winning percentage reached the Super Bowl, while there were three MLB teams that were 10th or worse that reached the World Series. The 2023 Diamondbacks were 13th, and they swept the almighty Dodgers in the NLDs on their way to a World Series appearance. The 2021 Braves had the 12th best winning percentage in the regular season and beat the 106-win unstoppable Dodgers in the NLCS on their way to bringing home a championship.

Fans have short memories, so it's easy to forget just how unpredictable the baseball postseason actually is. And how little relevance the regular season has. We've seen in just the past few years that even teams that finish well down the list in winning percentage have a legitimate chance of winning a title.

In the NFL? Not even close. The gaps between teams are so big that the best regular season team almost always reaches the Super Bowl or wins it. If your team finishes outside the top three in winning percentage, it's a near-guarantee you're waiting for next year. Especially if you don't have Patrick Mahomes or Tom Brady.

The NFL has several structural benefits however, that allows it to overcome this predictability problem. One is the misguided assumption that any team can win in a given season. We have nearly a decade and a half showing that is conclusively not the case. Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady have played on 10 of the 26 Super Bowl teams since 2013.

The other benefits? The schedule, Red Zone channel, scoring system, and the explosion of fantasy football and gambling.

In 2024 and 2025, the average NFL team has scored 23 points per game. Big numbers! Big numbers means exciting! Considering that represents an average of just over three touchdowns per game, it's much less so. If the average score of an NFL game was 4-3, would fans think it was so "exciting?"

The Red Zone channel, where most fans spend time watching games that don't feature their favorite teams, focuses exclusively on the big, meaningful plays. If you condense a three hour football game into a handful of the best plays, of course it'll seem exciting.

The schedule too, where games are primarily focused Sunday, when the vast majority of fans aren't working and are able to watch games on national television. They watch those games, even with teams they don't follow, due in large part to the rise of gambling, daily fantasy, prop bets, prediction markets, and of course, season-long fantasy football. Or to just have something on in the background. The Netflix "second screen" model.

Apparently because some of this predictability comes from teams in smaller markets, primarily the Chiefs, fans bizarrely don't seem to mind dynasties. No one cares if the same few teams win in the NFL, as long as they're not from New York or LA. Even though the outcome ultimately is predictable, people don't think it is. And perception, as is so often the case, is more important than reality.

Then there's the fact that betting in the NFL is primarily on point spreads, not simply winners and losers. That makes the ultimate outcome, even if it is more predictable, less "boring," because a team can still "cover" even in a loss.

Oh, and by the way, the current betting favorite is the LA Rams, which, should that come to pass, would mean we'd have just seven different teams win a Super Bowl in 14 seasons. It doesn't get much worse than that.