Hogs Haven
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Washington’s breakout year contained plenty of good fortune. An NFL data scientist has the numbers to prove it.
The biggest reason for a dose of pessimism...might be luck. The Commanders’ breakout season included a lot of good fortune the team can’t necessarily count on again.
This goes deeper than the Hail Mary. It goes deeper than Washington’s record in one-score games: 9-4, the sixth-best winning percentage in the league. And it goes deeper than injuries, as Washington finished as the NFL’s fifth-healthiest team by the metric “adjusted games lost,” which attempts to quantify the significance of each.
The good luck is perhaps best captured by a “luck dashboard” created by NFL data scientist Tom Bliss and published on the league’s website.
Bliss identified four key scenarios where “teams benefit from actions in a game that are almost entirely derived from opponent performance or lucky bounces” and measured their impact with win probability.
1. An opponent drops a pass on offense.
2. An opponent drops an interception on defense.
3. An opponent misses a kick.
4. Either team recovers a fumble.
By the metric, the 2024 Commanders were the luckiest team since at least the 2022 season, when Bliss started tracking this. It isn’t close, either.
“We have found no correlation for this luck metric from season to season,” Bliss wrote in an email. “Thus, every team individually (including the Commanders) should expect to have a net win probability via luck of 0” going into next season.
The Commanders excelled in one-score games because the coaches prepared them the right way, players argued, and they believe the team’s improved health is at least partly because of increased investment from ownership.
Andrew Wylie said, “[A] lot of winning-time moments went our way because we practiced them every day.”
“I feel like there’s absolutely a component of luck, but I also think that the most well-prepared teams are the luckiest,” guard Nick Allegretti said.
“Do you believe in luck?” a reporter asked center Tyler Biadasz.
“I believe in 5,” he responded, referring to quarterback Jayden Daniels.
The numbers say the Commanders probably won’t get as lucky as they did last season. The players aren’t so sure it was luck in the first place.
Sinnott originally hails from Waterloo, Iowa. He didn’t just play football in high school; he lettered in golf, baseball, tennis, and track at Columbus Catholic High School. He was also an incredible hockey player. Sinnott began playing hockey when he was three years old and credits the sport for teaching him how to be physically aggressive. Although his...
