NFL Odds – Will There Be A ‘Trio of Ties’ in the National Football League?
Most people know that it’s possible for an NFL game to end in a tie. That’s ‘most people’. When the Cincinnati Bengals and Philadelphia Eagles played to a 13-13 tie in 2008 Philly quarterback Donovan McNabb revealed at the post game press conference that he didn’t know NFL games could end in a tie. The fact that prior to the Eagles and Bengals tie game there hadn’t been a tie in the National Football League since 2002 should underscore it’s rarity. Most long time NFL fans can recall a tie game or two but it’s definitely not something that you see all the time.
In fact, prior to the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals playing to a 6-6 tie on October 23, 2016 there hadn’t been a tie in the NFL in over two years. The Seahawks/Cardinals tie was unprecedented in some interesting ways as it was the lowest scoring tie since the introduction of overtime in 1974 and the only tie in the OT era with no touchdowns scored. Football fans didn’t have to wait long for the next tie–it happened this Sunday, October 30 as the Cincinnati Bengals and Washington Redskins played to a 27-27 tie at London’s Wembley Stadium. There hasn’t been a tie game in consecutive weeks in the NFL in over 20 years.
WILL THERE BE A TIE IN THREE CONSECUTIVE WEEKS?
That’s the obvious question–will there be a tie next week making it the third in three weeks? What are the odds of this happening? These might be obvious questions but the answers aren’t quite so obvious. There’s quite a few factors at play that make it difficult to even work out all of the variables involved to determine the odds of a third tie in three weeks. Let’s take a look at the odds and then I’ll explain how I came up with these numbers:
NFL TIE GAME PROPOSITION BETTING ODDS
Will any game played in Week Nine of the NFL season end in a tie?:
YES: +1750
NO: -3500
The following set of odds would apply to every NFL game on the board in Week Nine. We’ll use Thursday’s game between Tampa Bay and Atlanta as an example:
Will the Thursday Night game between Tampa Bay and Atlanta end in a tie?:
YES: +18500
NO: -37500
Will there be another tie in the NFL before the end of the 2016 season?:
YES: +1500
NO: -2500
Will the NFL change the overtime rules for the 2017 season?:
YES: +500
NO: -750
The thing that’s most important to keep in mind: a NFL tie is what statisticians call an ‘independent event’. In other words, one NFL tie exerts no influence on future NFL ties. Last week’s Seahawks/Cardinals tie did not increase or decrease the likelihood of a tie occurring in today’s Redskins/Bengals game or any other NFL game. That’s what is known as the ‘Gambler’s Fallacy’ at work. It’s the same concept that makes some people believe that if a roulette wheel has hit an odd number ten times in a row that it’s *more* likely that an even number will come up next because ‘it’s due’. Or if you’re flipping a coin and get ‘heads’ a dozen straight times. Since everyone knows that a coin flip is a 50/50 proposition that makes the odds of a ‘heads’ on any given toss an even money proposition (+100 or 1/1). The toss after that is also an even money proposition with a 50/50 chance of heads or tails appearing no matter what happened on the previous toss. Keep this in mind–it’s an essential concept to the question at hand and gambling in general.
CHANGES IN NFL OVERTIME RULES MEAN FEWER TIES
The first thing we need to determine is the chance that any given NFL game will end in a tie. There’s a number of ways to go about this, none of which can be completely accurate. Between 1920 and 1973 there were 258 ties including three seasons with no ties and 5 seasons with 10 or more ties. Of course it’s obvious that ties are going to be more likely when there’s not an overtime period to break them. More significantly, these 258 ties do us little good in determining the frequency of tie games in the NFL circa 2016. Overtime was implemented in 1974 and the NFL began counting ties as a ‘half win/half loss’ in the standings. Since the advent of overtime in 1974 there have been 22 tie games. That’s a better number but NFL fans know that overtime rules were changed *again* in 2012 to give the kicking team a chance to get the ball if the receiving team scores a FG at the start of the extra period.
The number we’ll work with is the number of ties since 2012, of which there have been five. There have been 1148 NFL games in the period from the start of the 2012 season (when the new overtime rules were implemented) through Week 8 of the 2016 NFL season (not counting Monday’s game). Keeping in mind that this is a very short ‘sample size’ from a statistical standpoint. Ideally, we’d be able to use data from millions of games to get a more accurate result but we have to work with what we’ve got. Now we can do the math and figure out just how likely it is for a NFL game to end in a tie.
DOING THE MATH ON NFL TIES
I’ll spare you the formulas and calculations but based on the numbers above there has been a one tie every 229.6 NFL games played since the start of the 2012 season. More accurately, our data suggests that any individual NFL came has a .004355 or approximately a 0.43% chance of ending in a tie score after overtime. With 12 games scheduled for Week 9 of the 2016 NFL season that gives us 12 chances at 0.43% each. Factoring this out, that means there is a 0.05226 or approximately 5.22% chance that we’ll have a tie game in Week 9 for the third consecutive week.
This brings us back to the ‘Gambler’s Fallacy’–there is no causal relationship between a tie game in Phoenix in Week 7, a tie game in London in Week 8 and the potential of a tie game happening in Week 9. It’s neither more likely nor less likely, in the same way that flipping a coin and getting ‘heads’ 12 straight times in no way influences the outcome of flip #13. That will still be a 50/50 proposition and in Week 9 of NFL football action there will be a 0.43% chance of any individual NFL game ending in a tie. Putting this in odds format and assuming the validity of our percentages, the ‘true odds’ of a tie occurring in any individual NFL game would be +23155. The true odds against a tie in any individual NFL game would be -23255 or 1/200. The odds for a tie in any given week of the NFL schedule depends on the number of games played. For next weekend’s 12 game slate it would be +1815 or 363/20 that there will be a tie and -1814 or 7/127 that there won’t be a tie. Spoiler alert–you won’t find a sportsbook offering anywhere near ‘true odds’ on a ‘Will there be a tie?’ proposition. For example, some books offered a prop bet that Sunday Night’s game between Dallas and Philadelphia would end in a tie paying +15000. In the odds posted at the outset of the article I included a little bit of ‘vig’ as well.
So the decreasing frequency of ties is a validation that the NFL’s revised overtime rules work like a charm? Not so fast–there might very well be an alternate causality here and that’s the continuing improvement of NFL placekickers. NFL placekickers have greater range and accuracy than any time in history and they keep getting better. This can be demonstrated from any number of metrics but here’s just one interesting fact: In the 1932 NFL season, NFL kickers hit 67.3% of their kicks (combined field goals and extra points). Since 2010, NFL kickers have been successful on 61.9% of their field goal attempts of 50 or more yards!