By SAM MAXWELL
Staff Writer
Often times after a team wins the Super Bowl, they attribute the victory to “getting hot at the right time.” The team says their run in the playoffs was due to coming together, and playing their best football at the right time.
So, I wanted to analyze just when is this “right time” for a team to come together? How many games does it take to get a team on the right track?
I analyzed the regular season results of the last ten Super Bowl champions, and looked to see which weeks were the most popular for these teams to lose.
The last ten champions are as follows: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2002, the New England Patriots in 2003, and 2004, the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2005 and 2008, the Indianapolis Colts in 2006, the New York Giants in 2007, and 2011, the New Orleans Saints in 2009, and the Green Bay Packers in 2010.
My hypothesis before looking at the results was the most of the losses would have occurred at the beginning of the season. If the “getting hot at the right time” explanation is true, the teams would not have been losing games in weeks 15, 16, and 17. However, after looking at the results, I found that my hypothesis was dead wrong.
After looking at the results, the most frequent week for a Super Bowl champion to lose was week 15 of the regular season. Out of the last ten champions, half of them lost that week.
What is even more surprising is the fact that the second highest loss frequency rate was week 16 (along with weeks 12, 13 and 1) with four of the last 10 champions losing that week.
In fact, the most interesting fact I found was in 2009, the New Orleans Saints lost their final three games before entering the playoffs. The team lost in weeks 15, 16, and 17, after not losing at all in the previous 14 weeks! That could not be farther away from entering the playoffs “getting hot at the right time.”
If you divide the season in half (putting week 9 in the second half), the last ten Super Bowl champions lost 16 games in weeks 1-8, and 27 games in weeks 10-17 (none of the teams lost in week 9). I would have bet those numbers had been reversed.
However, it seems that it does not matter when you are playing your best football, as long as you play well enough to win and advance.
