Ridiculous headline: “Chargers and Cowboys are most deserving of a Super Bowl win.” Problem is that this is based on a flawed premise



Is "South America's Team" really deserving of a Super Bowl?
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… the Vikings and Bills are more deserving than the nefarious 'boys

The Cowboys one of two teams that are “most deserving” of winning the next Super Bowl? I can agree that the Chargers are deserving, since they have never won a Lombardi Trophy.

First, the Cowboys have the most money, the most expensive venue, and the most financial resources of any team in the NFL. The fact that they have not won a Super Bowl in a quarter-century is their fault, and it does not mean that they deserve to win one.

Eleven other teams besides the Chargers have never won a Super Bowl, and some of them deserve one more than South America's Team.

So, how did this expert on “analytics” arrive at this conclusion?

Who is Bill James?

According to the author of the article, his headline is based upon the same formula that Bill James uses for baseball,

It’s easy to sit back and look at which teams are the contenders from year to year, yet the debate of which franchise is most deserving to win a championship is a little more intriguing, especially for the dozen teams which have never hoisted the Lombardi trophy. An by adapting some baseball metrics, we can actually measure this deservedness.

Bill James, widely considered the godfather of baseball analytics, presented one method to determine which baseball team was most deserving to win a World Series. He postulated “you deserve to win if you consistently put out a competitive team, which has a chance to win” and went about constructing a simple point system to rank franchises based on merit. It’s so simple, we can easily apply it to the NFL.

Neil Greenberg, “Chargers and Cowboys are most deserving of 
a Super Bowl win,” Washington Post, April 29, 2020

I have never heard of James, but his basic premise of “you deserve to win if you consistently put out a competitive team, which has a chance to win” obviously omitting some major teams that certainly deserve to win.

The whole idea of putting out a competitive team that has a chance to win means that those teams that do not put out a competitive team were not included in this.

Personally, I would like to see two teams that have come close to winning Super Bowls actually doing so: The Vikings and Bills.

The results


Here are those results, for what they are worth:

List of most deserving teams "according to analytics"

1. Chargers
2. Cowboys
3. Falcons
4. Panthers
5. Colts

Most deserving among teams that have never won the Super Bowl

1. Los Angeles Chargers, 52 points
2. Atlanta Falcons, 48 points
3. Carolina Panthers, 47 points
4. Minnesota Vikings, 42 points
5. Cincinnati Bengals, 40 points
T-6. Tennessee Titans, 39 points
T-6. Houston Texans, 39 points
8. Arizona Cardinals, 33 points
9. Jacksonville Jaguars, 31 points
10. Detroit Lions, 28 points
11. Buffalo Bills, 25 points
12. Cleveland Browns, 19 points



Neil Greenberg, Washington Post, April 29, 2020

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