For those of you who don’t know who Nate Silver is, Silver is a political blogger for the New York Times and uses numbers to predict the outcomes of Presidential Elections. Just how good is Silver? He had a 100% accuracy rating predicting which states would fall for each candidate, including all eight swing states; a truly impressive feat.
Silver said that he uses Football Outsiders’ advanced metrics as one specific tool, but he added that point differential is the most accurate predictor going forward, and not wins and losses. Silver also said that he thinks New England and Denver are the two best teams and that the AFC Championship is pretty much the “de facto Super Bowl.”
A Super Bowl match up of New England and Seattle would be extremely intriguing. Seattle is one of the hottest teams in the league and they already beat the Patriots once this year. You can guarantee that we would hear a lot about the Richard Sherman-Tom Brady confrontation in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl if this match up occurs.
I’m not a fan of First Take, not by a long shot, but having Silver on the show is one of the best segments they’ve ever done. If you’re a huge football fan, I recommend watching the video in its entirety. It’s interesting to listen to someone who is completely unbiased and uses only statistics for his predictions and what his methods are.