Predicting the Kansas City Chiefs 2015 season: The continuity model

Last season I got lucky and somehow predicted the Chiefs 2014 record. Why do I call my prediction luck? Because I used some incredibly haphazard and weakly linked statistics to come to a conclusion. So perhaps I can get lucky again using a different statistical model.

For starters I'd like to thank AP member AnotherDamnSFConvert for mentioning an excellent idea to me that helped lead to this prediction. The article discussed how well teams going into their third season of HC and QB continuity performed on average. ADSFC suggested I compare the second year of HC and QB continuity against the third year. He then took it a step further and completed the table I had made and added all of the first and second year's data. If you want to look at the table you can do so here. For those who aren't familiar with the article or the table, the old data basically describes the win / loss and playoff success of teams who had third year HC and QB continuity starting in 2002. The new data shows the first, second and third years for each of the teams.

Some interesting knowledge was gained from this data. Please note that this data only includes information from teams who had experienced their third consecutive year of HC and QB continuity. The data also only includes regular season games.

Ahhhhh growth. This is good right?  The first year for teams who experience three years of HC and QB continuity averaged 8.62 wins on average, the second year teams averaged 9.21 wins on average, and the third year averaged 9.74 wins.

Basically these numbers tell us that on average HC and QB continuity leads to more wins in each of the first three seasons.

Going back to the Chiefs under Andy Reid, they won 11 games their first year, and nine games in their second year. In total the Chiefs won 20 games their first two seasons while the average team under the same HC / QB continuity circumstances won an average of 17.83. If you compare the Chiefs to the average team under similar HC/QB continuity circumstances, they are 112 percent better. The graph below makes it look pretty.

The Chiefs are 12 percentage points better than the other teams in this scenario.

It is an impressive stat to see that Reid, Dorsey, and Smith have outperformed other teams heading into their third year of continuity. The success the Chiefs are having in the past two seasons should be noted.

Anyway, where does this get us? Oh yes, I was supposed to be making a prediction of sorts. So here goes ... how about we take these numbers for the Chiefs and multiply it with the average number of wins for the third season of continuity. This gives us:

1.12 X 9.74 = 10.9088

Well, there you have it. 10.9088 wins is my prediction! Somehow the Chiefs will find a way to win .9088 of a game. I'm excited to see how that happens.. In fact, this conclusion has led me to my first two bold predictions for the 2015 season:

• The Chiefs will find a way to win .9088ths of a game against the Broncos.
• The Chiefs will win the AFC West by winning the tie breaker due to the Chiefs having 10.9088 wins and the Broncos having 10.0912 wins.

All silliness aside, let's go ahead and round the number to 11 wins in 2015.  My prediction is the Chiefs will be 11 - 5 in 2015. Maybe I'll get lucky again this year. 11 - 5 is an excellent record and I would be happy with this result.