A lot of sports fans and sports media are huge numbers nerds. Many of us love statistics, and that’s one of the primary reasons why we got into sports in the first place.
Statistical coincidences are even more fascinating—the correlations that we might want to believe are potentially causational but are almost certainly spurious.
Here is another one for you as the NFL postseason begins this weekend.
Everybody knows the Ravens win the Super Bowl every 12 years by scoring 34 points with a 28 year old quarterback
2001: 34-7 with Dilfer (28)
2013: 34-31 with Flacco (28)
2025: 34-? with Jackson (28)— Stuckey (@Stuckey2) January 7, 2025
Stuckey, known only by one name, like Drake or Neymar, is a sports pundit with The Action Network.
He’s also pointed out a statistical trend here that every Ravens fan hopes to see continue. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. We fixate on them when they hold true but forget about them when they miss the boat.
You might have heard about the “Redskins Rule:” if the Washington Football Team/Commanders/Redskins wins their final home game before a U.S. Presidential election, the incumbent party wins.
However, this rule did not hold in November. It has now failed in three of the past four outcomes after being upheld 19 straight times, dating back to 1936.
Or you can take the Kentucky Wildcats-New York Yankees Title Theorem. Kentucky won the NCAA Tournament in 1949, 1951, 1958, 1978, 1996, and 1998. And the Yankees won the World Series in all six of those years.
But what about Kentucky winning it all in 1948 and 2012? The Yankees did not claim the World Series title in either of those years, so the rule isn’t always upheld.
