luckadjusted

Week 8 2024 · October 27, 2024

Bills at Seahawks, Week 8 2024: who deserved to win?

The Bills beat the Seahawks 31–10, and it was no fluke: replayed with the way both teams actually played, the Bills win 10 of 10. The Seahawks had the bounces: judgment calls alone were worth 1.6 points to the Seahawks.

Before kickoff the Bills were 59% favorites. The biggest swing (Q2, 6:54 left): the Bills were stopped on 3rd & 3, worth 28 points of win probability to the Seahawks.

Final

Buffalo Bills 31
Seattle Seahawks 10

October 27, 2024 · Lumen Field · Closing line: Bills −3

Luck index +4 Bills about even · −4 Seahawks

Each team’s own plays from this game, resampled into new drives 4,000 times: with the way both teams actually played, how often does this performance win? How the replay works

Ten replays. Bills win 10, Seahawks win 0.

  1. 1 BUF 40 SEA 6
  2. 2 BUF 34 SEA 7
  3. 3 BUF 54 SEA 31
  4. 4 BUF 33 SEA 13
  5. 5 BUF 27 SEA 10
  6. 6 BUF 27 SEA 13
  7. 7 BUF 27 SEA 16
  8. 8 BUF 29 SEA 20
  9. 9 BUF 14 SEA 9
  10. 10 BUF 13 SEA 10

Three other ways to ask

Each answers a different question, so none of them replaces the replay above.

The closing betting line, turned into a probability. What everyone knew before the game.

The line plus what this game showed, weighted by how much one game can tell. It stays close to the line because one game says little.

Every kick, fumble bounce, drop, conversion and judgment call redrawn; everything else fixed. The narrowest view of luck.

How 4,000 replays ended

Bills win 96% of them, Seahawks 4%, counting the 1% still level after regulation as half each. The line is what actually happened: Bills by 21.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Bills by 17+69.0%
Bills by 9–1619.3%
Bills by 1–87.4%
Level after regulation0.8%
Seahawks by 1–82.6%
Seahawks by 9–160.7%
Seahawks by 17+0.2%

Where the luck was

Take the luck out

The final margin was Bills by 21. Remove the luck, one kind at a time, and it becomes Bills by 20.2.

Each row takes one kind of luck out of the margin. Color shows which team it helped. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each component is luck).

The kicks

How likely each kicker was to make that kick (his own record, the distance and the weather), and what happened.

  • J. Myers, 38 yds made · 88% expected
  • T. Bass, 27 yds made · 96% expected
Bar: expected chance of a make. Filled dot: made. Open dot: missed or blocked.

When it happened

Seahawks’ chance of winning

As low as 0% and as high as 56%. Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.

nflfastR’s in-game win probability. It ignores the betting line, so it starts near even. Shaded above the middle while the Seahawks were ahead in it, below while the Bills were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 Q1 12:39 Offensive Holding on the Bills, 10 yards, wiping out the playJudgment calls +8% SEA SEA: Punt
2 Q1 10:28 Illegal Contact on the Seahawks (Devon Witherspoon), 5 yards, wiping out the playJudgment calls · 9 flags in 1359 snaps before, position avg 1 per 215 +8% BUF BUF: Touchdown
3 Q1 6:46 The Bills converted 3rd & 83rd & 4th downs · 35% expected +10% BUF BUF: Touchdown
4 Q1 1:16 K. Coleman dropped a catchable passDrops · 1 drops on 24 catchable balls before thisFalse Start on the Bills, 5 yardsPre-snap flags +7% SEA BUF: Punt
5 Q2 6:54 The Bills were stopped on 3rd & 33rd & 4th downs · 56% expectedThe Bills threw an interception-worthy pass, and it was pickedInterceptions · 49% expected to stay out of the defense's hands +28% SEA BUF: Touchdown
6 Q2 4:46 The Seahawks were stopped on 4th & 13rd & 4th downs · 65% expected +12% BUF SEA: End of half
7 Q2 4:05 Offensive Pass Interference on the Bills (Keon Coleman), 4 yards, wiping out the playJudgment calls · 1 flag in 272 snaps before, position avg 1 per 409 +8% SEA SEA: End of half
8 Q2 2:55 The Bills converted 3rd & 53rd & 4th downs · 45% expectedThe Bills fumbled and recovered it themselvesFumble bounces · loose balls are close to 50/50 +13% BUF BUF: Touchdown

Missing players

Key players (usually on the field for half the snaps or more) who missed this game or part of it, valued by position and quality. The same players are missing in every replay, so this counts as luck in points only.

  • Rayshawn Jenkins (SEA SS), out (IR) · 0.4 pts
  • Stone Forsythe (SEA T), out (IR) · 0.4 pts
  • Tre Brown (SEA CB), out · 0.2 pts
  • Terrel Bernard (BUF LB), out · 0.5 pts

Adjust the assumptions

Disagree with how much of a fumble bounce or a pass interference call is luck? Change it and the coin-flip replay reruns in your browser.

Only coin-flips re-rolled

Bills 100% · Seahawks 0%

Final margin
Bills by 21
Luck in points
0.8 for the Bills
Luck-adjusted margin
Bills by 20.2
Replay with same day's form
Bills 96% · Seahawks 4% unchanged: why
How much of each is luck?

0% treats it as skill, 100% as pure luck. The tick is our fit.

What counts

We tested momentum on 19,000 lucky breaks and found none, so it's off by default. Why

Flip a play

Force the other outcome, in this game and in every replay: a made kick becomes a miss, a stop becomes a conversion, a flag goes the other way.

About these numbers

Play-by-play and win probability from nflfastR via nflverse; kicks valued against each kicker’s own record; drops and interception-worthy throws from FTN charting; injuries from snap counts and injury reports.

Methodology and validation · All Week 8 2024 games · Bills · Seahawks

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