Zoltar is my computer program that predicts the results of NFL football games. The 2024 season finished a few months ago when the slight-underdog Philadelphia Eagles (1.5 points) beat the slight-favorite Kansas City Chiefs by a score of 40-22 on Sunday, February 9, 2025 in Super Bowl LIX.

One morning before work, I figured I’d look at the margins of victory. I fired up Zoltar and got this data and dropped it into Excel:

By far the most common margin of victory was 3 points which happened 39 times out of 285 games (272 regular season games and 13 playoff games). Also common margins of victory were 6 points (29 times), and 5 points and 7 points (both 20 times). The biggest margin of victory was a huge 46 points (the Detriot Lions beat the hapless Jacksonville Jaguars 52-6 on Nov. 17, 2024. Ouch.)

A couple of things that stand out to me are 1.) the rarity of a 4-point margin of victory (only 8 times) and 2.) a 5-point margin of victory was more common than I expected. Whenever there is anomalous data, there are usually opportunities. I’ll have to give this some thought.

Here’s the data in a table:

MV      count
---------------
0         0
1        13
2        16
3        39
4         8
5        20
6        29
7        20
8        11
9         5
10       14
11        0
12        7
13        6
14        7
15        3
16        6
17       10
18        8
19        6
20        5
21        9
22        3
23        6
24        4
25        7
26        2
27        2
28        3
29        1
30        0
31        2
32        2
33        2
34        3
35        0
36        0
37        2
38        3
39        0
40        0
41        0
42        0
43        0
44        0
45        0
46        1
47        0
48        0
49        0
        -----
         285