Everyone knows that when it comes to the Super Bowl, nerves are an issue and experienced players will perform better. Of course, everyone “knew” that defense and running the football win championships, but someone forgot to tell this year’s final four teams.
So, let’s use some historical data to look at how experience has affected Super Bowl performance over the last few decades.**video
Head coach
Super Bowl LIII features a huge mismatch in coaching experience, with Bill Belichick going into his ninth Big Game facing Super Bowl rookie Sean McVay. So how much has a head coaches experience helped his team?
Going back to 1990 when the NFL playoffs expanded to 12 teams, there have been 19 Super Bowls where one coach had the experience edge in terms of number of Super Bowl appearances as a head coach.
The team with the more experienced coach has gone just 8-11 straight up and a miserable 4-13-2 ATS. This years’ experience gap is the biggest yet (Belichick holds the Top 5 spots in that ranking) but maybe hold off on giving the Patriots a big edge due to more experienced coaching.
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Team
Some teams are just winners. They’ve been there before, expect to be there again, and have a core of players who can help the younger players through the craziness that is the Super Bowl. Surely, that’s got to count for something? Well…
Going back again to 1990, 25 Super Bowls have featured an experience mismatch. Once again, things don’t look so great for experience, as the more experienced side has gone 12-13 straight up and 9-15-1 ATS (38%).
Quarterbacks
Experience is batting 0-2 so far, but what about the unquestionably most important player on the field. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize you’d rather have Tom Brady as your Super Bowl quarterback than Jared Goff. But is that because of his experience or just because he’s a better player?
Again, going back to 1990 and looking for games with differing experience between the QBs, we get 19 games. Is it time for the more experience to finally win through? Sadly, no.
Similar to our head coach example we get an 8-11 straight up mark (7-12 ATS) for the more experienced quarterback and another blow to the benefit of experience.
Some concerns
Hopefully many of you reading this have noticed that there are some sample issues at play here. One, we’re talking about 15-25 game samples here, so we should expect to see a fair bit of variance and want to be careful making sweeping conclusions.
Two, this sample is drastically skewed by a couple pairs. In the 28 Super Bowls since the 1990 season (not including this year), 12 of them featured either Brady/Belichick or Jim Kelly/Marv Levy. We’ll go easy on Bills fans like myself and not talk about those pairs’ records in the big games…
The take home
While you want to be careful reading too much into a small sample, we certainly haven’t been able to unearth any evidence that experience – whether it be from the team, coach or quarterback – conveys any positive benefits.
There is even some evidence to the contrary. Perhaps the younger players have less baggage and can actually play more freely. Ultimately, as is so often the case, it may be best to simply strip the names off the jerseys when handicapping the game.
I’ll be picking the Patriots this weekend, but not because they’ve been there before.
