UPDATE: Here are the results for Super Bowl 54 squares. We've still got the probabilities for every score in every quarter below.
- First Quarter: Chiefs 7, 49ers 3
- Second Quarter: Chiefs 0, 49ers 0
- Third Quarter: Chiefs 0, 49ers 0
- Final Score: Chiefs 1, 49ers 0
You've got your Super Bowl squares in hand. You're ready for the game to begin. But how likely are you to actually win, and how screwed are you with 2-2?
The goal of Super Bowl squares is to land the correct final digit of each team’s score at the end of each quarter.
Last year, anyone with Patriots 3, Rams 3 took home the final score prize when the game finished 13-3.
Football lends itself to certain final digits based on how points are scored, so some boxes will give you a much better chance of winning. That's why squares pools are randomized and there's no selection process.
Sean Koerner, our Director of Predictive Analytics, simulated Super Bowl 54 using his models to determine the likelihood of each square winning in each quarter.
You can download and print a blank squares sheet here.
Best Super Bowl Squares
The best Super Bowl squares are exactly what you'd expect: 7-0, 0-0, 7-7, 3-0 — aka any numbers that are easy fits with touchdowns and field goals.
Koerner simulated each quarter (which we'll touch on below) and added the probabilities up to determine that these are the best overall numbers:
What If I Have Weird, Terrible, Non-Football Numbers?
Anyone with 5-2 or 2-2 isn't dead yet. Unique game scores are at an all-time high since the NFL pushed the extra point back in 2015, which caused more misses and trickled down to more 2-point conversions.
Traditional football numbers like 0, 1, 4 and 7 aren’t occurring at the same rates that they were between 1966 and 2014 — those numbers are collectively down about 8% over the past five seasons.
Does It Matter Which Team I Have For Each Number?
In some cases, yes. There are more likely finishing scores for winning teams than losing teams.
Since the betting market has the Chiefs and 49ers almost dead-even, it shouldn't matter much. Our projections reflect that.
Best First Quarter Numbers
Variance increases as a game progresses, so probabilities for the first quarter are different than for the final score.
Things like missed extra points, 2-point conversions and multiple field goals can give you some weird final numbers. But in the first quarter, those events are less likely. So the most likely numbers are 0s, 3s and 7s.
Three combinations (0-0, 0-3, 0-7) make up 32 Super Bowl first quarter scores, while there have been 33 different final score combinations, including 3-3 last year in New England's 13-3 win.
Second Quarter
The best numbers for the second quarter are still 0-0 and 7-0. But they have a much worse chance of hitting than in the first quarter.
Probabilities do level out a little as the game goes on.
Third Quarter
The third quarter isn't all that different from the second — we start to see 3s decline, since those are less likely after teams cross 13 points.
Final Score
The biggest changes over the course of the game is the decline of 0 and the rise of 8.
It's tough for a final digit to land on 0 once each team passes 20, while it's more likely a team finishes with 28 or 38 at the end of the game.
Print Your Super Bowl Squares Sheet
Still haven't set up a squares pool for Super Bowl 54? Download and print a blank squares sheet here.
