During Wild Card weekend, two of the four games went to overtime. Since then, the four Divisional Round games and two Conference Championship games ended in regulation.
So what are the odds we get another overtime game in Miami? Let's take a look at the history of overtime and its correlation to the playoffs and the Super Bowl.
History of Overtime
Only one of the past 53 Super Bowls have gone to overtime: When the Patriots trailed the Falcons, 28-3, in Super Bowl 51 late in the third quarter then scored 25 unanswered points — including a game-tying touchdown and two-point conversion to force overtime.
Tom Brady and the Patriots won the coin toss and drove down the field, without even facing a third down. Then James White scored the game-winning touchdown to complete the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history.
Six of the 53 Super Bowls have finished with a margin of three points, three finished with a margin of seven and one finished with a margin of eight. Eight of those collective 10 games featured a moment at the end of the game when overtime was possible given the margin, but it took until the 2016 season for it to occur.
The Patriots have been involved in the past five Super Bowls that could have gone (or did go) to overtime: 36, 38, 39, 42 and 51.
The Odds Behind Overtime
The odds that there will be overtime in Super Bowl 54 are +1000, and -2500 that there won't be. So if you wagered $100 on an overtime period, you'd win $1,000 and return $1,100 in total.
Eliminating the vig from the odds itself, +1000 equates to approximately a 9% chance to cash.
With overtime only occurring once in the Super Bowl's 53-year history, let's broaden this lens to the regular season and playoffs.
The Math Behind Overtime
Overtime occurring just once in 53 Super Bowls is good for a 1.9% rate, while the 306 times overtime has happened in the 2,560 regular-season games over the past decade is good for a 12% rate.
With such a large gap between the percentage of games to go to overtime in the Super Bowl vs. regular season, the obvious next layer is the playoffs. The games are tighter, the teams are better and there's theoretically a better chance for an extra period.
Ten of the 109 playoff games over the past decade have gone to overtime, good for a 9.2% rate — a nearly 3% decrease from the regular season.
Let's do a quick recap…
- 12% of regular-season games go to overtime, which should equate to about a +730 bet.
- 9.2% playoff games go to overtime, which should equate to about a +1000 or 10-1 bet.
- 1.9% of Super Bowls have gone to overtime, which should equate to about a 50-1 long shot (+5000).
If you average out the regular season pct and the playoff pct (12% and 9.2%), the 10.6% average, which would equate to about an +850 bet is right in line with the market, which is +1000.
