No matter how much research someone does, predicting who wins football games can sometimes be a crapshoot. Even the pro prognosticators on TV can maybe predict who wins 60% of the time just simply because these people go with what they believe is the most likely scenario and the most likely scenario doesn’t always happen.
Sometimes, it’s almost better to leave it to chance to predict who wins and that’s what a Raiders fan on Reddit did. u/pongislame flipped a coin to determine the result of each Raiders game this season and they were amazingly accurate. After getting the first 11 games correct (a 1 out of 2,048 chance) and reaching 6-5, they missed on the result of the Washington game. The Raiders lost and that was that.
At least that’s what we thought.
The Raiders correctly matched the next four games to get 15 of 16 predictions correct by the result of a coin flip. Entering the 17th game, the coin had dictated that the Raiders lose. Despite the apparent attempt to tie and still advance to the playoffs, Chargers head coach Brandon Staley called a timeout and the Raiders kicked a game winning field goal.
Not only did it get the Raiders into the playoffs, it set things back on track for the coin flipping prediction. With the Washington loss and the Chargers win, the Raiders finished the season at 10-7 which the coin correctly predicted. It may have gotten a couple games wrong but it got the record right.
Sure, it might be nonsense but it’s not like did much better. Even the computers did worse as ESPN’s simulations gave the Raiders an 8-9 record. When it comes down to it, everyone is pretty much guessing and sometimes a series of lucky guesses winds up being correct.
