Detroit Lions Context for Leicester City's Premier League Title

Leicester City clinched the Premier League title yesterday despite starting the season at 5000 to 1 odds. Let’s put that number in a Detroit Lions context.

The biggest current story in the sports world is Leicester City clinching the Premier League championship yesterday thanks to a 2-2 draw between Chelsea and Tottenham.

It’s always big news in the soccer world when a championship is clinched in one of Europe’s top leagues but the Leicester City story is even bigger news because they started the season with championship odds of just 5,000-1.

Long odds like that are hard to put into context, but consider that the Cleveland Browns are 200-1 to win the next Super Bowl. In other words, betting odds consider the Browns 25 times more likely to win the Super Bowl than Leicester City was to win the Premier League when the season began. Teams like Indiana and Illinois are 2,000-1 to win the next College Football Playoff.

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But let’s bring the context closer to home.

The Detroit Lions‘ 2015 season can’t be considered a success but they did get one big monkey off their back by getting a road win over the Green Bay Packers for the first time since 1991. A 24-game losing streak to one team seems almost impossible, even if the Lions were favored in only one of those games. But almost impossible is short of actually impossible, so what were the odds of that Lions’ road losing streak to the Packers actually happening?

To answer that question we would have to know what the probability was of the Lions losing each of those 24 games individually before we can determine the odds of losing all 24 in total.

Thanks to the team game finder tool on pro-football-reference.com, I was able to find the point spreads for each of the 24 games in the losing streak.

Just a minute with the Google machine makes it easy to convert point spreads to expected win probabilities for each game.

Date	Tm	Opp	Result	Spread	Odds of Loss
12/28/2014	DET	GNB	L 20-30	7	75.20%
10/6/2013	DET	GNB	L 9-22	9.5	81.10%
12/9/2012	DET	GNB	L 20-27	6.5	72.30%
1/1/2012	DET	GNB	L 41-45	-6.5	27.60%
10/3/2010	DET	GNB	L 26-28	14.5	94.90%
10/18/2009	DET	GNB	L 0-26	14	92.40%
12/28/2008	DET	GNB	L 21-31	11	87.10%
12/30/2007	DET	GNB	L 13-34	3	59.40%
12/17/2006	DET	GNB	L 9-17	6	70.60%
12/11/2005	DET	GNB	L 13-16	5.5	68.90%
12/12/2004	DET	GNB	L 13-16	9	80.70%
9/14/2003	DET	GNB	L 6-31	7	75.20%
11/10/2002	DET	GNB	L 14-40	10.5	86.00%
9/9/2001	DET	GNB	L 6-28	5.5	68.90%
12/10/2000	DET	GNB	L 13-26	3.5	64.30%
11/21/1999	DET	GNB	L 17-26	4	65.80%
9/6/1998	DET	GNB	L 19-38	9.5	81.10%
11/2/1997	DET	GNB	L 10-20	10	83.60%
11/3/1996	DET	GNB	L 18-28	11	87.10%
10/15/1995	DET	GNB	L 21-30	3.5	64.30%
12/31/1994	DET	GNB	L 12-16	4.5	67.30%
11/6/1994	DET	GNB	L 30-38	5.5	68.90%
11/21/1993	DET	GNB	L 17-26	3.5	64.30%
12/6/1992	DET	GNB	L 10-38	3.5	64.30%

Taking the probabilities of each loss and applying some hot math skillz, we find that there is just a 0.0297% chance of all 24 of those games ending in Lions losses.

Those are 1 in 3,362 odds. Long, but still more likely than Leicester City was to win the Premier League. The odds of flipping a coin 11 times and getting the same side each time are more likely than the Lions road losing streak to Green Bay.

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Fortunately, that streak is over. Here’s to hoping we can start talking about the odds of a winning streak sometime soon. By the way, the Lions haven’t lost to the Chicago Bears in 1,220 days.

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Detroit Lions Context for Leicester City’s Premier League Championship

By Zac Snyder | May 3, 2016

Leicester City clinched the Premier League title yesterday despite starting the season at 5000 to 1 odds. Let’s put that number in a Detroit Lions context.