Winning percentage is not something that football fans think of very often. When looking at the standings it is usually easy to determine which teams should be ahead by simply looking at the win column.
But when playoff time rolls around many football fans begin to look closer into their team’s winning percentage.
Calculating the winning percentage in football is quite easy. To do this you must first determine how many wins a team has on the season.
It is important to note that a tie in football counts as half a win and half a loss. So for example, if a team were to go 10-6-1 on a season that would mean they actually had 10.5 wins and 6.5 losses.
Once you have the total number of wins in the season you then divide the number of wins by the number of games played.
Since there are now seventeen games in an NFL regular season you are going to divide the number of wins by seventeen.
So if a team went ten and seven on the season they would have a winning percentage of 0.588. If a team went ten six and one they would have a winning percentage of 0.617 this shows you how ties work their way into winning percentages.
Winning percentages come in handy at the end of the season when looking to determine which teams are going to make the playoffs. Additionally, they can also be helpful to see which teams are ahead when one of them has played more games.
In fantasy football, you don’t have to worry about calculating winning percentage because they already have a playoff percentage statistic.
During the season bye weeks can make the number of games played uneven throughout the league. Using the winning percentage you can determine which team is in front at any time.
Find out which teams have the highest winning percentage of all time here.
Why Winning Percentage Matters Even If You Make The Playoffs
The main reason fans are usually checking the standings in football is to see if their team is going to have a chance to make the playoffs.
Though once in the playoffs a team’s regular winning percentage is still going to play a large role.
First off a team’s winning percentage is going to determine who they are matching up against. In the NFL teams are matched up based on their seeding. The top-ranked teams in the playoffs play the lowest-ranked teams.
This rewards those teams that had a high winning percentage in the regular season. And makes life more difficult for the teams with a low winning percentage.
On top of that, a team’s regular-season win percentage will also determine whether or not a team is able to achieve a first-round bye.
Each season the team with the highest winning percentage in the conference earns itself a bye for the first week of the playoffs.
This first-round bye allows the top teams to skip the wild card round entirely. Instead, these teams will only have to win two playoff games in order to make it to the Superbowl.
This greatly increases a team’s chances of making the Superbowl as winning two playoff games is much easier than winning three.
Each regular season team will compete extremely hard for the highest winning percentage in order to earn that first-round bye.
That’s all for winning percentage in football if you want to check out some other similar articles see our guide to completion percentage or other statistics such as STRK.
