How much does history go into sports predictions?

By Olivia Lawrence

RP Show Intern

On Thursday Night Football the Dallas Cowboys will take on the New Orleans Saints in their Superdome. The Cowboys, “America’s team”, in Rod Pedersen’s words, are going into this matchup favoured by six. Who better to break down Thursday Night Football odds than NFL Network analyst Cynthia Frelund?!

The interesting thing about the prediction for tonight, is the Saints have won the last 10 of 13 games against the Cowboys, and the Saints have not lost at home to the team since 2009.  Rod Pedersen asked Frelund if historical information like this plays a factor in predicting a game.   

“Unless they have similar personnel or the same personnel which they don’t, then it’s kind of a fun no,” said Frelund. “It’s not really helpful in terms of predicting the outcome of tonight’s game because the personnel matters, and by the way the Saints are missing just a bunch of them.”

 Frelund said there is a “laundry list” of Saints players who will not be playing tonight, and she’s not wrong. Some of the injured players include: Runningback Alvin Kamara, offensive tacklers Terron Armstead and Ryan Ramczyk, and Tanoh Kpassagnon and Marcus Davenport at defensive end. 

It looks like quarterback Taysom Hill will get his first start for the Saints after he has been out with a foot injury. The Saints have struggled with injuries amongst their quarterbacks too.  

“It’s going to be a difficult matchup for the Saints who are so short-handed,” said Frelund. 

This is good news for Rod Pedersen, who is a huge Cowboys fan. The Cowboys have lost three of their last four games and are looking for a win. 

If it is not necessarily based on past season match-ups and home field advantage, Rod Pedersen asked Frelund what goes into her formulas to make these bold game predictions.

 “There are some elements of, what does this year’s team look like and what does this year’s opponent look like?,” said Frelund. “And how does this game stack-up? Where are the game points? Where are the things where someone has an advantage over another? So essentially, you’re matching up what you might see tonight, and what you might see, based on a historical reference framework of lots of times when you saw similar things, what were the outcomes in those games? And that helps inform what’s most likely to happen in this game.”

Tune into Thursday Night Football to see if the odds will stand true for the Cowboys.