We’re two days away from the big game, and this week’s Seattle Sidelines poll generated some interesting results.
This week’s poll concerned Sunday’s Super Bowl LII between the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles, which takes place Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. Readers were asked which team they thought would prevail, and here’s the results:
POLL: Who wins Sunday’s Super Bowl LII between the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles? Full context here: https://t.co/E3c98tfkGV
— Nick Patterson (@NickHPatterson) January 29, 2018
That’s a pretty convincing margin in favor of Philadelphia. Add the two together and the Eagles received 57 percent of the vote, which was 14 percentage points better than the 43 percent received by the Patriots. The voting was dead even between those who voted on Twitter and those who voted on the blog.
This is interesting, because all the odds makers favor New England in this one. The point spread had the Patriots a 4.5-point favorite at the beginning of the week, and it remains there as of Friday morning.
Then there’s the experience factor. This is the eighth Super Bowl for the New England duo of coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady. The pair has won five of the previous seven, with the New York Giants being the only team that’s overcome the Patriots in the big game. Belichick and Brady have also been strong of late, winning two of the previous three Super Bowls. They’ve built up an aura of near invincibility.
Meanwhile, this is just Philadelphia’s third trip to the Super Bowl, the first since 2005, and the Eagles have never won it. Add in that Philadelphia is riding back-up quarterback Nick Foles after starter Carson Wentz went down with a season-ending knee injury, and its understandable that the Eagles are the underdogs.
Yet the poll voters stumped substantially in favor of the Eagles.
In setting up the poll Monday I went through the numbers, and they suggested the Eagles should be taken seriously as a threat — the teams finished the regular season with identical 13-3 records, and they essentially scored and allowed and equal number of points. So maybe people were convinced by that argument.
But I also mentioned how I considered making the poll about rooting interest rather than about who would win, yet nixed that idea because the result would be obvious, as there are few people in the Puget Sound region who have a reason to root for New England. Perhaps some of that rooting interest influenced the voting.
The game kicks off at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, so we’ll find out soon whether it was wise to buck the odds.
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