Wins for wild cards
20 July 2023
In 2021, Centurions qualified for playoffs with a 5-5 record, while Kings (5-5) did not.
In 2022, Raiders and Dragons qualified with a 8-4 record, while Galaxy and Rhein Fire (both 8-4) did not.
Before the 2023 season we predicted that most probably 8-4 would be needed for a wild card, but 7-5 might be enough.
Now after week 7, in theory a 5-7 record could still bring you into the playoffs, so no team is out of the playoff race yet. And also in theory, 9-3 might be not enough, so still no team is qualified yet.
Simulation #
To get a more realistic view, we simulated the rest of the season 100,000 times using our current strength model. The results show that 8-4 is even more likely the record you need to qualify for playoffs. Here is a table with the percentages of records for rank 6 and rank 7:
| rank | 5-7 | 6-7 | 7-5 | 8-4 | 9-3 | 10-2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | <1 | 1 | 29 | 62 | 8 | <1 |
| 7 | <1 | 13 | 63 | 24 | <1 | - |
Wild cards per conference #
In the 2023 season up to four teams from one conference can qualify for the playoffs. Based on the simulations using our current strength model, we have a 62% chance that each conference sends two teams to the playoffs.
However, in 27% of our simulations, the Central conference had no wild card participant, but the Eastern conference had two. In 5.6% of the cases, Eastern has two, but Western conference has none. In 2.9% of simulations, the Western conference has two wild card spots and the Central conference had none.