In the yawn-fest that was Super Bowl XLVIII, you’d be forgiven for missing the fact that it was actually an incredibly interesting match-up. It pit what was probably the best offense in NFL history – courtesy of the Denver Broncos – against one of the stingiest defenses in modern football – care of the Seattle Seahawks.

Going into the game, the stats were clear… the Broncos scored more points (606) during the 2013 season than any other offense in NFL history and ranked number one in terms of yards gained per play. The Seahawks meanwhile boasted the lowest average yards given up per play in the regular season.

Who would prevail in Super Bowl 48 – Offense or Defense?

So with this classic match-up at play, we ran a poll on our homepage to find out what our esteemed users thought. Over a thousand of you responded in the two weeks leading up to the Superbowl. Just about half of you picked Peyton Manning to lead the Denver Broncos offense to victory. And 36% picked the Seahawks. (Around 14% of you only cared about the commercials and the nacho dip. We can respect that.)

 

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Pretty unsurprisingly, we did detect a bit of geographical bias (some would say loyalty) amongst our users. Over 80% of users in the Seahawk’s home state Washington and their neighbors Oregon picked the Seahawks, while over 70% of voters in Colorado and neighboring Arizona picked the Broncos. Surprisingly, however, Seattle was also heavily favored by folks in Wisconsin and Nebraska, while users from New Jersey and Maryland were all about the Broncos. (We got nothing to explain this one.)

An analysis of the distribution of the votes over time shows that users were pretty clear from the beginning that the Broncos were going to prevail. However, the race tightened a bit as game day approached and a flood of votes came in. Most people voted at the last minute and both teams got about 45% of their votes the day before the Super Bowl.

It happened to be that the pick of our users – in all their wisdom – roughly mapped to the odds coming out of the experts in Vegas. (We weren’t that surprised. Our users are pretty smart.) Most bookies had Denver winning by around 3 points.

And it made sense…people favor flashy offense over grinding defense. In addition, who doesn’t love the Broncos quarterback, Peyton Manning? He’s a future Hall of Famer who recovered from potentially career ending injuries in 2011 to set the NFL’s single-season passing record this year with 5,477 yards and 55 touchdowns. He’s hard not to root for (sorry Seahawks voters in Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin, and Nebraska.)

But as with lots of things that seem to make sense, the data tell a different and truer story. In this case, they told us that defense wins championships. Super Bowl XLVIII was the sixth time in Super Bowl history that a markedly stronger offense was pitted against one of the more powerful defenses. And in only one of those six previous games did the stronger offense prevail.

The game wasn’t even close. (The folks who focused on the nacho dip instead were well rewarded.) The Seahawks routed the Broncos 43-8 proving once more that getting the right answer depends on asking the right question – and getting the right data.

We know, we know…  it’s a message that’s about as flashy and alluring as an unyielding defense is. But it’s also equally likely to bring success – to your conference, your classroom, your brainstorming strategy session. (And if you really crave all the excitement, you can always add a little extra jalapeno to that nacho dip.)