At one point, Chiefs had a 4.6 percent chance of beating 49ers. Things changed quickly
When a 16-yard pass from Patrick Mahomes to Tyreek Hill was ruled incomplete with 7 minutes, 17 seconds remaining, the Chiefs odds of winning Super Bowl LIV were at their lowest — less than five percent.
That’s according to ESPN’s win-probability chart. The San Francisco 49ers led 20-10 and that under-throw to Hill left the Chiefs with a third-and-15 from the Chiefs’ 35. At that moment, the 49ers’ chance of victory peaked at 95.4 percent.
The next play changed everything.
Mahomes found Hill on a 44-yard completion. That drive ended in a touchdown. So did the next one, and the one after that as the Chiefs roared back to take a 31-20 victory. They became the first team in NFL history to win three postseason games after trailing by double digits each time.
“They’re a beautiful bunch, resilient, tough, tough-minded players,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said of his team.
If those improbable odds of triumph sound familiar to Kansas City sports fans they should: Three times in the Royals’ path to the 2015 World Series championship they found themselves in games with less than a 10 percent chance of victory, according to win-probability charts at baseball-reference.com.
In Game 4 of the ALDS at Houston, the Royals had a 1.7 percent chance, overcoming a four-run seventh-inning deficit to defeat the Astros.
In Game 2 of the ALCS against the Blue Jays, the Royals had a 7.7 percent chance of winning down 3-0 in the seventh inning.
In the World Series-clinching Game 5 at New York, the Royals trailed 2-0 entering the ninth inning and had a 4.8 percent chance of winning.