THE CLAIM
In what’s turning into a lost season for the Indianapolis Colts, firing their GM Chris Ballard after falling to 2-4 in a loss to the lowly Tennessee Titans, the stats vultures have come out, pointing to the soul-crushing nature of the losses they’ve had:
Things are a bit more calm for the Baltimore Ravens, but they join the Colts with the dubious distinction of not just blowing leads, but blowing big leads. John Breech at CBS Sports highlights:
As for the Ravens, their loss to the Browns marked the 15th time since 2020 that they’ve blown a fourth-quarter lead of seven points or more. Not only is that the most blown leads in the NFL in that span, but no other team even has 10. Yikes.
What’s the likelihood that these franchises will start holding on in the fourth quarter?
THE VERDICT: PARTIALLY BUNK
The stats are all right and true that the Ravens and Colts have been awful at holding on to fourth-quarter leads, and that critique remains when adding the context of win-probability expectations, especially for the Ravens.
But the larger evidence of stickiness to teams’ abilities to play from ahead is fairly weak, so our projection for how often the Ravens and Colts will continue to suffer unlikely losses shouldn’t differ significantly from the rest of the NFL.
THE EVIDENCE
The first thing we have to do when taking any binary stat like “blown leads” is put it into context. Using win probability numbers that include betting market expectations (i.e., heavy favorites having a higher WP than underdogs at the equivalent game state: score differential, time remaining, etc.), it does confirm that the Ravens and Colts are giving up too many leads.
The plot below includes regular-season games from 2018 through 2026 where a team led at the start of any fourth-quarter play and then lost or tied. Expected blown leads is the sum of 1 minus Vegas win probability at each team’s first fourth-quarter snap with a lead. The model is well calibrated, with 565 actual blown leads league-wide against 557 expected.
