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As Super Week heads toward its dramatic conclusion, we are only a few days shy of the big game. To continue the pre-Super Bowl festivities, I decided to setup a computer simulation of this year's Super Bowl using Madden 2013.
To make this as close to random as possible, I used exact settings. The game site was in The Benz, no users were controlling the players (they were computer controlled), and the quarters were 15 minutes a piece.
Let's take a look at the outcome of our simulation.
| Ravens | 49ers | |
| Final Score | 16 | 37 |
| Turnovers | 3 | 1 |
| Passing Yards | 206 | 177 |
| Rushing Yards | 40 | 169 |
| First Downs | 12 | 10 |
| Time of Possession | 32:43 | 27:17 |
After watching watching a little bit of the simulation and then looking at the final statistics, I was pretty surprised. I definitely would not have expected either team to score over thirty points and have the margin of victory by twenty-one. Vegas has the line in favor of San Francisco, but only by 3.5 points. In my opinion, Baltimore will win by about 5.
Looking at the rest of the stats, you can see why the final score escalated to such a blowout. San Francisco forced three turnovers and pounded the rock. The computer also had them converting on 53% of their third downs. I would go ahead and assume that Baltimore led in passing yards and time of possession because they were trying to play catch up.
So is this how Super Bowl XLVII will play out? All in all, I wouldn't bank on this simulation being accurate. I fully expect for this matchup to be completely defensive and to not be out of reach until the clock strikes zero. Although, if either team were to win by a big margin, I would go with the Ravens because they have a tremendous deep-threat game; the 49ers haven't been so strong covering deep-threats lately.