It is that time of the year again. Super Bowl Sunday is fast approaching, with its traditions of drinks, tailgating, cheap snacks, commercials, halftime shows, and screaming fans. Fans this year have even more to scream about with the New England Patriots going after their second title in three years against the Atlanta Falcons, poised to win their first super bowl in the history of the franchise in only their second appearance at the big game.
But it’s time for yet another one of our annual traditions: The EA Super Bowl Simulation. Every year, EA Sports runs the big game within their franchise title to see who, in theory, comes out on top with the team’s rosters as is. In 13 years, the simulation has only been wrong four times, making it reasonably accurate.
In this year’s simulation, the game has predicted that the winner of the Super Bowl will be Tom Brady’s New England Patriots with a nail-biting 27-24 score. The simulation also predicts Tom Brady once again receiving MVP honors, making him the most decorated quarterback in the history of the game.
While this news will be discouraging to Falcons fans–as well as the legions of people who routinely root against the Pats and Tom Brady–you should still bear in mind that the simulation does not take into account the human factor, and anything can happen over the course of the game. Also of note is that while the simulation was remarkably accurate in 2015–correctly predicting the Patriots over the Seattle Seahawks with the score of 28-24–it was way off with its guess last year–predicting the Carolina Panthers over the actual champion Denver Broncos by way of a score of 20-24.