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NFL Mascots: For the Birds
Fun Fact: Three of the final four teams in the NFL playoffs have bird mascots (Cardinals, Eagles and Ravens), and four of the NFL’s five bird teams made it to the playoffs this season. This is, as far as I can tell, pretty unusual.
So, since I was really bored today, I decided to figure out what kinds of mascots performed the best this past season. Of course, my suspicions were on target, birds were the best with a final regular season record of 44-35-1, an average winning percentage of .556.
The next best category, a close second, was the “Other” category — teams whose mascots didn’t fit into any other category. Their overall record was 53-43, a winning percentage of .552. Pretty much all of this success came from the Titans and Giants, each conference’s number one seed going into the playoffs (both of whom were eliminated this weekend).
On the other side of the coin, teams with cat mascots did incredibly badly this season, with a record of 21-42-1, a winning percentage of .335. The most notable of these teams was the Detroit Lions, who made NFL history with the league’s first 0-16 season.
Team data was copied from ESPN.com and compiled in this spreadsheet.
