Most Exciting Steelers Games Since 2002

A game's heartbeat is the play-by-play win probability calculated throughout the game. It starts at a certain mark, based on the Vegas betting line, and then moves up and down over the next 60+ minutes of game time.

Heartbeat signature
Perhaps the most natural corollary of heartbeat signatures is using them to measure how "competitive" or "exciting" a game was. And certainly, just that with the Heart Rate Index, which combines heartbeat signatures with game context and additional play-by-play analysis to generate excitement ratings for every game. The comeback is the probability swing.

The Maths

Heartbeat Movement= ∑t ∈ # of plays∑∣P(t)−P(t−1)∣

In words, for any given play, t, in a game, there is an associated win probability calculated after that play, denoted P(t). To score the impact of that play on the win probability, we simply look at the (absolute value) of the change compared to the expected win probability before that play happened - ∣P(t)−P(t−1)∣. We take this value for every play in the game, t ∈ # of plays, and sum them up.

 

Yeah, what??!! I would put that game at 1 or 2 in this list. I needed a defibrillator that entire game!

And number 2 in this list, probably wouldn't be in my top 10.

 

Probably there because of the crazy ending.

 

The 2016 Wild Card against cinci for sure. We probably wont see an ending like that ever again.

Joey Porter, once a steeler always a steeler

 

Nope. Ranked 58th most exciting post season game. Gotta take off the Steelers glasses. The highest ranked SB was in '23 SF-KC.

Top 10 postseasons:

 

To be fair, this is like 80% of Steelers games.

Seems like we can never just win cleanly.

Many of these games are ones I think we would have guessed from the title of the thread. But I agree missing the SB is odd.

 

My guess is that that SB was crazy because of the insane ending.

But that the integration of the "excitement" this method does suggests that the big excitement was mostly at the end of the halves?

Looking at these graphs for the ARI and GB SBs, you can see the impact of DTDs very clearly. The "unit step" changes in win% are crazy (at least I assume these big steps are the DTDs).

The big jump from "the catch" in the ARI game is bigger. But my guess is that's because it happened right at the end of the game. Seeing those big jumps from DTDs in the 1st half shows the impact of DTDs IMO.

 

JEH and I had to get out our digital abacuses to follow this logic. Just another example of GROK, HAL and Watson stealing the human experience from life these days. Even Isaac Asimov and Bradbury would probably agree.

 

I am jeh and agree with this message

 

heck i thought the final game of the season last year against the ravens was pretty exciting.

 

A simple way to visualize 'excitement ' is to look at the win probability graphs and the number of times they cross the horizontal 50% line. Steelers SB against AZ only had one crossing at the end of the game. Contrast that with the SF-KC SB that went back and forth multiple times.