East Coast Offense: Why We're Still Shocked by Upsets

How It's Easy to Conflate Unlikely, Almost Impossible and Impossible

When Vegas implies (with its moneylines) that the Patriots are an 89 percent favorite at home against the Kevin-Kolb-led Cardinals, it always seems as if they're overestimating the real possibility of an upset. There's just no way the Cardinals are going into Foxborough with their crappy QB, poor offensive line and average-at-best defense and beating the Pats. Logically, we know that virtually any NFL team has at minimum a roughly 10 percent chance of beating any other, that no upset in pro football even approaches Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson (25 to 1) or the Cardinals (8.5 games out in September) winning the World Series (90 to 1). But I don't think we usually grasp the difference between unlikely, almost impossible and impossible.

Now that Arizona won, we can talk about how the Patriots offense was built on moving
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