In XLVII, the Seattle Seahawks beat down the Denver Broncos by 35. The same had happened in the preseason (in Seattle), where the Seahawks won by 30. It's conventional wisdom that preseason games have very little bearing on how a team will perform in the regular season. So, I sought to see if results in preseason games were actually repeated by the same matchups in the regular season.
However, when I looked at data from the 2013 season, of the 65 preseason matchups, only 7 were repeated in the regular season (this is probably on purpose). Due to this, this hypothesis really can't be tested and is irrelevant (in those 7 matchups, 3 preseason results matched those of the regular season (so 4 went the opposite way)).
I still figured I would see if there was any correlation between a team's preseason win percentage and their performance in the regular season. The correlation for the 2013 season was 0.322: fairly weak. Since I can't really test my hypothesis, the project isn't really worth pursuing with more data. It seems it is true: preseason NFL games don't really matter. (Anecdotal evidence: the Washington Redskins went 4-0 in the preseason and then had the 2nd worst record in the regular season).
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