As fans of the Seattle Seahawks, Detroit Lions, and NFL stat nerds everywhere surely know by now, a new Scorigami has just been achieved in Week 4.
What is Scorigami, you may ask? Well, it’s a term coined by SB Nation writer Jon Bois, and refers to an NFL game with a final score that has never before been officially recorded. Based on this concept, Dave Mattingly created and currently runs a Twitter account that tracks every game as they happen, providing updates on the chances of Scorigami, the most likely Scorigami at that point in the game, and of course, announcements of new Scorigami’s, which always quickly garner likes in the tens of thousands.
As of the time of this writing, there have been 1,073 unique scores in NFL history, as seen on the Twitter announcement at the conclusion of the Seattle Seahawks-Detroit Lions game.
Statistics in sports can be a fascinatingly deep rabbit hole. With every snap in every game, an exhaustive list of variables and actions are being recorded and updated, patterns are recognized and reported, and savvy fans everywhere read up on it all so they can prove why their team should keep their star quarterback with cold hard stats.
Scorigami, however, is a bit of a fascinating anomaly in the sports stats world. Whether or not a game achieves the feat doesn’t provide any meaningful insight into the performance of either team, as getting a unique score is really more of a game of chance. And yet, as a game progresses, and the Twitter account’s updates feature a higher and higher probability of reaching a unique score, the game in question becomes infinitely more exciting, even if you’re not a fan of either team. The nature of how teams score points in football specifically adds to the fun of following Scorigami, as a game on track to get the honor can either get derailed by a sudden safety or two-point conversion, or suddenly secure a unique score due to a botched extra point attempt.
As more and more unique scores are slowly achieved, Scorigami has become a fun way to watch the NFL.