Appearing In and Winning the Super Bowl
There have been 50 Super Bowls (SB). There have been 100 starting quarterbacks (QB). 62 of the 100 QBs have started more than one SB. This 62 includes 20 individual QBs. 36 of the 62 QBs won the SB, a 58% winning percentage. 38 (100 – 62) QBs have started only one SB. 14 of these 38 QBs won the SB, a 37% winning percentage.
32 NFL teams times 50 years yields 1600 starting QB years. 4.4 years is the average career length of a QB. Thus, there have been roughly 364 (1600/4.4) starting QBs. 58 (20 + 38) QBs have started a SB, yielding a 15.9% (58/364) starting percentage and a 9.3% (34/364) winning percentage.
32 NFL teams times 53 players per team times 50 years yields 84,800 player years. 3.3 years is the average career length of an NFL player. Thus, there have been roughly 25,697 (84,800/3.3) players. There have been 5300 (53 x 2 x 50) players in one or more SB. Thus, there is a 20.6% (5300/25697) appearance percentage. However, this estimate is too high for the following reason.
For QBs, multiple appearances are known and included in calculations. For players in general, this data is not readily available. If this phenomenon were ignored for QBs, the appearance percentage would be 0.275 (100/364), an overestimate by a factor of 1.73 (.275/.159). Adjusting the players in general percentage by this factor yields an 11.9% (.206/1.73) appearance percentage.
