Many people who play Football Squares want to know what the most common numbers are for the final score. Or in other words, which numbers have the best chance of winning?
The most common numbers in Football Squares correspond with the last digits of each NFL team’s score. Based on 16,812 NFL games through September 2021, the most common numbers in order are 7, 0, 3, 1, and 4.
While these numbers do have a higher chance of winning, this information will only help you if you can choose which numbers to buy. For most games of Football Squares, the numbers are picked randomly after each square is purchased. If however, the numbers are already shown on each row and column, or your game board is simply numbered in order (0-9 or 1-0), you’re in luck and you can use this information to greatly improve your odds!
How To Improve Your Odds In Football Squares
In Football Squares, the payouts are based on the last digits of the both the home team and the away team. The pot or winnings goes to the player that correctly picked the square that intersects the last digit from both winning scores. If the numbers across the top and side of your Football Squares gameboard are already set BEFORE you pick your squares to buy, you can greatly increase your odds of winning. It’s all in the statistics.
Looking at the last 16,812 NFL games (as of September 2021), we can count how many times each number ends up being the last digit for either the winning or losing team. As you can see below, 7 and 0 are the most common numbers followed by 3, 1, and 4.
| Last Digit of Final Score (Winner or Loser) | Number Of Scores With This Last Digit In 16,812 NFL Games |
| 7 | 5835 |
| 0 | 5827 |
| 3 | 3908 |
| 1 | 3145 |
| 4 | 2642 |
| 6 | 2565 |
| 8 | 1972 |
| 9 | 1450 |
| 5 | 1260 |
| 2 | 1131 |
Before I go any further, let me thank the folks at Pro Football Reference for their data on the most common NFL games scores through pro football history. My analysis is based on their historical data. If you’d like to see my calculations, download my Most Common Numbers From Final Scores worksheet from Google Docs. As a disclaimer, I have to say that this data analysis is simply showing what numbers HAVE BEEN for the last digits of final scores and doesn’t give the exact mathematical probability of what future last digits would be. However, with a sample size of over 16k NFL games, it should be a pretty good indicator!
Now, I’m a numbers guy so I like to see the numbers in a couple of different formats so here’s the same data expressed in the form of percentages, showing that both the numbers “7” and “0” have been the last digit of the final score 19.6% of the time each so these are the numbers you should pick.
| Last Digit of Final Score (Winner or Loser) | Percentage Of Scores With This Last Digit In 16,8111 NFL Games |
| 7 | 19.6% |
| 0 | 19.6% |
| 3 | 13.1% |
| 1 | 10.6% |
| 4 | 8.9% |
| 6 | 8.6% |
| 8 | 6.6% |
| 9 | 4.9% |
| 5 | 4.2% |
| 2 | 3.8% |
Looking at the past NFL games, the top 3 numbers are over 4X more likely than the lowest 3 numbers, 52% vs 12.9%. So picking the right number makes a huge difference in your probability of winning!
What Are The Worst Numbers For Football Squares?
Based on the data analysis from over 16,000 NFL games, the least common numbers for Football Squares are 2, 5, 9, and 8. These numbers together only account for 19.5% of the scores in all the NFL football games recorded. The number 2 only has a 3.8% chance of being a winning number while the number 5 only has a 4.2% chance of being a winning number. If your game picks the numbers before participants purchase their squares, make sure to avoid these numbers!
