A Quantum Leap: Meta Synchronicity, Super Bowl 48, and the 12s
How One Game Encapsulates the Soul of an NFL Franchise
This post is the fourth in a five-part presentation that began here.
The previous post in this presentation is here.
Things that Happen Under our Collective Nose
Moments can be truly epic, incredibly well-synced, and yet go largely unnoticed.
Their place in history can slip by almost silently—simply because they lack the one thing sports fans seem to crave most:
Sensationalism.
Case in point: Eleven years after Super Bowl 48, we suggest that relatively few members of Seattle’s Twelve community could say exactly when their beloved Seahawks clinched the greatest victory in franchise history.
It happened on a quiet, almost pedestrian play—one that got buried beneath the collective memory of flashier highlights.
By default, this short one-yard run is one of the most significant plays in Seattle Seahawks history. Click the image to see it.
The relevant facts about this touchdown are as follows.
This touchdown led to Seattle and the Twelves clinching ultimate NFL victory with exactly 12:00 remaining in the first half.
This Super Bowl-clinching play was scored at 12 minutes and 12 seconds before Percy Harvin scored his touchdown 12 seconds into the second half.
The touchdown was scored by Marshawn Lynch, one of the most beloved—and significant—players of the Seahawks' Super Bowl era.
Marshawn Lynch was the 12th player selected in the 2007 NFL draft.
Lynch scored 12 touchdowns during Seattle’s one and only Super Bowl-winning regular season.
He left Seattle after Super Bowl 48, only to return in late 2019 in a bizarre twist of fate. Both of Seattle’s starting running backs suffered season-ending injuries in a game against the Arizona Cardinals, with the playoffs just one game away. Lynch happened to be available.
In his comeback game—played on December 29, 2019—Marshawn Lynch carried the ball 12 times.
Late in what was Lynch’s 12th season in the NFL.
Having returned for the Seahawks’ last pre-playoff game, Lynch finished the NFL’s 2019 regular season, his final regular season, with exactly 12 carries.
See how this data takes us into territory that recalls the constellation of 316 associations surrounding the Tim Tebow story? As far as synchronicity goes, the two are already in league. Both are off-the-charts improbable and relevant.
This cluster bomb shouldn’t be happening either. But it is. There’s no wiggle room. Nothing for skeptics to fall back on. No swamp gas. The data speaks plainly. And this time, it’s tied to the no less than climax of the United States’ undisputed favorite pastime.
A couple of weeks later, Marshawn Lynch played the final game of his NFL career.
On the 12th day of 2020.
In that final game, Lynch again had 12 carries.
He scored a touchdown on his 12th and final carry of that game.
Marshawn Lynch’s last NFL touchdown, his very last touch, led to his 12th career playoff touchdown.
Making the Heuristic Point: Low-Balling 1 in 10 Across the Board
To say that any of these kinds of data points will appear “at least 1 in 10 times” when random NFL touchdowns are considered is a very low estimate. An unreasonably low estimate, once you think about it.
Despite this short-coming, the 1 in 10 rate is highly convenient. It makes the main scientific and heuristic point.
For all ten of these 12s to appear tied to the same singular touchdown, is something we must expect to see much less than 1 in 10 billion touchdowns. That would be “much” to the 10th power less.
Scientific expectation is crushed once again, under an avalanche of improbability and exquisite relevance. Even at the unreasonably low 1-in-10 level, it becomes obvious that this dataset can’t be explained away by a basic null hypothesis test.
Ah, the null hypothesis test. And that famous p = 0.05 thing: it must take a lot more than 20 random NFL touchdowns to find another that displays 12-related data like this. Here’s why. Matching takes more than identifying significant 12s. The 12s must also display large combined improbability. It must take much less than 1 in 20 touchdowns, therefore, because matching in this case means finding a 12-cluster whose chance rarity is much¹⁰ rarer than a 1 in 10 billion outcome.
Statistically speaking, we must strongly expect to never see this cluster. As Sagan instructs, we must never believe it manifested without hard evidence.
But we do—and not with any random NFL touchdown. This touchdown was the clinching play in the most significant game, ever, for a tribe that literally calls itself the number 12.
Earlier, I suggested it might have been in the planner’s incentive to reinforce the interpretation that the 30-year Super Bowl meta sync was meant to foreshadow Seattle’s victory in Super Bowl 48, through various 12s.
This touchdown does that, with triumphant emphatic closure. It’s the play within the game that literally secured ultimate NFL victory for Seattle, in the final crowning installment of the 30-year Super Bowl sequence.
The Super Bowl 48 Sandwich
Many will say that Marshawn Lynch personified the spirit of the Twelves in his heyday. How fitting, when one considers the quiet glory of this touchdown to the Twelves.
Seen in this light, this Super Bowl-clinching touchdown proved to be a synchronistic work in progress—just like the Tebow-to-Thomas Denver-Pittsburgh one, as we learned.
And this work in progress sits quietly in the middle of two sensational scoring plays in Super Bowl 48, both of which featured the exact same 12-second time signature.
Here’s what we get when we consider all three plays, after applying some more of that fifth-grade math: a Super Bowl 48 sandwich.
When we assume that four 12-second scores have occurred at the start of both the first and third quarters, this generous rate of 4 in 16,000 per quarter implies a combined probability of 1 in 16 million. The two 12-second plays form a macro sync of their own—clearly relevant and highly improbable data points that are testable, drawn from large samples of identical data, and cannot be duplicated even 1 in 20 times on average. Science’s sacred p = 0.05 is soundly defeated and it isn’t even close, again. This understated result translates to something we can expect to see less than once every 16 million NFL games and did during Super Bowl 48.
When we combine this 00:12 pairing with Marshawn Lynch’s touchdown—another macro sync unto itself—we’re looking at a set of events that we can expect to see less than once every 160 trillion NFL games. In reality, it’s much, much less, since we’ve significantly understated every one of the data points associated with Lynch’s Super Bowl–clinching touchdown.
This macro sync should not be separated from the three-part meta sync we introduced earlier. It literally sticks to it—like static cling on polyester. Through more adjacency. The 12 second safety play literally ended the Super Bowl safety trio while introducing this fourth macro sync.
Let me be clear. I am not saying that this 30-year meta string seen below is a plan. I am saying that it resembles one. It’s the only logical way to interpret the results when we put on our detective hats. From left to right:
The stunningly improbable buildup over 27 years, through the win streak and the coin-toss streak that immediately followed. Once every 134 million years, where chance rules.
Then hints of the meta climax in Super Bowl 46 and 47, although nobody could tell.
And finally, the staggeringly improbable fireworks party that was Super Bowl 48
—the statistical baptism-explosion for Seattle’s Twelves. A very tidy less than 1 in 160 trillion random outcome that reinforces the idea that the safety trio was a set up.
The Odds
All hard data. Very testable. No swamp gas.
We ground this data set by asking the all-important science question:
The rarity level of this meta sync pattern is light-years beyond 1 in 20.
The Art
Enough number crunching.
As we said in the Tebow story: there comes a point when it’s time to put down the calculator. Chance is thoroughly defeated. Fixating on number crunching can distract. It can devolve into a time-consuming sport—showing just how really, really bad chance can be. That’s fascinating, I’ll admit, especially considering how many educated people still cling to chance as the only so-called logical or rational explanation.
I’ve found that staggeringly improbable patterns often carry equally compelling artistic signatures. After a certain point, one’s intellectual capital is better spent looking in that direction. This is where a lot of people refuel anyway. By reflecting on these patterns’ artistic majesty.
The meta-pattern above deserves to be viewed as a possible work of cosmic art. Nothing is wasted. Each giant piece, a Super Bowl, contributes to the meta pattern is connected by the principle of adjacency. Seen as a plan, its duration looks highly deliberate and steers the mind toward 12s near the end, and concludes on that same note, with emphatic and exponential emphasis.
As far as possible Art goes, there is one more adjacent-positive thing to consider:
This impossibly rare thirty-year string of Super Bowls doesn’t just evoke Seattle’s Twelve motif at its finish.
It does so through its January 20, 1985 introduction—Super Bowl 19.
The Seattle Seahawks officially enshrined the Twelves five weeks earlier, when they retired the number 12 in honor of their fans—on December 15, 1984.
Seen in that light, the entire 30-year Super Bowl meta sync looks rather like a response to what the Seahawks did,
and perhaps an endorsement.
The Scientific Conclusion
To circle back to a very important point that was made in our first case study, where we examined the Tim Tebow John 3:16 synchronicity episode:
These case studies are truly scientifically significant because their data sets can be tested and determined to be non-random, through a very clear-cut null hypothesis test in particular.
This is important for two reasons. The lesser reason is that these results run contrary to the strong expectations of the current academic zeitgeist. The more important reason is that, in defeating chance so resoundingly, these same results represent data that classical science is unable to explain. They are scientific proof that our classical science is lacking. There’s no room here for the usual rebuttals, like confirmation bias. This data is literally of Copernican consequence, because it exposes a flaw in the prevailing scientific paradigm.
So, here’s the science: In this brief question and answer discussion, I discuss the Lynch touchdown data with four A.I. systems who confirm that our methods and conclusions are scientifically valid and significant.
It’s good to have quality peer review. Especially when it comes to truly scientifically significant data. Surprisingly, however, the scientific question is incredibly simple and straightforward:
Will 1 in 20 randomly selected NFL touchdowns display clusters of significant 12s that compare to Marshawn Lynch’s Super Bowl clinching touchdown?
The answer is clearly no, because we require a 12-based pattern whose rarity is at least 1 in 10 billion.
Chance is defeated, again, scientifically.
Once again, classical science is unable to explain away the results.