Football is wildly unpredictable so it probably depends on what you mean by legit chance.
The best score prediction systems in the world are going to miss about 1/3 of the games by 14 points or more in one direction or the other. The spread between the last at-large team into the playoff field and the best team in the field will probably be around 20 points.
I have the honor to be Your Obedient Servant - B.Aud
We all live in stories... It seems to me that a definition of any living vibrant society is that you constantly question those stories... The argument itself is freedom. It's not that you come to a conclusion about it. Through that argument you change your mind sometimes... That's how societies grow. When you can't retell for yourself the stories of your life then you live in a prison... Somebody else controls the story. - S. Rushdie
I have the honor to be Your Obedient Servant - B.Aud
We all live in stories... It seems to me that a definition of any living vibrant society is that you constantly question those stories... The argument itself is freedom. It's not that you come to a conclusion about it. Through that argument you change your mind sometimes... That's how societies grow. When you can't retell for yourself the stories of your life then you live in a prison... Somebody else controls the story. - S. Rushdie
That's not what I take from it, but perhaps it's valid to stretch to that.
I think it is more that they play a lot of tough teams (MVFC is tough, as evidenced by our OOC record the past few years). And they play those tough teams close (win or lose, it shows they are also quite good). Against lower rated teams, they generally win by a lot, which also supports their high rating.
I doubt that Sagarin has a way to measure and compare the "clutch" factor (if any such thing exists) for teams that just know how to win the game. For some of Sagarin's measures, it doesn't even matter which team wins... just the number of points they win or lose by in relation to the expectations from the previous week's ratings.
I like what Ken Pomeroy does for basketball. He actually has a "luck" factor that is a result of predicted vs. actual results. Teams that win many games they shouldn't, end up with a high luck rating. A team like UNI would have a poor luck rating because many of the games where the actual score differential is within a TD of the predicted score differential, but the result of the game often ended in a UNI loss.
IOW, the predicted score was a 3pt UNI win, but UNI loses by 1. The difference between the two scores is only 4pts, but it was enough to tip the balance against them. Enough games like that and you end up with a poor luck rating.
Yeah, my differential columns are pretty meaningless. They're mainly there for my own amusement. It helps me see in what games the team appeared to over or underperform. The total differential has even less meaning, but seems to point to possible irregularities if it gets too high. High numbers in either direction can be caused by a very inconsistent team with wild swings. Or they can come from a team consistently missing a bit high or a bit low.
I wouldn't put any real stock in the total diff number at all.