Advanced football analysis indicates that it’s difficult to make the playoffs while allowing more points than you score. Prior to this year, 564 teams had made the playoffs since the NFL-AFL merger in 1970, and just 46 (8.2 percent) did it with a negative point differential. Of those, just 10 allowed regular-season opponents to outscore […]
Four years ago, the poorest owner in the NFL committed over $1.1 billion he didn’t have toward building a $1.9 billion stadium in Las Vegas, at a time when NFL policies forbid team owners, staffers and players from even appearing to have connections to gambling. Three years ago, he lured the franchise’s famous former head […]
sara.ziegler (Sara Ziegler, sports editor): Week 11 of this NFL season was a doozy. We saw yet another quarterback lost to injury, a touchdown catch that truly defied physics and two matches between playoff contenders that each needed overtime. But let’s start in Sin City, where the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Las Vegas Raiders […]
After reports late last week that Antonio Brown was heading to the Buffalo Bills, the Pittsburgh Steelers will instead reportedly trade their star receiver to the Oakland Raiders for a third- and a fifth-round pick in the 2019 draft. When the deal is finalized on Wednesday, Brown will have a restructured contract from the Raiders […]
FiveThirtyEight is running a series of eight NFL previews, one division at a time, to highlight the numbers that may influence each team’s season. America’s favorite weekly soap opera is about to begin; get prepped. Denver Broncos Expected wins (using implied power ratings from Las Vegas point spreads): 10.3 Playoff probability: 73 percent (56 percent […]