The NFL’s wild-card round may have been a brutal showcase of grind-it-out defense and uninspired offensive play-calling. But at least it threw another intriguing wrench into what was already shaping up to be a chaotic postseason. Three of the four favorites (according to FiveThirtyEight’s pregame Elo ratings) lost on opening weekend: the home Texans, Ravens […]
gfoster (Geoff Foster, sports editor): The wild-card weekend — the best weekend — is in the books, and it would be hard to argue that it wasn’t great. Three of four road teams won. With the exception of the Colts wiping out the Texans, every game was within a touchdown. Let’s start with the most […]
With the NFL’s playoff bracket finally set, it’s time to survey the field and handicap the race for the Super Bowl. What’s interesting about this season is that there are plenty of very good teams but few that could be classified as truly dominant. Nine teams have an Elo rating of at least 1600, but […]
gfoster (Geoff Foster, sports editor): Week 15 in the NFL is almost over, and we are here to discuss the key takeaways from the weekend and how the playoff picture is shaping up. Most broadly, a pair of playoff-bound teams that looked shaky a week ago (Patriots and Rams) continued to look off their game, […]
There’s a new team atop FiveThirtyEight’s NFL Elo rankings this week, and it’s the one we discussed in this space last time around — the red-hot New Orleans Saints. Fresh off an impressive victory over the Los Angeles Rams, New Orleans turned around and walloped the Bengals 51-14 in Cincinnati. Based on how they’ve been […]