NFL training camps are opening this week, and even teams that finished last season in last place are full of hope. Since the NFL is so volatile, this isn’t merely summer optimism. In every year this decade except one (2014), at least one team has rebounded from a last-place finish in its division the previous […]
One of the most wonderfully ironic moments in Super Bowl history happened just before kickoff in February 2002, when St. Louis Rams wide receiver Ricky Proehl turned to NFL Films’ cameras during warmups and declared: “Tonight, a dynasty is born!” Proehl was right, of course. A dynasty was born that night — just not the […]
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 […]
It’s the last week of the NFL’s regular season, and that means it’s time to game out all of the fun playoff scenarios facing each team. Here at FiveThirtyEight, we like to measure the most important games of the week based on how much they swing every team’s odds of making the postseason (across every […]
If it feels like we still don’t know how good the Minnesota Vikings are after 15 weeks of football, it’s probably because … we still don’t. With their playoff hopes on the line Sunday, the Vikings cruised past the Miami Dolphins — a team whose own playoff future was in flux — in a 41-17 […]