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The NFL Games To Watch With The Playoffs On The Line

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 […]

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The NFL’s Home-Field Advantage Is Real. But Why?

As the NFL playoffs approach, teams will be competing hard down the stretch to secure home-field advantage for at least one postseason game. It’s also the reason teams like the Rams and Saints, who have comfortably locked up a playoff spot and even home field for their first playoff game, will risk injury to their […]

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The Vikings Are Mediocre, And That’s Confusing

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 […]

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We Still Don’t Know Which NFL Teams Are Any Good

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, […]

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Why We Still Don’t Know How Many NFL Players Have CTE

Over the past few years, the NFL has been haunted by the early deaths of some former players whose brains showed signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. CTE is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by memory loss, mood disorders, dementia and other brain-related problems. But how prevalent is CTE, and how likely are players to develop it? […]

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