Playoff Race
Pick a team. See its odds, and the games left that matter most to it, two ways: making the playoffs, and reaching the Super Bowl.
Choose the odds
Root for the results that get a team in. Its playoff list comes first.Root for the results that get a team to the Super Bowl: in, then through the bracket. Its Super Bowl list comes first.
Games the betting lines don't cover yet use our power rankings and the Super Bowl market.The betting lines, then a plain Elo rating from scores. No opinions.
Where they land
Their own games
To make the playoffs
Other teams' games, by the points of playoff odds the right result is worth. Root for the team in bold.
To reach the Super Bowl
The same, for Super Bowl odds: get in, then win the conference's bracket. Root for the team in bold.
Where the two disagree
How the two work
Both come from the same 60,000 simulated seasons. They ask different questions, so they can want different results from the same game.
Make the playoffs: a race to the cut line
Seven teams in each conference get in: four division winners and three wild cards. Only the record matters, then the tiebreakers. So you want the teams around you in the standings to lose, most of all the ones in your own conference and your own division.
How good a team is doesn't matter here, only where it finishes. The conference's projected field, built the way the NFL builds it: each division's favorite, then the three best wild card bets. Bars are playoff odds. The small number is a team's seed if the season ended today.
Reach the Super Bowl: a path through the bracket
Getting in is the first step. Then a team has to win the conference: three games, or two with the 1 seed's bye, with home field going to the better seed. So the seed matters, and so does who else gets in. A good team with a bad record can be worth knocking out, even when a weaker team takes its place, because it's the team nobody wants to meet in January.
Each playoff game is played with team strength from our power rankings and the Super Bowl betting marketa plain Elo rating from scores. The conference's most likely bracket:
From 60,000 simulated seasons of every game left, with the NFL's full tiebreakers. Win chances come from the betting lines where there are any, then from team strength: our power rankings (70%) and the Super Bowl betting market (30%)Elo ratings from the last two seasons. A game's number is how much the team's odds move between its two results. Small numbers carry a little noise. Updated .