AFC
|
|
|
NFC
|
|
Team
|
Rnk
|
|
Team
|
Rnk
|
Denver
|
112.7
|
|
Dallas
|
116.0
|
Tennessee
|
112.0
|
|
Philadelphia
|
111.4
|
Baltimore
|
109.2
|
|
Tampa Bay
|
110.3
|
San Diego
|
105.8
|
|
New Orleans
|
110.2
|
Pittsburgh
|
105.4
|
|
Chicago
|
108.9
|
Buffalo
|
104.7
|
|
Washington
|
108.7
|
Jacksonville
|
103.0
|
|
NY Giants
|
107.6
|
Cincinnati
|
101.3
|
|
Arizona
|
107.3
|
Indianapolis
|
99.4
|
|
Green Bay
|
105.3
|
Cleveland
|
96.2
|
|
Carolina
|
105.0
|
Oakland
|
93.9
|
|
Minnesota
|
103.2
|
Miami
|
91.2
|
|
San Francisco
|
96.1
|
Houston
|
90.7
|
|
Atlanta
|
95.8
|
NY Jets
|
85.9
|
|
Seattle
|
90.2
|
New England
|
80.5
|
|
Detroit
|
81.7
|
Kansas City
|
75.4
|
|
St. Louis
|
74.7
|
Monday Night Football (San Diego 48, Jets 29) was fairly consistent with our predicted outcome, but moved the Jets forward by 3.9 points, while dropping San Diego by 2.9. This didn’t move either team in the standings; San Diego remains fourth in the conference, the Jets remain 14th. The AFC East teams—Miami, the Jets and New England—have been playing one another, so their ratings are kind of locked in place relative to one another, so the +3.9 for the Jets also moved the Pats and Dolphins up by 2.3. The only change of positions in the AFC was that this moved Miami in front of Houston; otherwise the one-through-sixteen order remained the same.
In the NFC, the Panthers lost 1.5 points because their win over San Diego was devalued a little bit, while Arizona, with a earlier win over Miami, moved up by 0.9. This caused Carolina, in a tight pack of teams, to drop two slots behind Arizona and Green Bay.
There is no Thursday night game this week. Our predictions for Sunday’s games:
Atlanta at Carolina |
|
Panthers by 11 |
Cleveland at Cincinnati |
|
Bengals by 7 |
Houston at Jacksonville |
|
Jags by 12 |
Denver at Kansas City |
|
Broncos by 23 |
San Francisco at New Orleans |
|
Saints by 13 |
Arizona at New York Jets |
|
Arizona by 15 |
Green Bay at Tampa Bay |
|
Buccaneers by 7 |
Minnesota at Tennessee |
|
Titans by 11 |
San Diego at Oakland |
|
Chargers by 10 |
Buffalo at St. Louis |
|
Bills by 19 |
Washington at Dallas |
|
Cowboys by 9 |
Philadelphia at Chicago |
|
Philadelphia by 1 |
Philadelphia by Chicago by actually less than one-half, actually; it’s even. My gut instinct is that Chicago will win, because Chicago needs a win more and I usually think in a fairly even match, the team that needs the win worse will win.
I made up a rule there, based on no research whatsoever, that when a game was lop-sided I would reduce the predicted margin by dividing the points above 10 by two—thus, a 20-point difference becomes 15, a 24-point difference becomes 17. I’m just really uncomfortable saying that the Broncos will beat Kansas City by 36, because they don’t need to do that. Up 20 in the fourth quarter, they’ll just run off as much clock as they can and kick a field goal.