Team ratings, playoff and Super Bowl probabilities, and forecasts of every upcoming game from Silver Bulletin's exclusive NFL model.
đź•’ Our latest NFL team ratings
Updated Tuesday, November 18
Between sports like basketball that are highly deterministic — the best teams can win 85 or 90 percent of their games — and highly stochastic sports like baseball and hockey, the NFL is somewhere in between. A team like theBills can look terrible one week in losing to theDolphins, and terrific the next one in a high-scoring shootout against theBucs. But let’s see which squads ELWAY thinks have broken through the noise:
TheRams are now a clear #1 in our QB- and injury-adjusted ratings. There’s a lot to like. They just beat theSeahawks, another team that ELWAY thinks highly of. They’requite healthy. Their quarterback, Matt Stafford, is having a Pro Bowlif not even MVP-caliber season. And in contrast to almost everyone else in the league, they’ve been quite consistent, with their team rating at least holding steady if not improving basically every week of the season so far. The NFC West is a challenging division — the49ers are now a tough out too now with Brock Purdy back — but the Rams have a 67 percent chance of the division title.
ELWAY was less impressed by two other teams that won high-profile matchups last week. TheBroncos have one of the biggest home-field advantages in the league, and they’re now 81 percent to win the AFC West after a thrilling win over theChiefs. But a lot of those wins have been narrow, Bo Nix has been just OK, and they’re not as good as their 8-game winning streak suggests. ELWAY is also a little stingy on theEagles, who beat a team ELWAY likes a lot in theLions, but averaged only 3.9 yards per offensive snap in doing so.
The Chiefs are now 5-5. Their underlying metrics are good, but they haven’t had the knack for winning close games that they had last year, proof that clutch performance is pretty random. Because of the soft underbelly in the AFC, they still have a 66 percent chance of making the playoffs, but they’re unlikely to have the advantage of hosting home games at Arrowhead in the postseason.
There’sslightly less to worry about for the Lions, however listless they were on Sunday night. TheBears actually currently lead the NFC North, but ELWAY thinks they’ve been the luckiest team in football so far, and the Lions won the first head-to-head matchup in Detroit and so would control the tiebreaker if they win again in Chicago. Injuries, most recently to tight end Sam LaPorta, have been a recurring problem, however. ThePackers, with a tie on their record, are also a half-game ahead of the Lions and a half-game back of Chicago, but their remaining game against the Lions is in Detroit.
The rest of this page contains:
Different versions of our ELWAY ratings;
Playoff odds, Super Bowl odds and projected regular-season finishes, along with conditional odds indicating the impact of a W or L this week;
Detailed projections for every forthcoming regular season game, including point spreads and totals (yes,there is gambling in this casino);
And a series of 32 mini-graphs that track each team’s ELWAY rating from week to week.
The ratings themselves are free for everyone, while the other features are exclusive to paying subscribers.-NS, 11/18/25
See also:QBERT NFL quarterback ratings.
The best (and worst) teams in the NFL
The default version of ELWAY ratings includes adjustments based on a team’s projected starting QB for the upcoming game and current injuries. You can click the tabs in the table to view the other versions. “Healthy QB1s” backs out injuries completely for both QBs and non-QBs; the Bengals magically get Joe Burrow back. This might be a good indication of a team’s intrinsic strength later in the season. Meanwhile, the “team performance” version is most comparable totraditional NFL power ratings. It accounts for offseason roster movement and carries over a portion of the ratings from one season to the next, but otherwise takes a more “set it and forget it” approach.
ELWAY’s offensive and defensive ratings are essentially projections of how many points a team is expected to score and allow in forthcoming games. (Lower defensive ratings are better since it means a team is projected to allow fewer points.) By design, these ratings tend to be correlated, as you can see from this scatterplot:
Why such a strong relationship? Well, it’s because in a very literal sense, “a good offense is the best defense” in the NFL. Holding onto possession of the ball prevents the other team from scoring — defensive TDs are rare — eats up the clock, and leaves them with worse field position.
ELWAY projected records and playoff odds
We simulate the remainder of the season 5,000 times based on these ratings, projected injury timelines, and a whole series of other adjustments. A team like the Packers will tend to have a bigger home-field advantage later in the season, for instance, because winter weather tends to help home teams that are accustomed to it. (There’s a reason that luxury housing is relatively affordable in Green Bay.)
Here are our projected regular-season and playoff odds, starting with the AFC.