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ELWAY NFL team projections

Team ratings, playoff and Super Bowl probabilities, and forecasts of every upcoming game from Silver Bulletin's exclusive NFL model.

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Nate Silver
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Joseph George
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Eli McKown-Dawson
Oct 16, 2025
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🕒 Our latest NFL team ratings

Updated October 16, 2025

It took a little longer than we thought … but after three months of nearly continuous work, our new NFL model, ELWAY1, is ready for some football.

This is our first model that’s completely native to Silver Bulletin.2 And if I’m being honest, I forgot just how much work these things are. ELWAY is incredibly detailed (as you can see by visiting the methodology page). We designed a whole new quarterback rating system, QBERT, as a complement to ELWAY. We simulate everything from how home-field advantage differs from stadium to stadium — Buffalo is a much tougher place to play than Los Angeles, for instance — to how changes in NFL strategy are affecting the distribution of final scores. (Possibly relevant if you’re betting against the point spread, not that we’d necessarily advise that kind of thing.3)

We strongly recommend that you view and bookmark the web version of ELWAY. What you’re seeing here is what we call a landing page: it contains numerous tables and charts, and we’ll add more in the coming weeks. We’ll refresh these numbers (at least4) once a week.

The rest of this page contains:

  • Different versions of our ELWAY ratings;

  • Playoff, Super Bowl odds and projected regular-season finishes;

  • And detailed projections for every forthcoming regular season game.

The ratings themselves are free for everyone, while the forecasts and projections are exclusive to paying subscribers. Your subscriptions are a huge help in allowing us to make ambitious plans for Silver Bulletin, and we’ve appreciated your patience as we’ve gotten ELWAY ready. We’re going to turn to basketball next after we’ve caught up on some sleep.

But now it’s time to show you some numbers … and I swear it’s just a coincidence that ELWAY thinks my hometown team, the Detroit Lions, is the closest thing to a juggernaut in a season that’s featured a lot of parity so far.

This leaderboard teases a few key ELWAY features. A team’s net adjusted rating is essentially its projected margin of victory on a neutral field against an average opponent; it has subcomponents for offense and defense, as we’ll show you in a moment. There are also versions of the ratings with and without quarterback adjustments (based on QBERT) and injury adjustments (for all players, not just QBs).5

ELWAY is sensitive to performance early in the season, so teams like the Seahawks and the Buccaneers have risen while the Ravens — and to a lesser extent the Eagles — have declined. It also helps to get off to a fast start. ELWAY thinks Baker Mayfield and the Buccaneers are merely good, not great, but they’re already 5-1 and facing a soft schedule. So they’re tied with the Lions for the best projected record at 12-5, but are just outside the leaders in sixth place in Super Bowl title odds.

ELWAY also simulates changes in conditions in the forthcoming weeks. Lamar Jackson is expected to return in Week 8 following the Ravens’ bye, for instance. Injuries can heal, although more often they accumulate over the course of the season, especially for older teams, and the model accounts for this.

Let me go ahead and show you the ratings for every team:

The best (and worst) teams in the NFL

As we mentioned, the default version of ELWAY ratings includes adjustments based on a team’s projected starting QB for the forthcoming game, as well as current injuries. The Chargers and 49ers are particularly adversely affected by injuries at the moment, while the Patriots are extremely healthy.

You can click over to the other versions using the tabs in the table. “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 the most comparable to more traditional versions of 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.

So ELWAY really likes teams that consistently move the ball. Factors like completions, first downs and yards per play are more consistent than winning games via turnovers, penalties, special teams, or third-down conversions. Sacks — and avoiding sacks on offense — also matter a lot in ELWAY. In the modern game, with few turnovers, a good pass rush is just about the only chance that defenses have of stopping a Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes.

With that said, you see a few teams whose strengths are tilted toward one side of the ball. The Texans and Vikings have an above-average defense but a below-average offense, while the opposite is true for the Cowboys.

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 used to it. (There’s a reason that luxury housing is relatively affordable in Green Bay.) But let’s take a look at the AFC first:

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