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How the NFL’s Top Receivers’ Stats Would Change If They Played With Average QBs
The New Orleans Saints’ Jimmy Graham lost an arbitration hearing Wednesday in which he sought classification as a wide receiver rather than a tight end. Graham’s desire to be a wideout might seem...
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2014 NFL Preview: The Once-Proud NFC East
Editor’s Note: FiveThirtyEight is running a series of eight NFL previews, one division at a time, to highlight the numbers that may influence each team’s season. America’s favorite weekly soap opera is...
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Skeptical Football: DeMarco Murray Is Way Better At Running Than Alex Henery...
Dallas Cowboys running back DeMarco Murray is kinda killing it this year. Through five games, he’s leading the league in rushing by more than 200 yards2 — and he’s run for 100 or more yards in every...
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NFL Week 7 Elo Ratings And Playoff Odds
The Seattle Seahawks, No. 1 in our NFL Elo ratings since the start of the season, have relinquished that position after losing 30-23 at home against the Dallas Cowboys. The new Elo No. 1 probably won’t...
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NFL Week 9 Elo Ratings And Playoff Odds
Unlike the previous week, when three of the top five teams in our Elo ratings lost, Week 8 of the NFL season was a good time for the elite. The No. 4 San Francisco 49ers were idle, but the top 3 teams...
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NFL Week 9 Playoff Implications: A Crucial Week For The Saints And Panthers
NFL Playoff Implications, our weekly guide to what games matter, and whom they matter to, returns for Week 9 of the NFL season. For an explanation of the methodology, see here. The rankings behind...
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NFL Week 13 Playoff Implications: Be Thankful For Meaningful Games This...
UPDATE (Nov. 29, 3:52 p.m.): The interactive tables above have been updated to include the results of Thursday’s match-ups, and those games has been removed (the text of the article has not been...
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Skeptical Football: Thanksgiving Preview Edition
On Thanksgiving Day 1892, the Allegheny Athletic Association — featuring the world’s first professional football player, William Heffelfinger — beat the Cleveland Athletic Club with a single touchdown,...
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NFL Week 14 Playoff Implications: The Chargers Have A Pulse
The San Diego Chargers’ playoff chances, once as high as 75 percent, were on the verge of dropping into single digits Sunday as the team trailed the Baltimore Ravens by three late in the...
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NFL Week 14 Elo Ratings And Playoff Odds
On Sunday, the Green Bay Packers beat the New England Patriots, who had entered Week 13 ranked first in FiveThirtyEight’s NFL Elo ratings. They got there by defeating the previous No. 1, the Denver...
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NFL Week 15 Playoff Implications: The Chances A Coin Flip Will Decide The...
The intricacies of the NFL playoff race can make for uneasy alliances. Going into last week’s games, the numbers dictated that Dallas Cowboys fans should have been rooting for a Philadelphia Eagles...
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Week 15 NFL Elo Ratings And Playoff Odds
Remember the Seattle Seahawks? For all 137.6 decibels of noise at CenturyLink Field, they’ve been relatively quiet this year. The Seahawks have been one of the most consistent teams in the NFL, rarely...
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Decades Before Moneyball, The Dallas Cowboys Used Advanced Stats To Win Super...
A. Salam Qureishi grew up in India and knew nothing about football — or America. And yet in the early 1960s, Qureishi, a computer programmer and statistician, helped the Dallas Cowboys overhaul their...
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NFL Week 16 Playoff Implications: When Things Start To Shake Out
The Arizona Cardinals continue to get no respect. Despite an NFC best 11-3 record, Las Vegas has them as eight-point underdogs, at home, against the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday. Similarly, our...
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Tony Romo’s Been Great, But He’s Not The MVP
After the Dallas Cowboys clinched the NFC East crown with a dominating 42-7 victory over the Indianapolis Colts Sunday, there was plenty of talk that Tony Romo, a quarterback by turns revered and...
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NFL Teams Are Analyzing Everything From The Salary Cap To Fan Loyalty
The FiveThirtyEight film “The Cowboys and the Indian,” which debuted last week, tells the story of A. Salam Qureishi, who brought computerized player analytics to the Dallas Cowboys in the 1960s. At...
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NFL Week 17 Playoff Implications: Someone Has To Win The NFC South
With just one week remaining in the NFL regular season, the playoff implications are fairly straightforward, and running thousands of simulations of Week 17 outcomes may seem like computational...
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Week 19 NFL Elo Ratings And Playoff Odds: Divisional Round Edition
One blind spot of the analytics movement has been its underappreciation of postseason play. I don’t necessarily mean that “COUNT THE RINGZ” is a better paradigm. But there are all sorts of interesting...
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Are The Patriots Now The Greatest NFL Dynasty Of All Time?
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area idolizing Joe Montana, Steve Young and the San Francisco 49ers. Now, after winning his fourth Super Bowl on Sunday,...
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Tony Romo Is Skeptical Football’s Gunslinger Of The Year
In the opening week of the 2014 NFL season, the Dallas Cowboys’ Tony Romo threw three interceptions against the San Francisco 49ers, all with his team trailing. The Cowboys lost that game by double...
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