Game quality
How well each team played, beyond the score: EPA (expected points added) per play, adjusted for the opponent. A big day against a bad defence counts for less. Season views include playoff games.
Games
Adj margin: offence minus defence EPA per play, opponent-adjusted. Win exp: how often a team with that margin wins (a 55% win was close to a coin flip). Win prob range: the lowest and highest in-game win chance.
| Team | Score | vs line | Off EPA/playraw → adj | Def EPA/playraw → adj | Adj margin | Win exp | Win prob range | Turnoverslost / forced |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LA W | 23–20 | -1.5fav 4.5 | -0.06 → -0.07 | -0.12 → -0.13 | +0.06 | 66%raw 70% | 19% – 96% | 2 / 0 |
| @ CIN L | 20–23 | +1.5dog 4.5 | -0.12 → -0.04 | -0.06 → -0.09 | +0.04 | 62%raw 30% | 4% – 81% | 0 / 2 |
Quarterbacks this week
Click a column to sort. Schedule = what the opponent adjustment added (+ = faced a tough pass defence). Turnover and sack EPA are what those plays cost; sacks are shared with the line.
| Quarterback | Team | Opp | Dropbacks | Adj EPA/db | Raw EPA/db | Schedule | Total adj EPA | INT / FL | Turnover EPA | Sacks | Sack EPA | WPA | CPOE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Matthew Stafford | LA | CIN | 42 | +0.131 | +0.145 | -0.014 | +5.5 | 2 / 0 | -6.2 | 2 | -4.0 | +0.46 | -0.6 |
| Joe Burrow | CIN | LA | 40 | -0.095 | -0.193 | +0.098 | -3.8 | 0 / 0 | +0.0 | 7 | -11.5 | -0.40 | -3.0 |
How the ratings are built
Opponent adjustment. A unit's rating for a game is its average over its other games that season, blended with 16 games' worth of prior (league average plus half of last season's gap from it; 24 games for pass defence, which is noisier). Early in a season that leans on last year; by midseason it is mostly this year. Chosen by how well it predicts a held-out game: it cut that error by about a quarter against no shrinkage, and adjusted numbers agree between odd and even weeks more than raw ones do (team EPA margin r 0.52 → 0.55, defence 0.32 → 0.36, QB EPA/dropback 0.47 → 0.49, 2016–2025).Win expectancy is a logistic fit of wins on EPA margin over 6,036 completed games (it names the winner 86.5% of the time). These describe what happened; one game is not a forecast. Play-by-play credits the quarterback with every sack and dropback, so a bad line shows up in his numbers. Seasons 2016–2026, built 2026-11-07 11:05 UTC, from nflverse. Write-up:
backtests/nfl_game_quality/FINDINGS.md.