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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KC W | 38–35 | +4.0dog 1.0 | +0.37 → +0.42 | +0.15 → +0.07 | +0.35 | 98%raw 96% | 15% – 91% | 0 / 1 |
| @ PHI L | 35–38 | -4.0fav 1.0 | +0.15 → +0.14 | +0.37 → +0.24 | -0.10 | 26%raw 4% | 9% – 85% | 1 / 0 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Patrick Mahomes | KC | PHI | 27 | +0.519 | +0.459 | +0.060 | +14.0 | 0 / 0 | +0.0 | 0 | +0.0 | +0.42 | +13.6 |
| Jalen Hurts | PHI | KC | 40 | +0.320 | +0.322 | -0.002 | +12.8 | 0 / 0 | +0.0 | 2 | -1.9 | +0.28 | +12.0 |
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.