The complete guide to football analytics for sports betting, fantasy football, and data science. Learn EPA, win probability, and data-driven decision making.
What changed since the end of Week 5. Updated with results through Monday, October 19 · next update after the Thursday, October 22 games
Kickoff is September 9. The season hub, the frozen prediction ledger, and the opening slate — every number derived, graded in public.
Every 2026 page in one place: the schedule analysis, all eight division previews, and a tracker page for each of the 32 teams.
Open the season hubA frozen win probability for every 2026 game, published before kickoff and graded after. Week 1 is locked; misses stay on the page.
See the predictionsSixteen openers across four days — a Wednesday Super Bowl rematch, Melbourne, and every pairing's head-to-head ledger since 1999.
Read the slateFree interactive calculators for NFL analytics, betting, and fantasy football
Calculate Expected Points for any down, distance, and field position situation.
Use ToolShould you go for it, punt, or kick? Analyze the optimal fourth-down decision.
Use ToolEstimate win probability from the score margin, time remaining, and which side has the ball.
Use ToolFind +EV bets by comparing your probability estimates to betting odds.
Use Tool163 plain-English studies of the advanced numbers — each one the formula, a chart built from the bundled game log, and the caveat that keeps you from over-reading it. Latest October 21, 2026
The library runs from the metrics a broadcast quotes — expected points, DVOA, success rate, CPOE — through the structural effects that move games (home field, rest, weather), to the market studies that test what the betting line already knows (spread accuracy, road favorites, key numbers). The 12 newest are below; the rest are indexed on the explainers page.
Drive 1 is the game's first possession, run by the team that receives the opening kickoff, and drives are numbered for both teams in one sequence. In 2025 opening drives ended in points 45.6% of the time, the most since 2002, against 39.3% for all drives. How drives end, where Drive 1 starts, and how often a first-drive touchdown went with a win (62.6%).
Division games always split their wins and losses inside the division, so the fair test is the games against everyone else. Through week 6 the NFC North is 13-3 against other divisions and the AFC North 12-5; the NFC East and AFC South are 5-11. What a strong start has meant since 2002, and who each division has played.
aDOT, average depth of target, is how far past the line of scrimmage a player's targets travel, caught or not. The league averaged 7.86 yards in 2025: wide receivers 11.0, tight ends 6.2 and running backs about zero. What depth buys and costs, the shortest and deepest passers and receivers, and why a receiver's aDOT barely changes from one season to the next.
A field goal's distance is the yards from the line of scrimmage to the goal line plus 18, so a try from the opponent's 30 is a 48-yard kick. A yard-line table with how often each length went in over 2021-2025, how much better long kicking has become since 2006, indoors against outdoors, and 2026 through week 6.
Green Bay at Chicago, Buffalo at Denver and the Rams at Seattle play on Friday, December 25, with Houston at Philadelphia on Christmas Eve. The NFL has played on Christmas every year since 2020; before that, a Christmas from Tuesday to Friday almost never had a game. Since 1999 Christmas hosts are 13-16, and the team with the better record has usually won.
In 2025 each offense ran 63.3 plays a game, 126.6 for both teams, the second-lowest count since 2002; add the kicks, punts and kneel-downs and a game had 154.5 plays over a median 3 hours 2 minutes. What a game is made of, how far one game can swing, why more plays do not mean more wins, and why 2026 is running higher so far.
Chicago at Detroit, Philadelphia at Dallas and Kansas City at Buffalo play on Thursday, November 26, with Green Bay at the Rams the night before and Denver at Pittsburgh the day after. From 1999 to 2025 Thanksgiving hosts went 33-40, mostly because the visitor had the better record in 40 of the 73 games, and the extra rest teams get afterward has not shown up in their next game.
Since the NFL went to 17 games and a 14-team field in 2021, 10 wins has made the playoffs 15 times out of 16 and 9 wins 9 times out of 23; every 11-win team got in and no 7-win team did. The table for every format since 2002, the teams that won enough and missed, and where 2026's teams stand through Thursday of week 6.
The NFL breaks ties with two fixed lists, one inside a division and one for the wild cards, and a few rules around them decide more than the lists do. From 2002 to 2025, 23 of 192 division titles went to a tiebreaker and head-to-head or division record settled 18; strength of schedule never decided a title or a last playoff seat. Plus 2026's ties through Thursday of week 6, worked step by step.
The 2026 NFL trade deadline is Tuesday, November 10, at 4 p.m. Eastern, the Tuesday after week 9. In the five seasons since the schedule went to 17 games, 35 of 86 in-season trades came on deadline day itself, most of the 41 players moved were defenders, most of the picks were from rounds 4 to 7, and 27 of the 41 players went to a team with a better record.
The free source most public NFL analysis runs on is nflverse: 24 data releases on GitHub, 4,376 files, no key, CC BY 4.0. The catalog, how to load it with nflreadr or nflreadpy (nfl_data_py is archived and deprecated), the two releases that are traps, and a timed test: after Thursday night's game the 2026 play-by-play file was replaced 4 hours 18 minutes after kickoff.
All eight divisions have a sole leader through Thursday of week 6, from San Francisco 2.5 games clear to Carolina by half a game, and each leader also has its division's best point differential. In 192 division races since 2002, a team alone in first after week 5 won the division at .673, and two-game leaders won 26 of 32.
From foundational concepts to advanced machine learning techniques, this textbook covers everything you need to master NFL analytics.
Browse All ChaptersData infrastructure, nflverse, wrangling, and visualization basics.
5 ChaptersPassing, rushing, EPA analysis, success rate, and efficiency metrics.
7 ChaptersCoverage analysis, pass rush, run defense, and scheme evaluation.
6 ChaptersFourth down decisions, two-point conversions, and win probability.
4 ChaptersMachine learning, Bayesian methods, tracking data, and simulation.
5 ChaptersSpecial teams, personnel, college football, and future trends.
18 ChaptersIn-depth analytics profiles for all 32 NFL teams
100+ code examples in R and Python covering data loading, EPA analysis, visualization, betting models, and machine learning.
# Load NFL play-by-play data with nflfastR
library(nflfastR)
library(tidyverse)
# Get 2024 season data
pbp_2024 <- load_pbp(2024)
# Calculate team EPA per play
team_epa <- pbp_2024 %>%
filter(!is.na(epa)) %>%
group_by(posteam) %>%
summarize(
plays = n(),
total_epa = sum(epa),
epa_per_play = mean(epa),
success_rate = mean(success)
) %>%
arrange(desc(epa_per_play))
# View top offenses
head(team_epa, 10)Data-driven betting strategies
Learn how to use analytics to find +EV bets, manage your bankroll, and make smarter betting decisions.
Data sources, tools & community
Curated collection of the best NFL analytics resources, data sources, APIs, and learning materials.
Start with Chapter 1 and work your way through the full curriculum.