sara.ziegler (Sara Ziegler, sports editor): It‘s been quite an opening week in the NFL — and that’s just on the field. We started with an old-fashioned defensive slugfest on Thursday and ended Sunday night with the Patriots still looking like the Patriots. And we still have two games left tonight! Throw in a tie for […]
The Cleveland Browns … might actually be good this year? As the season opens, FiveThirtyEight’s NFL forecast thinks there’s a 41 percent chance the Browns will make the playoffs, which is way more optimistic than in years past. But before they get good, sportswriter Neil Paine wanted to relive the bad. Buckle up, it’s a […]
Eli Manning is a four-time Pro Bowler, a two-time Super Bowl champion and the 2016 Walter Payton Man of the Year. But when he takes the field as the Giants’ Week 1 starter — as he has every season for the past 14 — he may be ready for a new title: “Expendable.” Every year, […]
Every year, we look back on preseason win totals produced by forecasters and betting markets and chuckle at some of the more egregious misses. Last season, the Chicago Bears were initially forecast for seven wins by Las Vegas, then traded for Khalil Mack and somehow won 12. The Green Bay Packers’s predicted win total was […]
Vegas is notoriously hard to beat. But as the NFL season gets started Thursday, there’s some promise for gamblers in betting on projected team win totals. Half-win totals from 8.5 on down seem to be very solid bets to hit the over, even when accounting for the vigorish, or house margin. Money-line data is only […]