Projected Scores
2026 · Week 1 · 16 games · avg total 45.6 pts · avg margin 3.5 pts
- Avg miss 7.4 pts / team score
- Closing line 7.2
- Line never used
- 272 holdout games
How a projected score is built
Each team’s expected points is the projected game total plus or minus the projected margin, halved. The margin is a QB-adjusted Elo rating walked forward game by game; the total comes from how both teams have actually scored and conceded in prior weeks. Neither half sees the game it is projecting, and neither reads the betting line.
Accuracy, method, and the line
Over 272 holdout games the projected team score missed by 7.4 points on average. The closing line missed by 7.2 on the same games. The projection never uses the line.
Put another way, against a baseline that just guesses the league average every week, the model closes about 79% of the distance to the closing line on team scores and 86% on margin. That percentage is a measure of projection error, not a return, a win rate or an edge, and it is why it sits here rather than at the top of the page.
The exact final score is not the point and the page does not claim it: over 1,871 graded games the model called the exact score 3 times and the closing line also called it 3 times. A projection is a centre, not a prediction of a scoreline.
This page makes no picks and carries no prices. For win probability and the pools, see the winners board. Informational only, not betting advice. 21+. 1-800-GAMBLER.
Game shape, and what it does not say
A shape label names where these two numbers sit against every game since 2019 — top or bottom third of projected totals, closest or widest third of projected margins — so it describes the projection you can see, not how either team will play.
It is deliberately not a forecast of play-calling. A version that predicted behaviour was built and graded on a held-out season and lost to shuffled labels on every measure that mattered. Whether one team spends the afternoon chasing is close to unknowable before kickoff: the projected margin explains about 1% of it, and the closing line does no better.
Cut points are the 2019–2024 terciles over 1,599 games: totals at 44.39 and 46.63, margins at 2.53 and 6.17. About half of all games sit in the middle and carry no label, because half of all games have no distinctive shape.