Seven calls right. Seven wrong. A flat coin flip, the second soft week running after last week’s 9 of 15, and the week’s defining moment came down to a single flag with under a minute on the clock.
The headline miss
Los Angeles Rams were the heaviest favorite to lose all week, 82.9 percent at home over an Arizona team that came in 1-4 with the league’s worst recent form: four straight losing weeks, two of them 24-point blowouts, a minus-54 point differential. The Rams led. Then, with 47 seconds left in the fourth quarter and the ball at their own 35, Los Angeles was called for a defensive offside, the single costliest flag of anyone’s week, 0.2978 in win probability. Arizona won 18-16. This is the rare one where the flag genuinely is the story, not a footnote: a two-point final, under a minute to play, one penalty worth nearly thirty points of win probability. Arizona’s season has been bad. This one night, the whistle gave them the room to make it not matter.
Three more upsets, no flag involved
New Orleans was a 47.5 percent road underdog at the Giants and won anyway, 34-27. The Saints came in 1-4 with their last four weeks trending the wrong direction, nothing about their season said this was coming, and nothing about the game did either. The costliest flag in it, a Roughing the Passer on New York, moved just 0.043 in win probability, nowhere near enough to matter. New Orleans just played their best game in a month at the right time.
Baltimore was the better team walking into Cleveland, 4-1 and playing its best stretch of the season, a 60.7 percent favorite on the road. Cleveland won anyway, 13-10, a defensive game decided mostly by two offenses that couldn’t find room. Baltimore did commit a Delay of Game with 2:08 left that cost 0.093 in win probability on a drive at midfield, which didn’t help, but this result is a missed read on form, not a flag.
Chicago was a 41.1 percent road underdog at Atlanta and won 31-23. Atlanta’s season has been streaky all year, back-to-back blowout wins in the middle of the season, losses bracketing them, and this was a losing week. Chicago, coming off its own ugly loss the week before, played its cleanest game of the stretch. No penalty worth mentioning in this one either.
The Titans finally won, and a flag near the goal line helped
Tennessee came in 0-5, the league’s second-worst point differential, and had Indianapolis favored at home, 62.7 percent. Tennessee won 26-20. A Defensive Pass Interference on Indianapolis, worth 0.188 in win probability, at the 17-yard line with 5:26 left in the fourth kept a Tennessee drive alive at a point in the game where a stop would have ended it. Worth naming because of exactly when it happened, not because the Titans needed the help to be the better team that day. They were 0-5 for a reason all season. This was still the day it stopped mattering.
Houston survived its own worst penalty of the week
Houston’s trip to London closed with a win, 34-31 over Jacksonville at Wembley, despite giving back the second-costliest flag of the week against their own offense, an Ineligible Downfield Pass worth 0.2632 in win probability with four minutes left and the ball at the 4-yard line. Jacksonville came in 4-1 with the league’s second-best point differential, built on a two-week stretch where travel barely touched them. They lost their “home” finale anyway, and Houston’s own penalty, not Jacksonville’s, is the only flag in this one worth remembering.
Thursday’s result, graded
Denver’s 17-14 win over Seattle, the Thursday game, already ran in detail last week: a first-quarter leverage penalty on Seattle worth 0.226 in win probability, in a game Seattle was favored to win on the road. That one’s a miss on the call, correctly flagged as a real penalty story when it happened.
The calls that held up clean
Buffalo was the right favorite on the road at Las Vegas but had to survive it, winning by 3, 33-30. Green Bay held a short home edge against Dallas and made it look comfortable, 23-13. San Francisco, still unbeaten, was an overwhelming 87 percent favorite against Washington and still had to work for it, winning 23-17. Pittsburgh took care of business at Tampa Bay as the right favorite, 26-19. New England did the same at home against the Jets, 26-19. Kansas City, still unbeaten at the time, blew out the Chargers as expected, 22-6. Carolina went into Philadelphia as the better team and left as the better team, 25-14.
What it means going in
Two soft weeks in a row, 9 of 15 and now 7 of 14, after three weeks solidly above that line. The pattern is different this time though. Last week’s misses were all lopsided results nobody saw coming. This week had one legitimate, single-flag swing in a two-point game, plus three results that were closer reads on which team’s recent form actually meant something. That split, roughly half bad luck and half a real signal the numbers should weigh differently, is the one worth tracking into next week, not a reason to doubt the model outright.