2023 Super Bowl odds and projections: Every team’s playoff chances evaluated by The Athletic’s model

Welcome to my updated Super Bowl and playoff projections for the NFL season. If you’re new here, I project the score for every game and the win percentage for every team using my NFL betting model. The model phases out older data and uses data from this year as the season progresses. We then run that simulation 100,000 times after each day of games to give us our Super Bowl odds and projections from my NFL model.

Notes after NFL Week 4

Did anything change in Week 4?

There wasn’t too much movement at the top of the Super Bowl projections. The 49ers are still your favorite, the Chiefs are second, but the Buffalo Bills are now third, with the Eagles and Cowboys rounding out the top 5. The Dolphins were the only team to drop out of the top 5, which isn’t surprising considering their loss to Buffalo on Sunday.

What does the model think of the Bengals’ surprising start?

The Bengals have seen their playoff odds absolutely plummet after their 1-3 start to the season. They’re now making the playoffs in just 18.4% of my model’s simulations. This number is a little hard to derive, I’ll admit. Joe Burrow is clearly injured and I’m not sure if the injury is going to get better, or if he’s going to just stay the same for another month, or if he will get back to his old self. Right now, I have him pegged to be 75 percent of his “full health” in the projection. Maybe that’s too high, maybe that’s too low. But if he doesn’t get healthy soon, the Bengals will be looking forward to next year’s NFL Draft very shortly.

Is it likely Bears

Speaking of the 2024 NFL Draft, the Chicago Bears are currently projected to get the first overall pick — hello, Caleb Williams — but they’re also projected to get the second overall pick — hello, Marvin Harrison Jr. — with Carolina struggling to start the season. The Bears did receive some offseason hype, but that’s quickly vanished as the Bears have little to hope for this season other than setting up the franchise for years to come.

Super Bowl Projections

xWins is expected wins, Playoffs is projected chance to make the playoffs and Super Bowl is the chance for each team to win the Super Bowl.