2023-10-17 23:58:08
With the 49ers and Eagles both stumbling on Sunday, the 1972 Dolphins can rest easy: There will be no undefeated team this NFL season. But what’s happening at the other end of the spectrum? How does the projected top-10 draft order look coming out of Week 6?
To get an update on where things stand, we turn to Austin Mock’s projections. Mock projects the score for every game and the final win percentage for every team using his NFL betting model. The model phases out older data and uses data from this year as the season progresses. The simulation then runs 100,000 times after each day of games to give us, in this case, our projected top-10 draft order, plus each team’s projected win total and playoff chances.
Projected top 10 (as of Oct. 17)
A few thoughts on this week’s projections:
1. The top six is looking rather solid
The exact order still figures to shift a bunch — just this week, Arizona and Denver flip-flopped picks 2 and 4 despite both teams losing — but a rather steep drop-off has emerged between picks 1-6 and 7-10. The current owner of the No. 6 slot here, New England, now has a projected win total of just 5.3 (down from 6.3 last week and 7.1 after Week 4); Washington, at No. 7, has a projected win total of 7.0 and still carries a 12.0 percent chance of making the playoffs.
The elite teams tend to separate from the pack as the season goes along, but the same development occurs at the back half of the league — and the top of the draft order. Does anyone have any doubts at this moment that Carolina, Denver, Arizona and Chicago will be in similar spots come January? Is there reason to believe the Giants and Patriots are just about to turn a corner?
We’ve seen plenty of teams find midseason magic before, so it’s still too early to slam the door completely shut on anyone (although, let’s be honest about the teams projected at picks 1-4 this week). But even the deep middle of the pack is pulling away from the bottom-feeders.
GO DEEPER
2024 NFL Draft QB Tracker: Drake Maye’s case to be No. 1; Michael Penix Jr. delivers late
2. Make other plans for Nov. 9
In May, NFL owners passed a resolution to bring modified flex scheduling to the league’s Thursday night games. However, matchups cannot be flipped out of (or into) the Thursday slot until Week 13, which doesn’t do a whole lot to help us with the Week 10 Panthers-Bears matchup.
As if the now 1-5 Bears (who, of course, own the Panthers’ 2024 first-round pick) haven’t suffered enough already this season, they’re likely to be down starting QB Justin Fields for a bit. Fields dislocated the thumb on his right (throwing) hand in Sunday’s 19-13 loss to Minnesota, and Chicago coach Matt Eberflus already declared him “doubtful” to play versus the Raiders in Week 7.
GO DEEPER
Jahns: A Bears reporter’s scouting report on USC QB Caleb Williams
Will Fields be back in time for that Nov. 9 game against the Panthers? If not, it could be one of Carolina’s best remaining shots to pick up a victory this season. After their bye this week, Bryce Young and company do host Houston and Indianapolis (almost certainly minus Anthony Richardson) the two Sundays before that midweek trip to Chicago, so count those as other opportunities.
There are two Thursday night college football games up against the Panthers-Bears clash. Unfortunately, they also look pretty rough — Virginia (currently 1-5) travels to No. 21 Louisville; Southern Miss (also 1-5) visits Louisiana.
3. Are you buying the Jets?
It took a little help from a mistake-filled Eagles performance, but the Jets scored a signature win Sunday and now — at 3-3 with a manageable schedule following a Week 7 bye — might be starting to dream about a rather miraculous Aaron Rodgers playoff return.
Our latest projections are still on the conservative side, though. The Jets’ projected win total did climb from 6.3 last week to 7.3, and their playoff chances rose from 5.7 percent to 13.1 percent, but Mock’s model isn’t exactly feeling the resurgence just yet. That said, Robert Saleh’s team has weathered the storm of the Rodgers’ injury and a brutal opening stretch to tread water — with wins over Buffalo and Philadelphia. Were it not for an increasingly frustrating 15-10 home loss to New England, the Jets would be in wild-card position.
4. Welcome to the top 10 …
… Tennessee.
A Titans season that looked somewhat promising after a 27-3 dismantling of Cincinnati in Week 4 has unraveled in a hurry. Back-to-back losses to Indianapolis and Baltimore (in London) dropped the Titans to 2-4, starting QB Ryan Tannehill is hurt, and there’s a challenging stretch (Atlanta, at Pittsburgh, at Tampa Bay, at Jacksonville) trailing their Week 7 bye.
From The Athletic’s Joe Rexrode: “Will Levis should start against the Falcons. If he doesn’t, it at least opens the door of speculation — as outrageous as this may seem — to a third straight offseason of the Titans attempting to find Ryan Tannehill’s replacement. Malik Willis in the third round in 2022, Levis in the second round after moving up in 2023, so how about Caleb Williams or Drake Maye in 2024? Can the Titans tank enough for the trifecta?”
5. How many divisions will be decided early?
Of the eight current division leaders, seven — San Francisco, Detroit, Kansas City, Miami, Philadelphia, Jacksonville and Baltimore — have a better than 50 percent chance to finish the season in first place, per this week’s projections.
The lone outlier is 3-2 Tampa Bay, which holds a half-game lead in the NFC South and has a tenuous 28.8 percent division-title chance. Mock’s model actually tabs 3-3 New Orleans (45.4 percent) as the favorite in the South.
The 49ers (94.8 percent), Chiefs (88.8) and Lions (85.6) all have leads of at least 1 1/2 games on the second-place clubs in their respective divisions, so the model’s confidence tracks there. It’s a little more surprising in the cases of a team like Miami (71.6 percent), which has Buffalo breathing down its neck.
(Top photo: RJ Sangosti / MediaNews Group / The Denver Post via Getty Images)
“The Football 100,” the definitive ranking of the NFL’s best 100 players of all time, goes on sale this fall. Pre-order it here.
1697589511
#NFL #Draft #order #projections #Broncos #Giants #settle #top #Titans #slide