NFL Win Totals & Schedule-Adjusted Forecasting for 2024
Remember middle school dances?
There is so much uncertainity in your life that the thought of asking someone to dance probably left you sitting on the sidelines.
That analogy likely illicted some fear but it is more trying to get you to quit being a wallflower and get in the game. With DraftKings Sportsbook posting their futures win totals recently, we get our first look at how Vegas views the upcoming season. Whether you are plugged in with a forecasting perspective, NFL rooting interest with your favorite team or you are planning on laying some money on the line this year, here’s your starting place.
This is more of a “first look” at the win totals. It’s like getting a lay of the land and who else is on the dance floor before you hug the wall with your purple & black canned Cherry Coke at your middle school dance.
Over the next month, Matthew Betz and myself will be sharing some of our initial projections of these 2024 win totals and personal takes on some of these futures so stay tuned! We also will be using part of the summer to discuss win totals, BestBall strategy, and other best practices before running in-season together on the DFS & Betting Podcast and the DFS Pass, part of the Ultimate Draft Kit+.
What are Schedule Adjusted Win Projections?
You can look at a team’s win totals in a couple of different ways:
- Feelings– ‘This team just feels like a 10-win team to me’
- Optimism– ‘After how they finished, there’s no way to go but up…’
- Spite– ‘After what they did last year, there’s no way the repeat that…’
- Bias– ‘I know what this team/player/coach will do’
The reality is all of us carry priors into our forecasting abilities and that should be our starting place. No one is completely objective and some of the intuition or previous knowledge and information you carry with you (often undetected) shouldn’t be completely ignored. However, if you’re trying to wager actual money on futures and you’re not looking at the team’s actual schedule, you are trying to play darts without a dartboard. I don’t care how precise you think you are… you need a playing field to work with.
Every year in early May I write an article on the insights of the NFL Schedule release because right now we know who the opponents and where they are playing (home/away) but not when the games occur in terms of the order.
Every year, I’ve gone through and looked at all 32 NFL teams and their schedule to assign a win total based on per-game likelihood. In other words, we aren’t looking at a macro-level but game-by-game what could happen based by factoring in historical win rates of divisional matchups, home/away, and a running five-year win rate based on their schedule strength.
These projections were calculated before the DraftKings Sportsbook released their totals and they reflect totals rounded up or down to 0.1-point increments.
Over the past few years, we’ve had a lot of success in grabbing win totals in these early markets. Here are the correlation coefficients compared to the early lines and the closing lines put out by DK Sportsbook every year.
| Year | DK Sportsbook (Early) | Schedule-Adj. Forecast (Early) | DK Sportsbook (Kickoff) |
| 2021 | 0.75 | 0.72 | 0.72 |
| 2022 | 0.39 | 0.36 | 0.36 |
| 2023 | 0.47 | 0.54 | 0.56 |
A couple of things to consider:
Schedule-adjusted projections are an initial run.
Injuries, the NFL Draft, and the actual NFL season invites so much more chaos in our projections that are out of out control. We build in variables when looking at schedule-adjusted projections but these are human beings and more importantly, groups of human beings operating as teams with more week-to-week inconsistencies than we give credit. We do NOT weigh strength of schedule as simply looking at what teams did the previous year. This method is wildly inconsistent year to year with more pendulum swings than the public realizes.
Win totals are about considering inefficiencies.
Asking yourself “how could things break wrong/right?” These forecasts (historically) have been best utilized not as a “here is the exact win total for an NFL team” but rather spotting inefficiencies in the current market that perhaps are not being taken into account especially when it comes to the downside.
The actual math and probabilities of each game range from a 25 percent chance to 75 percent as every team in the NFL have some legitimate, mathematical chance of winning a football game. The majority of games fall in the 40-60 percent range with 201 of the 272 games (73.9%) sitting there. You might say that math doesn’t seem very compelling but any type of edge you think you might have against Vegas is silly. You’re having a killer year if you hit 55+ percent of your future predictions.
For example, the annual NFC East divisional matchup of the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Football Team takes place both in Lincoln Financial Field (PA) and FedEx Field (MD), and while the public may think Philadelphia was clearly a better team in 2024, it doesn’t mean the Commanders have no shot to win either game. You might say the Commanders have a 35 percent chance at home and think there’s no way they win on the road. But probability-wise both should hover closer to that median range of 40-to-60.
You may have forgotten but Taylor Heinicke and the Commanders won in Philly in 2022. Yes, during their Super Bowl run, the Eagles were waxed at home. Last year? Sam Howell and the Commanders played two absolute barn-burners against the Eagles losing 34-31 in Philly and 38-31 at home.
Jess Rapfogel/Getty Images
You assign a probability to each game (both home and away) and games historically are even tighter in intradivisional games like this. While the 2024 Commanders will likely start a rookie QB and a roster devoid of a ton of talent, we can’t look at their matchups against the Eagles
Laying big numbers (above 11 wins) is hard based on using win probabilities.
Yes, there will be teams with monster win total forecasts like the 49ers, Ravens, or Chiefs every year. It’s hard to poke holes in each team’s chances to contend for a Super Bowl and the odds certainly reflect that in that market. However, in win totals, the downside case for laying a monster number isn’t often taken into account. Beyond injury to a star player (God forbid anything ever happens to Lamar Jackson), it is downright difficult to surpass 11 wins even in today’s 17-game season. Here is the data over the last three years of teams with win totals of 11+ either in the early or kickoff windows for DraftKings.
The schedule-adjusted forecast is best utilized as highlighting which teams have a stronger case to take the under. We do NOT bet every single team but the Packers and Buccaneers unders in 2022 were some of our strongest takes on the DFS & Betting Podcast that year. If you blindly took the unders on these in this early window of win totals, you’d be 7-3-1 over the last three years.
That kind of across-the-board directive is NOT sound betting advice as the individual markets and odds will give you a much different return on your investment. That example is more highlighting the level of confidence we have in “elite teams” without considering the minefield of issues each team must traverse to get to a win total of 11+.
Know the Schedule Formula.
Beyond the annual six intradivisional games, there is a rotation of two other divisions each division matches up with every year. For example, the Bills play their six regularly scheduled games versus the AFC East (NE, NYJ, MIA) playing both home and away. For 2024, the AFC East plays the AFC South and NFC West.
There also are three “placement” games added based on where that team finished the previous year in their division. I cannot undersell how vital this is to schedule-adjusted forecasts and these three games often tip the balances in a lot of win total markets. It matters so much when we remove our blinders of “this team sucked last year” to actually walking through their schedule and seeing which games are added.
For example, in the early win totals of 2023, the Panthers were sitting at 7.5 wins with the optimism of a rookie QB and new head coach. However, their schedule was also a “2nd-place” schedule in terms of where they finished in the NFC South. Compare these three games with the hand dealt the Saints and Falcons despite the fact all three teams finished at 7-10 in 2022. The Panthers were our strongest under take of the year and one we pounded the table on over and over again.
We look at placement games as a piece of the puzzle using a holistic approach with schedule-adjusted forecasted. In other words, take in all the information, see if there is enough weighing evidence and moved forward with conviction. Also, being willing to say “that’s a good line! I could see it going either way!”
2024 Win Totals & Schedule-Adjusted Forecasts
Do not take schedule-adjusted win projections as gospel nor as exact win totals at the end of March. The markets will move after the NFL Draft and as bettors spot weak lines.
Reminder: These forecasts (historically) have been best utilized not as a “here is the exact win total for an NFL team” but rather spotting inefficiencies in the current market that perhaps are not being taken into account especially when it comes to the downside.
This may sound elementary but it’s worth stating in case you are new to wagering on sports. Every single line carries betting odds likely giving a lean where the money is coming in. For example, the Dolphins win total of 10.5 sounds massive compared to the 9.2 in the schedule-adjusted forecast. However, at -165, that type of “juice” essentially is saying the line is 10 or under. Thus, the 9.2 reflects a heavy lean to the under and it is nice to see the market reflecting the same. This will not always line up but it does explain some of the bigger discrepancies.
