Be sure to check out our FREE Playoff Preview!
This February we at SumerSports debuted our new website, with our first article discussing measuring in-game coaching decisions. We branched out to other topics as well, including the NFL draft. In August, we debuted our new set of tools, including our season simulation, which basically was an up-to-date collection of what we were using to seed our division previews.
In this article I want to go over those previews to see how we did. For more of our predictions, and some awesome, contextualized statistics, see our Playoff Preview.
Note: Apologies for not having vig-adjusted win totals. As such, we will not report units won/lost on win totals, only division futures, where they are clear in the articles, and we would take W/L (and anyone’s backwards-looking records) with a grain of salt.
AFC
AFC South
AFC South Divisional Preview | SumerSports
| Team | Market | Sumer | Result |
| JAX | 9.5 | 9.04 | 9 (W) |
| TEN | 7.5 | 7.50 | 6 (N/A) |
| IND | 6.5 | 7.40 | 9 (W) |
| HOU | 6.5 | 6.70 | 10 (W) |
We did pretty well here, as we never thought that the Jaguars should have been favored against the field in this division. We showed value in the division market on the Colts (Lost) and the Texans (Won) and would have won seven units in that market as well.
AFC West
AFC West Divisional Preview | SumerSports
| Team | Market | Sumer | Result |
| KC | 11.5 | 12.3 | 11 (L) |
| LAC | 9.5 | 8.6 | 5 (W) |
| DEN | 8.5 | 7.8 | 8 (W) |
| LV | 6.5 | 7.6 | 8 (W) |
Another good division. However, the Chiefs, for the first time under Andy Reid, went under all of their season win totals, while the Chargers, even before Justin Herbert went down with a myriad of injuries, disappointed again. Las Vegas, for the second time in three years, went over their season win total while firing their head coach. We had two division futures, Chiefs and Raiders, and split them.
AFC East
AFC East Divisional Preview | SumerSports
| Team | Market | Sumer | Result |
| BUF | 10.5 | 11.18 | 11 (W) |
| NYJ | 9.5 | 8.58 | 7 (W) |
| MIA | 9.5 | 8.05 | 11 (L) |
| NE | 7.5 | 7.43 | 4 (W) |
Another good outcome here, with the Bills pulling out a win on Sunday to hit their over and our division future (Win). The Jets losing Aaron Rodgers killed their chance at hitting their season win total, as they ended up starting four quarterbacks, which is the same number of snaps the Pat McAfee guest played all year.
AFC North
AFC North Divisional Preview | SumerSports
| Team | Market | Sumer | Result |
| CIN | 11.5 | 11.0 | 9 (W) |
| BAL | 10.5 | 9.6 | 13 (L) |
| CLE | 9.5 | 8.9 | 11 (L) |
| PIT | 8.5 | 8.3 | 10 (L) |
We take an L here. We had a division future on the Bengals (Lost), and were too low on the Ravens, Browns, and Steelers, who all made the playoffs. The results in this division are particularly surprising as 75 percent of the teams didn’t even finish the season with their starting quarterbacks.
NFC
NFC South
NFC South Divisional Preview | SumerSports
| Team | Market | Sumer | Result |
| NO | 9.5 | 9.17 | 9 (W) |
| ATL | 8.5 | 8.76 | 7 (L) |
| CAR | 7.5 | 8.54 | 2 (L) |
| TB | 6.5 | 6.67 | 9 (W) |
We were not great here, being on market on the Falcons and Bucs, while being too zealous on the Panthers, who showed value (to us) in the division market and in the win totals market (Lost). We did fade the Saints, which was a winner.
NFC West
NFC West Divisional Preview | SumerSports
| Team | Market | Sumer | Result |
| SF | 10.5 | 11.14 | 12 (W) |
| SEA | 8.5 | 7.98 | 9 (L) |
| LA | 6.5 | 7.37 | 10 (W) |
| ARI | 4.5 | 4.78 | 4 (L) |
This was a Matt Prater field goal miss away from being a clean sweep, but instead was a split. In any event, the simulation did a pretty good job of identifying the fact that the Rams were not a dead team, the Seahawks were a bit overrated, and the Cardinals were a real NFL team. We saw division futures values on the 49ers and Rams, for zero profit.
NFC East
NFC East Divisional Preview | SumerSports
| Team | Market | Sumer | Result |
| PHI | 11.5 | 11.8 | 11 (L) |
| DAL | 9.5 | 9.8 | 12 (W) |
| NYG | 7.5 | 7.1 | 6 (W) |
| WAS | 6.5 | 7.4 | 4 (L) |
This one was rough, since the Eagles not only lost us the division future in the last two weeks (Lost), but their over win total in the last week. Dallas did their part, as did the Giants as one of the more easily identifiable fades heading into the year after a fun 2022 season.
NFC North
NFC North Divisional Preview | SumerSports
| Team | Market | Sumer | Result |
| DET | 9.5 | 8.7 | 12 (L) |
| MIN | 8.5 | 7.9 | 7 (W) |
| GB | 7.5 | 8.2 | 9 (W) |
| CHI | 7.5 | 7.3 | 7 (W) |
This was a good showing. The Lions restored the roar, which ironically given my previous opinions, was our one loss. The Vikings were on their way to digging out of 1-4 before Kirk Cousins was injured, and the Bears also went under with a Week 18 loss. We lost our one division future on Green Bay (Lost), but were directionally correct on them by season’s end, as they were this year’s Lions.
Summary
We had 19 wins and 12 losses on win totals. We were +4.96 units on division title futures.
