How it works

Delta Sunday: The gap between the models is where the points are. The game, the models, the markets, the picks, and the plan, explained for players and readers. No code.

The name

Two forecasters watch every game here: Elo, a rating system anyone can understand, and the market, the sharpest number money can find. Where they agree, the favorite wins more than either expects. Where they disagree widely, the market is usually right. The points in this game live in that gap, and the site is built to show it to you every Sunday.

The game

Every week you set a win probability for each game: slide toward the team you think wins, or tap a number on that team's side. The middle is 50/50. Picks save on their own as you move; you can try the sliders before signing in, and your picks come with you when you do. You are not just picking a winner, you are saying how sure you are. After the game, you gain or lose points based on how confident you were and whether you were right.

The scoring is a rescaled Brier score, the same rule FiveThirtyEight used in its forecasting game: the points for a game are 25 minus the square of your miss divided by 100, where the miss is the gap between your percentage and the result (100 for a win, 0 for a loss). A 100% pick that wins earns 25; a 100% pick that loses costs 75; a 50/50 pick scores zero either way. A 75% pick earns 18.8 if right and costs 31.2 if wrong. Overconfidence is punished harder than caution.

Picks lock at kickoff. A game you skip counts as 50/50, so zero.
Playoff games count double. Ties are not scored.
Elo, the market, the blend, and the crowd play alongside you on every leaderboard, scored on their own pre-kickoff numbers.
You can make a private leaderboard on the Groups page and invite friends with a link.

Elo, the model you are trying to beat

Elo is a rating system: every team has a number, the average is 1505, and the gap between two teams' numbers converts to a win probability. A 100-point edge is about 64%; 200 points is about 76%. After each game the winner takes points from the loser, more for an upset and more for a big margin, so ratings chase results with a lag. We use the version FiveThirtyEight published before it closed: K factor 20, home field worth 48 points (about two points of spread), a 25-point bonus off a bye, and a 1.2× multiplier on the rating gap in the playoffs. Between seasons every team's rating moves halfway back toward the average, because rosters change.

The ratings started from FiveThirtyEight's final published numbers at the end of 2022 (their data was released under CC BY 4.0), then every game since has been replayed through this engine, so the current ratings are a continuous line from theirs. Team pages chart it back to 1920 using their history.

The quarterback adjustment

A team's rating assumes its usual quarterback. Each QB carries a rolling value built from his box scores (yards, completions, touchdowns, interceptions, sacks, rushing), and each team carries a rolling value of the QB play it has been getting. Before a game, the difference between the starter's value and the team's value, times 3.3, is added to the team's rating. If the usual starter plays, that is about zero. If a backup starts, it can be minus 50 or worse, about two points of spread. Rookies start at a value based on where they were drafted. The expected starters, their values, and the adjustments are on the QBs page; injuries announced late are set by hand there.

The markets

Three outside forecasts are shown next to Elo for every upcoming game: the sportsbooks (an average of moneylines from about eight US books with the bookmaker's margin removed), Kalshi (the mid-point of the bid and ask on the "home team wins" contract), and Polymarket (its moneyline price). Before we had those, and for past seasons, the closing point spread stands in, converted to a probability. All of them stop updating at kickoff, so what gets scored is the closing number. The Markets page shows where they disagree with each other and how each line has moved.

Over 855 replayed games from 2023 to 2025, the market outscored Elo by about 340 points. That is the honest baseline: the market is the better forecaster, and Elo is the one you can understand.

The blend

The blend weights the market three to one over Elo, then makes one small adjustment. When the two agree on the favorite within 4 points and the favorite is at least 55%, the blend moves 2 points further toward that favorite. Over 24 seasons, favorites in that spot won 69.2% against a 67.7% forecast: a real edge, but a small one. The blend scores a hair above the market alone over those seasons, and unlike the market it can explain every number. A bigger bump that looked brilliant on three recent seasons cost 40 points a season over the long run, which is why the site backtests everything as far back as the data goes.

The System

The System is the blend turned into a full set of slider rules, nine of them, each tested on 24 seasons of games. It is deliberately plain: the market-heavy blend, the 2-point nudge on tight agreement and on the lock, and a list of things not to do. Everything we tried on top, capping confidence, taking the market outright on disagreements, setting coin flips to 50, weighting Elo more in the playoffs, pressing the lock harder, cost points over the long run, and the page says so. The System page gives a number for every game with its reasoning and a button that applies them to your open picks. It is scored on the leaderboard beside the plain blend so the two extra rules stay accountable.

The game plan

Playing The System straight maximizes expected points; no allocation trick can raise them. What allocation can change is variance, and that matters depending on where you stand. The Game plan reads your gap to the leader and the weeks left, estimates your chance of catching up or holding on under three modes, and recommends one: Protect shrinks every number 10% toward 50, Straight plays them as they are, Chase stretches them 15% further. Over 24 seasons, chasing cost almost nothing in expected points and added an eighth to the weekly swing; protecting cost about a point a week and cut it by a tenth. The plan also sorts the week into tiers, Press, Fade Elo, Keep close to 50, Play straight, shows the expected points and spread, and applies itself with one button.

Reading the rings

Between the two teams on every pick card sit four rings, one per forecaster: Elo outside, then the market, the closing spread, and your own pick innermost in gold. Each ring's arc is that forecaster's probability for the team it favors, as a share of the circle: seven tenths of the way round is 70%. The arc sweeps toward the team it favors, clockwise for the team on the right of the card, counterclockwise for the team on the left, and the favored team's logo sits in the middle. When the arcs line up, everybody agrees. When Elo's runs well past the market's, that's a disagreement, and the site's whole thesis is that those gaps are where the points are. Hover any ring for its numbers. Once a game starts, the score takes the center.

The picks of the week

Before each week's first kickoff, two games are frozen. The lock of the week is the game where Elo and the market are most sure of the same team, ranked by the lower of the two numbers. Over 24 seasons that rule went 379–71, 84%, against an 80% forecast. The bold call of the week is the game where Elo disagrees most with the market, on Elo's side; the same rule went 217–233 over 24 seasons, and the market was usually the one that was right. Both are on the Predictions page with their season records.

The spots

The Predictions page also sorts each week's games into categories with a known track record: tight agreement (go above both numbers), big disagreement (take the market's number), coin flips (stay near 50), and the rest (the blend is as good as anything). The evidence and the advice are printed with each group, and the Nudges page keeps a running tally of whether each finding is holding up this season.

Playoff odds

The Playoffs page simulates the rest of the season 3,000 times. Each remaining game is decided by its Elo probability, standings are settled with the head-to-head, division, and conference tiebreakers, and the playoffs are played out on current ratings. The result is each team's chance of the playoffs, the division, a bye, the conference, and the title. The same simulations produce two things the rest of the site uses: each game's importance, how far the league's playoff picture swings on it, shown on Predictions and the members page; and from week 14 on, which teams are locked into a seed or eliminated. Those teams rest starters, the market knows who, and Elo doesn't, so their games are forecast mostly on the market.

Members

Signing in is free and unlocks the parts of the site that are ours rather than the models': the lock and bold call, our pick on every game, the weekly breakdownwith a written note, the tight-agreement and disagreement games explained, line movement since the picks froze, where the markets disagree with each other, and the game plan. Everyone else sees the model numbers and the spots.

Your account

Sign in with an email and password, or with a link we email you; either creates your account the first time, and you choose the username shown on leaderboards. Forgot your password? The sign-in page sends a reset link. Your profile holds three switches: show yourself on the public leaderboards (off, and you still rank, but only you see your row); a reminder email before each week listing your unpicked games; and the recap email when a week finishes. Below them are your calibration, what copying Elo, the market, or the blend would have scored on your games, and a week-by-week ledger of every pick against Elo.

Nudges

Every small finding from the replays lives on the Nudges page with what we did about it and a running tally for this season, so each one is tested on games it wasn't found on. Some are built in, some are being watched, a few we chose not to act on, and two are myths we can put down.

How to play well

The slider is a probability, not a preference. If you would take even money on a game, it is 50%.
The market beats Elo. The blend beats both in the replays, and The System is the blend with two small extras. Start from its numbers and change one only when you know something the models don't.
Check the game plan when you are far behind or leading late. That is when variance, not expectation, decides the season.
Never go past 90% unless you would bet your week on it. A wrong 95% costs 65 points; a right one earns 24.8.
Skipping a game is a 50/50 pick. Elo plays every game, so skipping is how you fall behind it.
Check your profile after a few weeks. It shows your calibration and what copying Elo, the market, or the blend would have scored on your games.

Credits and independence

Delta Sunday is an independent site. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to FiveThirtyEight or ABC News, which owns that name. Their published NFL Elo data and methodology were the starting point, used with attribution under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license they released it under; everything since 2023, and every rule beyond the original Elo, is this site's own work and is tested and reported here. Elo ratings themselves are Arpad Elo's method from the 1960s. Nothing on this site is gambling advice.

Glossary

Brier score: Mean squared error of probability forecasts. Lower is better; 0.25 is what always saying 50% scores.
Calibration: Whether things you call 70% happen 70% of the time. The Model page shows Elo's and the market's.
Closing line: The market's number at kickoff, the last and usually sharpest price.
Elo points: Rating units. 25 Elo points is roughly one point of spread; 100 Elo points is roughly a 64% favorite.
Importance: How much the league's playoff odds move between the two outcomes of a game, from simulation, 0 to 100.
Lock / bold call: Our two frozen picks each week: the strongest agreement between Elo and the market, and their biggest disagreement on Elo's side.
Tight agreement: Elo and the market on the same favorite of 55% or more, within 4 points. The spot with the best record.
Vig: The bookmaker's margin. Two moneylines add to more than 100%; we scale them back to 100% before using them.