Today· Sep 17Pregame slateSettled· Sep 16

Regular season · week 2 · Sunday, Sep 20, 1:00 PM ET

New Orleans SaintsatBaltimore RavensEXPERIMENTAL

M&T Bank Stadium

New Orleans SaintsBaltimore RavensSaved on this device

79°F · 10 mph wind from the SW · 21% chance of rain · slight chance rain showers — not used by the model; no weather term enters the numbers below.

Simulation story

5 chapters · read from the published artifact

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› Loading the matchup model› Reading the outcome distribution from 10,000 simulated games› Preparing the score scenariosPress Play to step through what the model expects, chapter by chapter, or read the report below.

NO @ BAL

New Orleans Saints at Baltimore Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium.

Simulation

What our model expects

10,000 simulated games · model nfl-regular-season-public-v1

Projected score

NO 18 — 27 BAL

the middle of our simulated outcomes, not a call on the exact final

Win chance

NO 26.8% · BAL 70.6%

how often each side won in 10,000 simulations · ties 2.6%

Total points (both teams)

8 in 10 simulations landed between 29 and 62

BAL winning margin

a minus means NO wins by that much · 8 in 10 between -9 and 24

Model details

From the margin-of-victory Elo win head, published exactly as evaluated on held-out 2006–2021 — no shrink toward 50% is applied, and no claim to out-predict the sportsbook market is made. Generated 2026-09-17T14:17:00Z under model nfl-regular-season-public-v1 and frozen pre-kickoff; every forecast is settled against the official result.

Projected scorecard

expected statistical summaries · not one simulated game

NO 18 — 27 BALwin chance NO 26.8% · BAL 70.6%total 45 (29–62)margin +8

Likely TD scorers

Travis Etienne 42.4% · available role uncertain

Alvin Kamara 36.8% · available role uncertain

Chris Olave 36.0% · available role uncertain

Passing

Tyler Shough 238 pass yds (135–383) · available role uncertain

Rushing leaders

Alvin Kamara 35 rush yds (8–98) · available role uncertain

Travis Etienne 30 rush yds (5–92) · available role uncertain

New arrivals · not in these numbers

Per game at their previous club — history, not a projection.

Travis Etienne Jr. 2.1 rec · 17.9 yds/g at JAX

Noah Fant 2.6 rec · 22.2 yds/g at CIN

Cedric Tillman 1.7 rec · 22.2 yds/g at CLE

Receiving leaders

Chris Olave 6 rec · 77 yds · available role uncertain

Travis Etienne 4 rec · 35 yds · available role uncertain

Noah Fant 3 rec · 31 yds · available role uncertain

BAL

Likely TD scorers

Derrick Henry 73.0% · available role uncertain

Zay Flowers 39.5% · questionable

Mark Andrews 27.0% · available role uncertain

Passing

Lamar Jackson 248 pass yds (131–421) · available role uncertain

Rushing leaders

Derrick Henry 79 rush yds (25–185) · available role uncertain

Lamar Jackson 14 rush yds (1–61) · available role uncertain

Receiving leaders

Zay Flowers 5 rec · 79 yds · questionable

Mark Andrews 4 rec · 40 yds · available role uncertain

Justice Hill 1 rec · 10 yds · available role uncertain

pass interceptions · First/last/2+ touchdown — withheld, with the exact bar each failed

pass interceptions: RESEARCH_ONLY
First/last/2+ touchdown: DISABLED — no ordering model and no calibration receipt of their own; never derived from anytime probabilities

Range

How wide the outcomes are

the 10th to 90th percentile of each team's simulated score

Team	Low (10th)	Projected	High (90th)
New Orleans Saints	7	18	31
Baltimore Ravens	14	27	38

Exact score

The likeliest final scores

from an event-based simulation of touchdowns and field goals, solved onto the median margin and total above

Score (NO – BAL)	Chance
17–20	0.83%
20–17	0.66%
24–27	0.57%
17–27	0.56%
20–23	0.54%
17–24	0.53%

No single scoreline is likely — these are the most common of hundreds. The projected score above is derived from the medians and answers a different question: the middle of the distribution, not its most common point.

Key numbers

How often it lands on 3, 7, 10 or 14

football's margins pile up on those four — this is the one thing a normal-draw model cannot show you

Margin	This game	Last 3 regular seasons
Decided by exactly 3	9.3%	14.2%
Decided by exactly 7	6.3%	8.3%
Decided by exactly 10	5.4%	4.2%
Decided by exactly 14	4.7%	4.4%
Any of the four	25.7%	31.1%

The right-hand column is what actually happened across 816 regular-season games (2023, 2024, 2025) — the same finals this engine was fitted to. It gets the shape right, with 3 the most common margin by a distance, and it is not calibrated to the number: it puts less weight on 3 and more on 10 than those seasons did.

NO touchdowns

2.2

BAL touchdowns

2.9

NO field goals

1.5

BAL field goals

2.0

Tied after regulation

3.5%

Comparison

Us versus the sportsbooks

two independent reads, shown side by side

No current sportsbook capture covers this game.

Player projections · 21 modelled

The player board

Every modelled player, with his availability. Players listed out carry no volume projection.

Every receiving family for one player on one row, ranked by expected receptions.

Player	Team	Availability	Receptions (10th–90th)	Rec yards (10th–90th)	TD chance
Chris Olave	NO	role uncertain	6 (2–12)	77 (33–149)	36.0%
Zay Flowers	BAL	questionable	5 (2–11)	79 (32–157)	39.5%
Travis Etienne	NO	role uncertain	4 (1–8)	35 (12–77)	42.4%
Mark Andrews	BAL	role uncertain	4 (1–8)	40 (13–89)	27.0%
Noah Fant	NO	role uncertain	3 (1–7)	31 (8–72)	24.8%
Devaughn Vele	NO	role uncertain	3 (1–7)	35 (10–80)	24.4%
Juwan Johnson	NO	questionable	3 (1–7)	36 (10–83)	23.7%
Alvin Kamara	NO	role uncertain	2 (0–5)	22 (3–57)	36.8%
Bryce Lance	NO	role uncertain	2 (0–4)	16 (0–48)	11.5%
Justice Hill	BAL	role uncertain	1 (0–3)	10 (0–37)	20.2%
Chris Moore	BAL	role uncertain	1 (0–4)	15 (0–51)	11.6%
Rashod Bateman	BAL	role uncertain	1 (0–3)	10 (0–39)	10.6%
Kevin Austin	NO	role uncertain	1 (0–3)	10 (0–38)	9.6%
Mason Tipton	NO	role uncertain	1 (0–3)	8 (0–34)	9.5%

New arrivals · not in the simulated numbers above

Per game at their previous team — history, not a projection.

Player	Team	Availability	Last club	Per game (prior club)
Travis Etienne Jr. RB	NO	active uncertain	JAX · 20g	2.1 rec · 17.9 yds · 60.2 rush yds
Noah Fant TE	NO	active uncertain	CIN · 13g	2.6 rec · 22.2 yds
Cedric Tillman WR	NO	active uncertain	CLE · 13g	1.7 rec · 22.2 yds

Families not shown, and the exact bar each failed (2)

pass interceptions: RESEARCH_ONLY
First/last/2+ touchdown: DISABLED — no ordering model and no calibration receipt of their own; never derived from anytime probabilities

Scoring outlooktop 6 of 21 by TD chance · full list in the board’s TD tab

73.0% Derrick Henry · BAL · available role uncertain
42.4% Travis Etienne · NO · available role uncertain
39.5% Zay Flowers · BAL · questionable
36.8% Alvin Kamara · NO · available role uncertain
36.0% Chris Olave · NO · available role uncertain
27.0% Mark Andrews · BAL · available role uncertain

Anytime-scorer probability means scoring a touchdown — never throwing one. Void if the player does not play; questionable players carry their state above.

Reading key

What these numbers mean

Projected score: The middle outcome across every simulated game — not a prediction of the exact final.
Win chance: How often each side won across the simulations, after the calibration described above.
80% range: Eight in ten simulated games landed inside this band. Real games land outside it too.
pp (percentage points): The plain difference between two percentages. A gap is a difference, not an advantage.
Experimental: Published while its out-of-sample record is still accumulating. Every forecast is frozen before kickoff and graded against the official result.

Provenance

Where this came from

model: nfl-regular-season-public-v1 v2
simulations: 10,000
input hash: babc1bf4caef43e0
generated: 2026-09-17T14:17:00Z
kickoff: 2026-09-20T17:00Z
state: UPCOMING

Player-family model provenance (4 published)

Rushing yards: Share-level model: cleared every bar when re-tested on 2014–2021 (14,502 player-games) — a second look at seasons examined once before, not a blind test. Each week's forecast is frozen before the first kickoff and graded; its blind 2026 record is still accumulating (0 graded player-games so far).
Receiving yards: Share-level model: cleared every bar when re-tested on 2014–2021 (27,134 player-games) — a second look at seasons examined once before, not a blind test. Each week's forecast is frozen before the first kickoff and graded; its blind 2026 record is still accumulating (0 graded player-games so far).
Receptions: Share-level model: cleared every bar when re-tested on 2014–2021 (27,134 player-games) — a second look at seasons examined once before, not a blind test. Each week's forecast is frozen before the first kickoff and graded; its blind 2026 record is still accumulating (0 graded player-games so far).
Anytime touchdown: Opportunity touchdown model: cleared every bar on a blind test of 2014–2021 (35,128 player-games never used to build it). Probabilities condition on playing — a player who does not play settles void. Each week's forecast is frozen before the first kickoff and graded; its blind 2026 record is still accumulating (0 graded player-games so far).

Our win chances come from a team rating that weights how decisively teams win. Tested on 4,281 past games it had never seen (2006–2021), it scored 0.629 on log loss (lower is better) — better than our previous rating's 0.642 and a coin flip's 0.693, but short of the sportsbooks' own odds at 0.610. It has NOT been shown to beat the sportsbook market. Where our win and margin ratings disagree on the favourite, the previous rating is used for that game. The 2026 season evaluation still runs under bars frozen in August, so every forecast stays experimental.

Educational and paper-only — not betting advice.