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Regular season · week 3 · Sunday, Sep 27, 4:05 PM ET

Minnesota VikingsatTampa Bay BuccaneersEXPERIMENTAL

Raymond James Stadium

Minnesota VikingsTampa Bay BuccaneersSaved on this device

85°F · 6 mph wind from the N · 0% chance of rain · partly sunny — 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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MIN @ TB

Minnesota Vikings at Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Raymond James Stadium.

Simulation

What our model expects

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

Projected score

MIN 22 — 19 TB

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

Win chance

MIN 64.6% · TB 32.5%

how often each side won in 10,000 simulations · ties 2.9%

Total points (both teams)

8 in 10 simulations landed between 24 and 58

TB winning margin

-3

a minus means MIN wins by that much · 8 in 10 between -20 and 14

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 2026-09-24T19:52:17Z 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

MIN 22 — 19 TBwin chance MIN 64.6% · TB 32.5%total 41 (24–58)margin -3

MIN

Likely TD scorers

Aaron Jones 42.1% · questionable

Justin Jefferson 42.0% · available role uncertain

T.J. Hockenson 26.4% · available role uncertain

Passing

Carson Wentz 183 pass yds (95–315) · available role uncertain

Rushing leaders

Aaron Jones 53 rush yds (15–132) · questionable

J.J. McCarthy 6 rush yds (0–42) · available role uncertain

New arrivals · not in these numbers

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

Jauan Jennings 3.4 rec · 41.8 yds/g at SF

Kyler Murray 176.3 pass yds/g at ARI

Receiving leaders

Justin Jefferson 6 rec · 72 yds · available role uncertain

T.J. Hockenson 4 rec · 37 yds · available role uncertain

Jordan Addison 3 rec · 29 yds · available role uncertain

Likely TD scorers

Bucky Irving 46.5% · available role uncertain

Emeka Egbuka 25.6% · available role uncertain

Kenny Gainwell 21.0% · available role uncertain

Passing

Baker Mayfield 207 pass yds (115–340) · available role uncertain

Rushing leaders

Bucky Irving 53 rush yds (14–134) · available role uncertain

Baker Mayfield 12 rush yds (1–62) · available role uncertain

New arrivals · not in these numbers

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

Kenny Gainwell 3.9 rec · 25.7 yds/g at PIT

Receiving leaders

Cade Otton 4 rec · 37 yds · available role uncertain

Bucky Irving 3 rec · 30 yds · available role uncertain

Emeka Egbuka 3 rec · 38 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)
Minnesota Vikings	10	22	34
Tampa Bay Buccaneers	7	19	31

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 (MIN – TB)	Chance
17–20	1.11%
20–17	1.04%
23–20	0.66%
24–17	0.64%
24–27	0.63%
13–10	0.60%

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	11.8%	14.2%
Decided by exactly 7	7.4%	8.3%
Decided by exactly 10	6.2%	4.2%
Decided by exactly 14	5.0%	4.4%
Any of the four	30.3%	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.

MIN touchdowns

2.4

TB touchdowns

2.2

MIN field goals

1.6

TB field goals

1.5

Tied after regulation

4.5%

Comparison

Us versus the sportsbooks

two independent reads, shown side by side

No current sportsbook capture covers this game.

Player projections · 20 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
Justin Jefferson	MIN	role uncertain	6 (2–12)	72 (30–140)	42.0%
T.J. Hockenson	MIN	role uncertain	4 (1–8)	37 (11–82)	26.4%
Cade Otton	TB	role uncertain	4 (1–8)	37 (12–82)	20.2%
Bucky Irving	TB	role uncertain	3 (1–7)	30 (9–68)	46.5%
Emeka Egbuka	TB	role uncertain	3 (1–8)	38 (11–85)	25.6%
Jordan Addison	MIN	role uncertain	3 (0–6)	29 (5–71)	21.1%
Ted Hurst III	TB	role uncertain	3 (1–7)	32 (8–75)	19.2%
Chris Godwin Jr.	TB	role uncertain	3 (1–6)	30 (7–73)	18.6%
Kenny Gainwell	TB	role uncertain	2 (0–4)	14 (0–41)	21.0%
Josh Oliver	MIN	role uncertain	2 (0–4)	17 (0–51)	13.3%
Aaron Jones	MIN	questionable	1 (0–3)	9 (0–36)	42.1%
Tez Johnson	TB	role uncertain	1 (0–3)	13 (0–46)	11.9%
Jalen McMillan	TB	role uncertain	1 (0–3)	8 (0–36)	7.7%
Demond Claiborne	MIN	role uncertain	1 (0–3)	6 (0–32)	7.5%

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)
Kenny Gainwell RB	TB	active uncertain	PIT · 20g	3.9 rec · 25.7 yds · 28.3 rush yds
Jauan Jennings WR	MIN	active uncertain	SF · 17g	3.4 rec · 41.8 yds
Kyler Murray QB	MIN	active uncertain	ARI · 6g	30.3 rush yds · 176.3 pass 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 19 by TD chance · full list in the board’s TD tab

46.5% Bucky Irving · TB · available role uncertain
42.1% Aaron Jones · MIN · questionable
42.0% Justin Jefferson · MIN · available role uncertain
26.4% T.J. Hockenson · MIN · available role uncertain
25.6% Emeka Egbuka · TB · available role uncertain
21.1% Jordan Addison · MIN · 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: 7a70d7d8ab5035dd
generated: 2026-09-24T19:52:17Z
kickoff: 2026-09-27T20:05Z
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 (111 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 (200 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 (200 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 (267 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.