What to Watch

How games are picked

A game makes the list when it moves a team's chances of its division title, a playoff spot or its conference's #1 seed - NovaModel plays out the rest of the season thousands of times with the game going each way and counts how much those chances change, more for a game that could go either way - or when both teams are in playoff position, both are unbeaten, or it's a playoff game. Follow a team and its own games come first, then every game tied to it: its next three opponents, teams it has already played that are in playoff position or its division (their results change what beating or losing to them was worth), a future opponent meeting a past one, teams just ahead of it in the seeding with a real chance to lose, and - once teams have played four games - division rivals within a game of it. Following a division counts its race. Seeds and races here go by record alone, without the NFL's tiebreakers.