2026 season

What the words mean

Every term this site puts on screen, in plain English · The line · The season · The playoffs · The numbers

This page assumes you know nothing about the National Football League. That is fine — start anywhere. The definitions describe how each term is used on this site — where you will see it and what it is telling you — rather than the whole sport. Where a term has a trap in it, the trap is named.

The line

The spread

Suppose a row reads BUF -7.5. The minus sign marks the favorite and the number is the margin it is expected to win by; the other club is the underdog at +7.5. It is not a forecast of the final score, it is the handicap that makes the two sides an even bet. Every spread on this site is captured before kickoff and frozen there, and the live number moves - the one on the board today may not be the one you see quoted elsewhere.

Where you meet it: The right-hand column of each game row on the home page and every /week/ view; the header of each matchup page; the “Result / line” column on team pages.

Favorite and underdog

The minus always attaches to the favorite, and the abbreviation in front of it names that club. “KC -6.5” means Kansas City is favored by six and a half. Where a team page shows “—” in the line column, no line has been posted for that game yet. The predictor starts every game on the favorite, so an untouched board is the market's opinion, not yours.

Where you meet it: Every game row; the “Result / line” column on team pages; /predict/, where every game starts on the favorite.

The total (over/under, O/U)

It sits after the spread on each row, and the matchup page writes it as “total 44.5”. Over means the two clubs together score more than that number, under means fewer. The total says nothing about who wins: a 3-0 game and a 24-21 game are opposite results here and can be the same result on the spread.

Where you meet it: Every game row on the home page and /week/ views; the matchup page header, labeled “total”.

Push

A 7-point favorite that wins by 7 has not covered; that is a push. The same goes for a total of 44 in a game that ends 24-20. This is why most lines carry a half point: -6.5 and O/U 44.5 cannot land on the number, so they can only win or lose. Whole numbers do appear, and those can push - which is why the betting-record cards count pushes in their own column instead of folding them into losses.

Where you meet it: Not labeled on a game row; it is the outcome behind every whole-numbered spread or total, and the betting-record cards count it separately.

Against the spread (ATS)

A club that wins by 3 as a 7-point favorite won the game and lost against the spread. Every ATS record on this site is accumulated from lines captured before kickoff and frozen at kickoff, never reconstructed afterwards, and every rate is printed with the number of games behind it.

Where you meet it: The betting-record card on every team page; your scorecard.

The season

Week

Games run Thursday through Monday, so a “week” on this site is the league's own week number rather than a calendar one. 18 weeks and 17 games do not match on purpose: the difference is the bye week.

Where you meet it: The week stepper at the top of the home page and every /week/ view.

Bye Week

Every club gets exactly one, and it falls between weeks 5 and 14. A club on its bye is not missing from the schedule and not on a losing run - it simply has no game, and its team page says so in place of a row. A gap anywhere outside that range is not a bye week; it is a schedule this site has not finished reading, and it is reported as one.

Where you meet it: Team pages, where the week shows as a labeled gap rather than a missing row.

Division

AFC East, North, South and West; NFC East, North, South and West. The four clubs in a division play each other twice a season, home and away, which is six of the seventeen games. Winning your division is the only thing on the schedule that guarantees a playoff place, and it outranks any wild-card record.

Where you meet it: The standings, which are grouped by it; the crumb on every team page.

Conference

A club's conference record is its record against the other fifteen clubs in its own conference. It matters because it is step four of the division tiebreaker and step two of the wild-card tiebreaker - the earliest thing that separates two clubs from different divisions.

Where you meet it: The “Conf” column on the standings and on the playoff picture.

Common games

Two clubs tied in the standings are compared over the opponents they share, which for two clubs in the same division is most of the schedule. It is step three of the division tiebreaker. In a wild-card tie there must be at least four common games before the step counts at all.

Where you meet it: The tiebreaker list on the predictor pages; the comparison tool shows the shared opponents themselves.

Tie

Records are written won-lost-tied - 9-7-1 - and the percentage that orders the standings treats the tie as half a win, so 9-7-1 is .559. Ties are rare and they decide divisions; this site never rounds one away or counts it as a loss.

Where you meet it: The record on every team page and in the standings, where a third number appears only when there is one.

The playoffs

Seed

Seeds 1 to 4 are the four division winners, ordered by record. Seeds 5, 6 and 7 are the three best clubs that did not win a division. The seed decides who plays whom and who is at home; it is not a ranking of how good a club is, and a division winner is seeded above a wild card with a better record.

Where you meet it: The playoff picture and the projected bracket.

Wild card

The three best remaining records take seeds 5, 6 and 7 and play on the opening weekend, always on the road. “Wild Card” is also the name of that round, which is why a club can be a wild card in the Wild Card round or, as the 2, 3 or 4 seed, host one.

Where you meet it: The playoff picture, where each seed says how it was earned.

The bye (playoff)

It is a week of rest and a guaranteed home game against whoever survives. Until the 2020 season each conference sent six clubs and rested two; since then it has been seven and one, which is why the 2 seed is worth much less than it once was.

Where you meet it: The bracket, where the 1 seed's first row is empty.

Reseeding

It is not a fixed ladder. If the 7 seed beats the 2 in the opening round, the 1 seed plays the 7 next - not whoever was drawn on that side. Every round before the final is hosted by the higher remaining seed, so surviving is worth more than the path you were given.

Where you meet it: The bracket, which redraws as you change picks.

Clinched and eliminated

On this site a club is in when nobody left in its division can reach it even if it loses every game it has left, or when at most two clubs in the conference can finish above it at all. It is out only when both roads are shut: someone in its own division is past its best possible finish AND so are 7 clubs in the conference. Seven clubs ahead is not on its own enough, because a division winner is seeded above every wild card whatever the records say. All of it is bounds rather than simulation, and anything a tiebreaker could still decide is left open. The league's own clinching scenarios go further; this site does not run them and does not claim to.

Where you meet it: The right-hand column of the playoff picture.

Strength of victory

Step five of the division tiebreaker and step four of the wild-card one. Two clubs on the same record are separated by who beat the better teams. It follows from a completed pick sheet, unlike the steps after it, which need points scored and points allowed.

Where you meet it: The tiebreaker list on the predictor pages.

Strength of schedule

TWO THINGS SHARE THIS NAME AND THEY ARE NOT THE SAME. The tiebreaker's version is the combined won-lost-tied record of every opponent played, and it is step six. This site's team pages show a different number: the mean efficiency margin of the opponents, which is a rating rather than a record. Where a page means the tiebreaker it says so.

Where you meet it: The schedule-strength row on every team page; separately, step six of the tiebreaker list.

The Super Bowl

The AFC and NFC champions meet. It is the only game in the postseason not hosted by the higher seed, and the venue is fixed long before anyone knows who is in it.

Where you meet it: The bracket, and the schedule itself once the date is published.

The numbers

PF/G and PA/G

They are averages, which is the only way the column means anything once clubs have played different numbers of games - and in this league they do from the first bye week on. A club at 24.1 PF/G and 19.8 PA/G is outscoring its opponents by a little over four points a week.

Where you meet it: The standings.

Streak

W3 is three straight wins, L2 two straight losses. It resets on any different result, including a tie, and it is empty before a club has played. It counts finished games only: a game in progress is a score on the board, not a result.

Where you meet it: The “Strk” column in the standings.

Efficiency margin

A club at +5.6 is about five and a half points a game better than an average one, and the two halves of that - offense and defense - are published separately. It comes from The Gridiron King, a sister site. This site consumes the published number and does not recompute it. It is used to order clubs before any game is played and to pick a default winner where no betting line exists - never to seed the playoffs, which this league decides on record alone.

Where you meet it: Team pages and matchup previews; the methodology page states what it does and does not decide.

TBD

Every postseason game is TBD until the clubs are decided. A TBD game has no line, no rating and no preview, and it is left out of anything that ranks games rather than given a placeholder value.

Where you meet it: The postseason weeks in the week stepper; the boards under the ten, which say so rather than showing an empty page.