NFL Week 9 Predictions, Rankings, and Tips: The Weekly Rundown

Here’s a quick-hit list of weekly highlights from the vast array of NFL content we publish on TeamRankings. We’ll also share some predictions and picks for Week 9 and beyond.


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NFL Week 9 Power Rankings Update

Current NFL rankings

  • Denver pulls further ahead. Denver slightly increased the gap between its league-leading power rating and the rest of the NFL by beating San Diego by 14, a margin of victory about five points more than expected.
  • Preseason ratings value. In general, Week 8 was another good one for demonstrating the value of preseason ratings, which still influence our system. New Orleans, a team that we still had ranked #14 despite a 2-4 record, beat Green Bay handily. Meanwhile, Dallas, who still hadn’t cracked the top 10 despite a 6-1 record, lost to Washington in OT despite being 10-point favorites.

  • Biggest gainers. Five teams increased their Predictive rating by at least a point this week after big victories: New Orleans (up from #14 to #9 now), New England (up from #7 to #3), Buffalo (up from #23 to #21), Kansas City (up from #15 to #10), and Pittsburgh (up from #20 to #19).
  • The new Top 5. New England’s big win over Chicago, coupled with losses by four other top teams (Baltimore, Indianapolis, Green Bay, San Diego) resulted in a big jump in the rankings for the Pats. The top of the NFL pecking order in our rankings now features Denver as the clear #1, followed by #2 Seattle (3 points worse), #3 New England (about a point worse than Seattle), #4 Baltimore (half a point worse than New England), and #5 San Francisco (about half a point worse than Baltimore).
  • Three other top contenders. #6 Indianapolis, #7 Green Bay, and #8 San Diego are the only other teams that rate as no more than a touchdown worse than Denver on a neutral field.
  • Are the Jets really that bad? After a disastrous outing against Buffalo, there’s been a lot of talk about just how bad the Jets are. One thing is for certain — the betting markets have done a poor job handicapping New York’s chances so far. They own the NFL’s worst record against the spread at 1-6-1, and they’re 1-3 straight up as the Vegas favorite. However, if you assume betting lines are efficient, you’d expect an NFL team to have an ATS record that bad by random chance alone. Lately we’ve heard some comments like, “At this point I wouldn’t pick the Jets to cover the spread no matter what the number was.” That certainly doesn’t make sense, and our Predictive ratings currently assess the Jets as over four points better than the worst team in the league, Jacksonville.

NFL Week 9 Season Projections Update

Current NFL season projections

  • Denver now 3-in-10 to win it all. Denver’s Super Bowl champion odds increased yet again, to 30% from 27%, after a better than expected win against division rival San Diego. In addition, the fact that several other top challengers lost in Week 8 makes the Broncos’ path to the NFL title look easier than it did last week. are now up to 27%, up from 21% last week.
  • Seattle and New England next best, but far back. Denver’s odds to win it all are now more than three times better than its two current top challengers, Seattle (9%, up from 7%) and New England (also 9%, up from 6%). We rate Seattle as a better team than New England, but the Seahawks suffer from not being the favorite to win their division, thanks in part to being two games behind Arizona in the standings. So Seattle’s path to the Super Bowl is likely to be more difficult than New England’s.
  • Then a big pack of teams. After those three teams, there is another drop to a huge pack of teams that all have a 4-6% chance to win the Super Bowl, including Baltimore, Indianapolis, Dallas, Philadelphia, Detroit, Green Bay, Arizona and San Francisco.
  • The outsiders. Cincinnati, San Diego, Kansas City and New Orleans are now the Super Bowl long shots, each with 2-3% odds to win. No other team is higher than 1%.
  • AFC division winner projections. Our current projected division winners are New England (74% AFC East, vs. 72% last week), Baltimore (48% AFC North, down from 66% last week), Indianapolis (80% AFC South, down from 92% last week), and Denver (89% AFC West, up from 83% last week).
  • Other AFC contenders. So we’ve now got solid favorites in every AFC division except for the North, where Cincinnati (29%) and surging Pittsburgh (19%) both still have a decent shot, thanks to Cincinnati’s second win over the Ravens. However, we still rate Baltimore as a better team, and the Ravens are still half a game up in the standings.
  • NFC division winner projections. Our current projected division winners are Dallas (50% NFC East, down from 59% last week), new favorite Detroit (52% NFC North), new favorite New Orleans (56% NFC South), and Arizona (47% NFC West, up from 42%).
  • Other NFC contenders. The NFC East, North, and South are all pretty much 2-dog races right now, with Philadelphia, Green Bay, and Carolina all right on the heels of our current division winner favorites. In the West, the three-contender field means that there’s actually a greater chance that EITHER Seattle or San Francisco wins the division over Arizona, but thanks to a 6-1 record and decent rating, Arizona still has the best division win odds of the three.
  • No hope for the playoffs? Our season simulations currently give 10 teams less than a 10% chance of making the playoffs, up from 9 last week. Six teams (Jacksonville, Oakland, the New York Jets, St. Louis, and now Tampa Bay and Tennessee) have been pretty much eliminated from playoff contention; none of them has better than a 1-in-100 chance to make the postseason. Minnesota, Chicago, and Washington (who played itself off the “left for dead” list with the win over Dallas) are also on the outside looking in. And finally, welcome the newest member of this dubious club: the Atlanta Falcons, who are now down to 7% playoff odds.

NFL Week 9 Pick’em Pools Update

Week 9 NFL pick’em pool picks

  • Most underrated picks score a big win. The Saints were the most underrated team in pick’em pools last week (58% win odds according to our models, but only 25% picked), and they came through with a big, value-packed victory over the Packers. On the upset side, even though Indianapolis was the favorite, pick’em players were also far underrating Pittsburgh’s odds to beat the Colts, and the Steelers delivered a big upset.
  • Last week’s advice. Our season prize pick’em advice last week was, unsurprisingly, to pick New Orleans over Green Bay, and that worked out swimmingly. The best looking upset pick in terms of having reasonable win odds plus low pick popularity, Tennessee over Houston, didn’t come through.
  • Strategy for season prize pools. For Week 9, your best strategy in NFL pick’em pools that only have season prizes is to continue to remain conservative and not go crazy picking upsets. (Even if you’re a bit behind in the standings, it’s not time to get more aggressive yet.) There’s another very strong value play on the board this week, which is to pick the Vegas-favored Dolphins at home over San Diego. The Dolphins were 1.5-point favorites on Thursday, but only 25% picked.
  • Strategy for weekly prize pools. Pools that only offer weekly prizes call for a different strategy, one that needs to give much more weight to how your opponents are likely to pick this week. There are a couple value plays in Week 9 that look smart for weekly pools. Definitely stick with the Ravens (the less popular pick) against Pittsburgh in a game that looks to be very even, and picking Houston over Philadelphia makes a lot of sense as an upset pick in bigger pools.
  • Strategy for YOUR pool. Just remember, the optimal strategy for your specific pool, including how many favorites vs. upsets you should pick this week, depends on a lot of factors: the number of entries in your pool, the rules, the scoring system, the payout structure. That’s why we developed our Football Pick’em Pools product to apply our analytics to your specific pool.

NFL Week 9 Survivor Pools Update

Week 9 NFL survivor pool picks

  • Thank you, thank you, Washington. What a week! It’s what we often try to set ourselves up for…to avoid the overwhelming crowd favorite pick and root for an upset. The Cowboys’ overtime loss to the Redskins torpedoed roughly 44% of still-surviving entries in Survivor pools. Even though all the other most popular picks of Week 8 won, that was absolutely huge.
  • We picked Kansas City and cruised. The best pick for maximizing your odds to win a Survivor pool (assuming you only had one entry, and your pool wasn’t down to a very small number of entries left) ended up being Kansas City last week. In fact, Dallas ended up not even being in our top 5 picks of the week in larger pools, due to their overwhelming popularity. So we recommended the Chiefs, who cruised to victory over St. Louis, and move on to Week 9.
  • First Survivor pool winner reports. Because of how Week 8 played out, we’ve received the first reports of our NFL Survivor Pool customers winning their survivor pools using our advice this season. After the Cowboys lost, one user reported a win in a 100-person pool, and another user reported a win in a 45-person pool. Yay!
  • Don’t pick these teams in Week 9. This week, the public’s survivor picks are almost all spread among the four least risky teams of the week. As of Thursday, the most popular pick, the Bengals, would not be one of our top three  choices for Week 9.

NFL Week 9 Game Predictions & Betting Picks Update

Week 9 NFL game winner picks | Spread picks | Most likely upsets

  • Tied again. Both our game winner picks and those of the public (we use the user consensus picks from ESPN’s pick’em game) went 10-5 last week. We had New Orleans over Green Bay, which the public got wrong. But we sided with Vegas in picking the Jets over Buffalo, while the public had the Bills.
  • Game winner picks lagging the public. As of now we’re 77-43-1 picking game winners on the season, which lags the ESPN user consensus by four wins, three of which came during Week 1. Our game winner picks are currently 6-5-2 against the 13 ESPN experts.
  • Better week for betting picks. Our playable over/under picks went 5-4 against Sunday lines (1-0 on 3-star picks), while playable spread picks went 4-4 (1-1 on 3-star picks). Our money line value picks broke even based on a flat betting strategy, hitting on underdogs Minnesota +118 and Pittsburgh +181, and barely missing on 2-star pick Atlanta +166, who managed to blow a 21-point lead against Detroit. Overall, including low confidence picks, spread picks went 8-7 and totals picks went 9-6.
  • Season performance update. That performance means that as we get ready to cross the halfway point of the season, our playable rated NFL spread picks against Sunday lines are now 34-32, while playable over/under picks are 26-26. 2-star money line picks are -5.6 units for the season based on a flat-betting strategy, while all starred money line picks are currently -7.6 units.
  • Top confidence Week 9 picks. The top confidence game winner picks from our models are currently Seattle at home over Oakland (89%), San Francisco at home vs. St. Louis (82%), and Cincinnati at home over Jacksonville (80%).
  • Most likely Week 9 upsets. The most likely upset of the week according to our models is currently Houston over Philadelphia, although it only has a 44% chance of happening, which is lower than usual. The most likely upset of a Vegas favorite of more than three points is currently the New York Giants over Indianapolis, with a 42% chance of happening.

One-Day Fantasy Challenge Update

Enter our Week 9 NFL contest | Current leaderboards

  • mkoidin takes the gold in Week 8. User mkoidin won our 189-entry NFL contest on FanDuel this past week, besting second place finisher milwaukeefan22 by almost 7 points with this lineup, and setting a new season high score for our private tournaments with 184.42 points! It was a high scoring week overall, and the leaderboards for some of our big end of season prizes have shifted as a result.
  • But wait…ineligible receiver! As it turns out, mkoidin is actually one of our very own TR team members (Matt and David Hess, who runs our official teamrankings entry, both play in our tourney). So we’re going to give the $249 Football Season Pass given to each weekly winner to milwaukeefan22 instead, and that means milwaukeefan22 now has the high score of the year, in terms of the season prize standings.
  • Solid effort by lmdirtybirds. A shout out also is due to lmdirtybirds, who had two very different entries end up finishing in third and fourth place, plus a third entry in 18th place. Whoa!
  • 53% of entries won cash. Thanks to our guaranteed prize pool, 100 of the 189 entrants in this past week’s contest doubled their entry fee, including us (our teamrankings entry came in 22nd place).
  • Come play with us! We want you to get in on the Week 9 action with us. Another 100 entries will win cash this week, and this is your chance to beat the TR Nerds head to head. Claim your spot now in our weekly tournament.