2023 NFL Season Review: Final Week Decides Team Win Totals
Congrats to Lions and Texans Backers
Another NFL regular season has (mostly) come and gone, with just Week 18 of the 2023 NFL season left before the playoffs begin. If you feel like it has been a pretty unusual campaign in terms of there being few dominant teams, a handful of teams hovering around .500, and only a couple of genuinely terrible NFL teams — sorry, Panthers fans — then you’d be pretty spot-on. As this 2023 NFL season review will explain, though, there are plenty of playoff spots to be decided and a bunch of team win total over/unders hanging in the balance.
The NFL schedule for Week 18 is all divisional matchups. Usually, that means there are at least some games between teams that have nothing to play for, whether they have clinched all they can clinch for playoff positioning or have been eliminated entirely from contention.
This season, that’s not the case at all, as 14 of the 16 NFL games on Saturday and Sunday — excluding Jets-Patriots and Broncos-Raiders — feature at least one team that can punch their ticket to the postseason. Plus, from a betting perspective, there are teams who are on the verge of hitting their regular season win total over if they can notch one more victory.
Teams With Hope
The teams who can still reach their over are the 11-5 Philadelphia Eagles (o/u 11.5 wins), 10-6 Buffalo Bills (o/u 10.5 wins), 9-7 Jacksonville Jaguars (o/u 10 wins), 9-7 Pittsburgh Steelers (u/o 9 wins), 8-8 Seattle Seahawks (o/u 9 wins), 8-8 Denver Broncos (o/u 8.5 wins), 7-9 Chicago Bears (u/o 7.5 wins), 7-9 Las Vegas Raiders (u/o 7.5 wins) and the 4-12 Arizona Cardinals (o/u 4.5 wins). A lot can hinge on the results of the Seahawks-Cardinals and Broncos-Raiders games regarding win totals.
Plenty of teams — namely the 13-3 Baltimore Ravens (o/u 9.5 wins), 12-4 San Francisco 49ers (o/u 10.5 wins) 11-5 Detroit Lions (o/u 9.5 wins), 11-5 Miami Dolphins (o/u 9.5 wins), 11-5 Cleveland Browns (o/u 9.5 wins), 9-7 Indianapolis Colts (o/u 6.5 wins), 9-7 Los Angeles Rams (o/u 6.5 wins) and 9-7 Houston Texans (o/u 6.5 wins) — have pretty comfortably reached their overs.
The Ravens, Colts, Rams and Texans have been among the teams that have improved their Super Bowl odds the most and either went from good to elite or from mediocre to potential playoff team.
Baltimore got its 10th win all the way back in Week 14 and has been the clear class of the AFC since the middle of October. Even without rookie quarterback Anthony Richardson, the Colts got their 7th win in Week 13 to highlight what has been a considerable surprise season for first-year head coach Shane Steichen. It took the Rams awhile to get going — they were 3-6 through nine weeks — but, after their bye, they’ve won six of seven to blow by their over/under. Houston, led by C.J. Stroud, got its 7th win in Week 13 as well to put themselves in the NFL bracket mix.
Injuries a Big Factor
On the other hand, of course, no 2023 NFL season review could be complete without looking at all the teams who never really had a chance to win more games than Vegas (and the betting public) expected them to. For 2023, the most unfortunate teams of this category were the 8-8 Cincinnati Bengals (o/u 11.5 wins), 6-10 New York Jets (o/u 9.5 wins), 5-11 Los Angeles Chargers (o/u 9.5 wins), 2-14 Carolina Panthers (o/u 7.5 wins), 5-11 New York Giants (o/u 7.5 wins), 4-12 New England Patriots (o/u 7.5 wins), 5-11 Tennessee Titans (o/u 7.5 wins) and 4-12 Washington Commanders (o/u 6.5 wins).
A common thread between those teams? Most of them lost their starting quarterbacks. Once Aaron Rodgers went down for the Jets (on the fourth snap of their season), Justin Herbert got hurt for the Chargers and Daniel Jones tore his ACL for the Giants, those teams faced enormously steep uphill climbs to get back to contention. The same excuse can’t be used for teams like the Panthers or Commanders, who have just severely underperformed expectations.
Close, but No Cigar
The theme of this 2023 NFL season review is that the year did not go according to plan, even for the NFL teams toward the top of the table and those right around their over/under win totals.
Take the 10-6 Kansas City Chiefs (o/u 11.5 wins), who can move to within half a win from their preseason total by beating the Chargers. But, it has been a slog for Patrick Mahomes and Co., who have never seemed to get into a groove. Throughout the league, only the Ravens and 49ers — with minor exceptions — have been great from start to finish.
It just goes to show that in the NFL regular season, which is pretty compact compared to that of the other major North American leagues, a lot can happen in a short time. For win total over/under (and playoff berths), one play here or there can make all the difference.
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