June 3, 2026 • 11 mins
ESPN's Football Power Index projections for the 2026 NFL season are out! The man in charge of them joined us to discuss, on ESPN1530.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I look forward to this every year because I think
it's it's just it's fun to chew on ESPN's Football
Power Index for twenty twenty six. The projections are out.
I've tweeted out a link Seth Walter, who is ESPN's
NFL analyst, who I think he's the Football Power Index guy.
He has always been kind enough to join us, I
(00:21):
think today on the shortest notice ever, so on Football
Power Index Day, Seth is with a set that's good
to have you, good afternoon. How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It's great to be here. I hope you're doing well.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I'm doing well. So here was like my first bit
of curiosity about the Football Power Index. I looked at
the end of last season, and this is after you know,
the super Bowl, of the playoffs, and after what was
a pretty miserable season for the Bengals. They were ranked
thirteenth this year twelve. Explain how that works why.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
They were ranked thirteen a year ago? You mean, and well,
one thing that's doing in season is understand the model
understands Joe Burrow's out, and so it's it's I wouldn't
say it's not like it's filtering out the games that
Joe Burrow didn't play in but it knew that at
the end of the season Joe Burrow was in, and
(01:12):
that that was essentially a different team than what you
would have expected, you know what we saw earlier when
you know when when he was out, and so that
plays a role. FPI is always forward looking. It's not backwards.
It's how good are you going from going forward? How
good are you today? And so it doesn't always line
(01:34):
up with the standings when we're in season nor you know,
which we wouldn't expect. So when we say that they're twelfth,
now are you are you feeling like, well, if there's
thirteenth last year when they were bad this year coming
in healthy, should they be higher like that? Is that
what you're thinking? Well?
Speaker 1 (01:52):
No, actually, and I remembered I remember talking about at
the end of the year here how they were thirteenth,
And so I when you sent out the link, I
took a guess and I said, I bet you the
Bengals are somewhere between eleventh and thirteenth, because I can't
imagine they're lower. I can't imagine they're going to be
dramatically higher, and so I just I thought it was
(02:14):
interesting that they were as high as thirteenth last year,
and I think that would stand out to a lot
of people who watched the season unfold. But it obviously
makes sense that you were accounting for the large amount
of time that Joe Burrow didn't.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Play totally and so okay, so you nail it. But yeah,
it's like I think it's the great indication of how
forward looking strength is not the same as the standings
or like another example is the Patriots even after the
end of the season, so they just played in the
Super Bowl and we said they were the tenth best team,
And I know that sounds sort of crazy, but like
(02:44):
that that is you know that sometimes is sometimes the case.
But I think that sports fan it's like we simultaneously
we have a hard time with this notion, but we
also know it, right, Like if the Rams lose in
Week one to the forty nine or that's a bad example,
but like if the Rams played a bad beat, if
the Rams played that the Saints or something in Week
(03:06):
one and they lost and then they were magically going
to play the Saints again, and we two, no one
would think that the Saints should be favored over over
the Rams, And uh, and so it's like that discrepancy
I do find quite interesting.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
So how does Football Power Index? How do you how
do you use strength of schedule? Because the simple way
we all do it as we look at you know,
every team's winning percentage from last year, and there's some
value to that, I guess. But if this is forward
looking and we're accounting for things that have happened during
the offseason, how is strength of schedule factored in when
(03:38):
you make your projections?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, so here's so here's how it worked. The first
thing FPI, guys, it creates ratings for every team, and
in the preseason it's largely based on uh Vegas will
Betty Betty market win totals combined with the schedule and
some other quarterback and special factors as well. But when
that gives us a base rating for every team, and
then we make strength of schedule is a product of
(04:03):
who are you playing? How good are those teams? And
there's some stuff around the edges about best differentials. Right,
if you think the team off of buy they're a
little better than than they might otherwise be. And so
when we say strength of schedule, it's again purely forward looking, right,
it's not going to it's not going to say that.
It's not looking at the Patriots again as a fourteen
win team last year. It's saying, no, no, no, this is
(04:26):
the Patriots THEAH just slightly above average team, not a
great team. And it's really.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Important for the Bengals because we have the Bengals as
have the easiest strength of schedule in the entire NFL,
and so that plays a big role.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
We say there's a twelfth best team, that means agnostic,
how good are you? Twelfth best teams? The projections are
where the strength of schedule comes in, and so that's
why we look at if we talk about Sincinnati's projection,
they are stronger than you might expect for the firge
fourth team. I don't want to twelve team.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I yes, I don't want to. I don't want to
give away your content. So you you wrote extensively about
you know why the Broncos and Patriots have dipped relative
to where they finished at the end of the season
last year. That the one thing I am sort of
interested in is, you know, Kansas City two years ago
was awesome in one score games, and it was weird
watching them all season long because you would watch them
game in and game out and not think, boy, this
(05:24):
is a super Bowl team and they got that far
this past season, they were awful in one score games.
Is that the biggest difference year to year that you've seen.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
It's not that it's like literally one score games are
the thing that you expect to pull back or regress,
but they're a great sign of something of basically fortunate
or luck or something that could be easily regressed. I
think that we know that football, there's lots of areas
like that would get like turnovers. But there's got a
lot of turnovers last year on defense. Does that mean
(05:55):
we expect them to have a lot of turnovers again
next year? I wouldn't bank on. I wouldn't on them
having a ton of turnovers again, just like I wouldn't
bank on denversus have it doing great in one score games. Again.
It's just one of these things where when it comes
down to the end of the game and a kicker
is to make a fifty yarder, ultimately what we think
(06:18):
about that team and their opponent going forward is not
that different whether whether that kick goes, you know, just
inside the upright or just outside the upright and that's
where like something like a one score game comes into play,
and so yeah, you see it. You see something like
a great record again in one score games, of terrible
record of one score games. We should expect that's probably
(06:39):
going to come back to earth just because on average
is done.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Seth Walter from ESPN is with US football Power Index
projections for twenty twenty six are out. Go read them
at ESPN dot com. For folks who see this, and
you've been kind enough to explain your methodology to us
and I'm sure many many others for years, but folks
will look at it and they'll see a figure assigned
next to each team. So, for instance, Cincinnati plus one
(07:03):
point six at the top of the AFC North, Baltimore
number three overall plus three point seven. What is that
figure and how wide does that gap just between those
two teams?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, so that's points per game. So basically, if Baltimore
and I'm sorry, yeah, Baltimore and Cincinnati were to meet
on a neutral field tomorrow, we would expect to favor
Baltimore by roughly two point one points over Cincinnati. And
so yeah, that's the spread we're talking about in the
AFC North, say three point seven is Baltimore at the top,
(07:37):
negative five point five is Cleveland at the bottom. And
so okay, we say, yeah, okay, if the Ravens played
the Browns and we're talking about a nine maybe more
than a nine point spread between them, and so that's
really all that's thing. It's essentially a rating on a
neutral field for each team relative. It's relative to average.
That's what the number purely is. So a one point
(07:58):
zero is one point better than average teams.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
What can because Cleveland's interesting, you know, you're you're doing
these and then they trade Miles Garrett away? Right, what
could the loss or acquisition of one player even that
good do for a team's Football Power Index rating?
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Okay, let me let me take it from the RAMS perspective,
because I think it's a little more illustrative. We had
run these numbers before the trade, right just came out today.
We'd obviously done it before, and so like how an
article was written, I had we had it done in
the RAMS. By trading for Garrett, their probability of winning
(08:37):
the Super Bowl went up by between one and two
percentage points depending on a couple of different times. And
so that's sort of what we're looking at here, and
I don't know if that sounds like a really small amount,
but there are very few non quarterbacks who could just
a single player who could nudge the needle that far.
(09:00):
I think it's also important in the case of this,
it's not just that Garrett adds maybe one or two
percentage points to their chances in Super Bowl. But it
was Garrett over Jarrett Vers, who's a great head rusher
in his own right. And so Garrett's impact alone, if
they maybe had just traded for him with draft picks,
probably would have would have been higher. But we already
(09:20):
had the rams of the favorite twin the Super Bowl
going into that trade, and then they were even stronger
favorites coming out of it.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
So from a Bengals perspective, Seth Walder from ESPN is
with us. From a Bengals perspective, they added Dexter Lawrence. Now,
Dexter Lawrence is not the caliber of player as Miles
Garrett certainly wasn't last year, but still like their big
offseason acquisition. So for a guy like that, what could
his addition do for your metric?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Well, so everything in a case of okay, so let
me back up for Garrett, we had the benefit of
this sort of like before snapshot after snapshot. We didn't
really have that for Lawrence because we didn't have numbers
prior to that trade, and because Betty market based, this
is all imputed. But what we know about Dexter Lawrence
is that he's an incredibly impactful player. He generates pressure,
(10:07):
and he obviously is great against the run, but then
he also is able to generate disruption and pressure and
stacks from the nose tackle position, which is not a
place where you're expecting to be able to do those things.
And so I do think that I could be a
lift for the Bengals defense. Now I was skeptical of
that trade. I think I thought it was an overpay,
considering that Lawrence had been not as good recently, was
(10:29):
not as good last year as he's done in the past,
and so they were kind of paying what I would
call full freight for him when he maybe should have
been at a discount. But I do think that he's
obviously helpful to an area of weakness for Cincinnati defense.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Well said, I know we reached out very shortly after
you put this out, so I can't thank you enough
for doing this. I always love chatting with you in
the insight you give us as to how you do things.
Thanks so much, Seth, no problem.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Can I give you one Bengals numbers? Yea good yes,
give it to me. Yes. Remember remember I said the Bengals,
we rank them twelfth, right, but they have the fourth
highest chance to make the playoffs of any team. And
that's where you see that straight to schedule. Now it's
just barely ahead of some other teams, but I'm but
but still the fourth Hi sixty nine percent chance to
(11:20):
make the playoffs. And that's fourth beat and that's because
of how we be their schedule.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Fourth best in the league or fourth best in the AFC.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
In the league, wow, in the league speaking at sixty
nine point two, ahead of the Seahawks at sixty nine
point one. But hey, fourth is fourth.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Fourth is fourth. Good after the way the last three
seasons have an unfolded Seth, We'll take it. I appreciate
that and you joining us. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Have a good one.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Awesome stuff. Seth wall to read his football Power Index
projections I tweeted at a link at Molegger. They're also
available at ESPN dot com.
I look forward to this every year because I think
it's it's just it's fun to chew on ESPN's Football
Power Index for twenty twenty six. The projections are out.
I've tweeted out a link Seth Walter, who is ESPN's
NFL analyst, who I think he's the Football Power Index guy.
He has always been kind enough to join us, I
(00:21):
think today on the shortest notice ever, so on Football
Power Index Day, Seth is with a set that's good
to have you, good afternoon. How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It's great to be here. I hope you're doing well.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
I'm doing well. So here was like my first bit
of curiosity about the Football Power Index. I looked at
the end of last season, and this is after you know,
the super Bowl, of the playoffs, and after what was
a pretty miserable season for the Bengals. They were ranked
thirteenth this year twelve. Explain how that works why.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
They were ranked thirteen a year ago? You mean, and well,
one thing that's doing in season is understand the model
understands Joe Burrow's out, and so it's it's I wouldn't
say it's not like it's filtering out the games that
Joe Burrow didn't play in but it knew that at
the end of the season Joe Burrow was in, and
(01:12):
that that was essentially a different team than what you
would have expected, you know what we saw earlier when
you know when when he was out, and so that
plays a role. FPI is always forward looking. It's not backwards.
It's how good are you going from going forward? How
good are you today? And so it doesn't always line
(01:34):
up with the standings when we're in season nor you know,
which we wouldn't expect. So when we say that they're twelfth,
now are you are you feeling like, well, if there's
thirteenth last year when they were bad this year coming
in healthy, should they be higher like that? Is that
what you're thinking? Well?
Speaker 1 (01:52):
No, actually, and I remembered I remember talking about at
the end of the year here how they were thirteenth,
And so I when you sent out the link, I
took a guess and I said, I bet you the
Bengals are somewhere between eleventh and thirteenth, because I can't
imagine they're lower. I can't imagine they're going to be
dramatically higher, and so I just I thought it was
(02:14):
interesting that they were as high as thirteenth last year,
and I think that would stand out to a lot
of people who watched the season unfold. But it obviously
makes sense that you were accounting for the large amount
of time that Joe Burrow didn't.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Play totally and so okay, so you nail it. But yeah,
it's like I think it's the great indication of how
forward looking strength is not the same as the standings
or like another example is the Patriots even after the
end of the season, so they just played in the
Super Bowl and we said they were the tenth best team,
And I know that sounds sort of crazy, but like
(02:44):
that that is you know that sometimes is sometimes the case.
But I think that sports fan it's like we simultaneously
we have a hard time with this notion, but we
also know it, right, Like if the Rams lose in
Week one to the forty nine or that's a bad example,
but like if the Rams played a bad beat, if
the Rams played that the Saints or something in Week
(03:06):
one and they lost and then they were magically going
to play the Saints again, and we two, no one
would think that the Saints should be favored over over
the Rams, And uh, and so it's like that discrepancy
I do find quite interesting.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
So how does Football Power Index? How do you how
do you use strength of schedule? Because the simple way
we all do it as we look at you know,
every team's winning percentage from last year, and there's some
value to that, I guess. But if this is forward
looking and we're accounting for things that have happened during
the offseason, how is strength of schedule factored in when
(03:38):
you make your projections?
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Yeah, so here's so here's how it worked. The first
thing FPI, guys, it creates ratings for every team, and
in the preseason it's largely based on uh Vegas will
Betty Betty market win totals combined with the schedule and
some other quarterback and special factors as well. But when
that gives us a base rating for every team, and
then we make strength of schedule is a product of
(04:03):
who are you playing? How good are those teams? And
there's some stuff around the edges about best differentials. Right,
if you think the team off of buy they're a
little better than than they might otherwise be. And so
when we say strength of schedule, it's again purely forward looking, right,
it's not going to it's not going to say that.
It's not looking at the Patriots again as a fourteen
win team last year. It's saying, no, no, no, this is
(04:26):
the Patriots THEAH just slightly above average team, not a
great team. And it's really.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Important for the Bengals because we have the Bengals as
have the easiest strength of schedule in the entire NFL,
and so that plays a big role.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
We say there's a twelfth best team, that means agnostic,
how good are you? Twelfth best teams? The projections are
where the strength of schedule comes in, and so that's
why we look at if we talk about Sincinnati's projection,
they are stronger than you might expect for the firge
fourth team. I don't want to twelve team.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I yes, I don't want to. I don't want to
give away your content. So you you wrote extensively about
you know why the Broncos and Patriots have dipped relative
to where they finished at the end of the season
last year. That the one thing I am sort of
interested in is, you know, Kansas City two years ago
was awesome in one score games, and it was weird
watching them all season long because you would watch them
game in and game out and not think, boy, this
(05:24):
is a super Bowl team and they got that far
this past season, they were awful in one score games.
Is that the biggest difference year to year that you've seen.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
It's not that it's like literally one score games are
the thing that you expect to pull back or regress,
but they're a great sign of something of basically fortunate
or luck or something that could be easily regressed. I
think that we know that football, there's lots of areas
like that would get like turnovers. But there's got a
lot of turnovers last year on defense. Does that mean
(05:55):
we expect them to have a lot of turnovers again
next year? I wouldn't bank on. I wouldn't on them
having a ton of turnovers again, just like I wouldn't
bank on denversus have it doing great in one score games. Again.
It's just one of these things where when it comes
down to the end of the game and a kicker
is to make a fifty yarder, ultimately what we think
(06:18):
about that team and their opponent going forward is not
that different whether whether that kick goes, you know, just
inside the upright or just outside the upright and that's
where like something like a one score game comes into play,
and so yeah, you see it. You see something like
a great record again in one score games, of terrible
record of one score games. We should expect that's probably
(06:39):
going to come back to earth just because on average
is done.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Seth Walter from ESPN is with US football Power Index
projections for twenty twenty six are out. Go read them
at ESPN dot com. For folks who see this, and
you've been kind enough to explain your methodology to us
and I'm sure many many others for years, but folks
will look at it and they'll see a figure assigned
next to each team. So, for instance, Cincinnati plus one
(07:03):
point six at the top of the AFC North, Baltimore
number three overall plus three point seven. What is that
figure and how wide does that gap just between those
two teams?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, so that's points per game. So basically, if Baltimore
and I'm sorry, yeah, Baltimore and Cincinnati were to meet
on a neutral field tomorrow, we would expect to favor
Baltimore by roughly two point one points over Cincinnati. And
so yeah, that's the spread we're talking about in the
AFC North, say three point seven is Baltimore at the top,
(07:37):
negative five point five is Cleveland at the bottom. And
so okay, we say, yeah, okay, if the Ravens played
the Browns and we're talking about a nine maybe more
than a nine point spread between them, and so that's
really all that's thing. It's essentially a rating on a
neutral field for each team relative. It's relative to average.
That's what the number purely is. So a one point
(07:58):
zero is one point better than average teams.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
What can because Cleveland's interesting, you know, you're you're doing
these and then they trade Miles Garrett away? Right, what
could the loss or acquisition of one player even that
good do for a team's Football Power Index rating?
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Okay, let me let me take it from the RAMS perspective,
because I think it's a little more illustrative. We had
run these numbers before the trade, right just came out today.
We'd obviously done it before, and so like how an
article was written, I had we had it done in
the RAMS. By trading for Garrett, their probability of winning
(08:37):
the Super Bowl went up by between one and two
percentage points depending on a couple of different times. And
so that's sort of what we're looking at here, and
I don't know if that sounds like a really small amount,
but there are very few non quarterbacks who could just
a single player who could nudge the needle that far.
(09:00):
I think it's also important in the case of this,
it's not just that Garrett adds maybe one or two
percentage points to their chances in Super Bowl. But it
was Garrett over Jarrett Vers, who's a great head rusher
in his own right. And so Garrett's impact alone, if
they maybe had just traded for him with draft picks,
probably would have would have been higher. But we already
(09:20):
had the rams of the favorite twin the Super Bowl
going into that trade, and then they were even stronger
favorites coming out of it.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
So from a Bengals perspective, Seth Walder from ESPN is
with us. From a Bengals perspective, they added Dexter Lawrence. Now,
Dexter Lawrence is not the caliber of player as Miles
Garrett certainly wasn't last year, but still like their big
offseason acquisition. So for a guy like that, what could
his addition do for your metric?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Well, so everything in a case of okay, so let
me back up for Garrett, we had the benefit of
this sort of like before snapshot after snapshot. We didn't
really have that for Lawrence because we didn't have numbers
prior to that trade, and because Betty market based, this
is all imputed. But what we know about Dexter Lawrence
is that he's an incredibly impactful player. He generates pressure,
(10:07):
and he obviously is great against the run, but then
he also is able to generate disruption and pressure and
stacks from the nose tackle position, which is not a
place where you're expecting to be able to do those things.
And so I do think that I could be a
lift for the Bengals defense. Now I was skeptical of
that trade. I think I thought it was an overpay,
considering that Lawrence had been not as good recently, was
(10:29):
not as good last year as he's done in the past,
and so they were kind of paying what I would
call full freight for him when he maybe should have
been at a discount. But I do think that he's
obviously helpful to an area of weakness for Cincinnati defense.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Well said, I know we reached out very shortly after
you put this out, so I can't thank you enough
for doing this. I always love chatting with you in
the insight you give us as to how you do things.
Thanks so much, Seth, no problem.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Can I give you one Bengals numbers? Yea good yes,
give it to me. Yes. Remember remember I said the Bengals,
we rank them twelfth, right, but they have the fourth
highest chance to make the playoffs of any team. And
that's where you see that straight to schedule. Now it's
just barely ahead of some other teams, but I'm but
but still the fourth Hi sixty nine percent chance to
(11:20):
make the playoffs. And that's fourth beat and that's because
of how we be their schedule.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Fourth best in the league or fourth best in the AFC.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
In the league, wow, in the league speaking at sixty
nine point two, ahead of the Seahawks at sixty nine
point one. But hey, fourth is fourth.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Fourth is fourth. Good after the way the last three
seasons have an unfolded Seth, We'll take it. I appreciate
that and you joining us. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Have a good one.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Awesome stuff. Seth wall to read his football Power Index
projections I tweeted at a link at Molegger. They're also
available at ESPN dot com.
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