An NFL Football Forecast: New England Patriots at Buffalo Bills, January 8, 2023

UPDATE: Looks like the odds-makers were right: Bills 35 - Patriots 23. The game was deadlocked at halftime, but the Bills broke it open in the third quarter while the Patriots went flat; the win was by almost two touchdowns rather than the one TD the cards predicted (at least they got the winning team …

Turkey-Day Football, 2022: Buffalo Bills at Detroit Lions

UPDATE: The game was closer than expected: Bills 28, Lions 25. I didn't watch the game but reviewed the final statistics. As far as I can tell from the numbers, the Bills moved the ball more effectively than the Lions, especially on the ground, even though they suffered more sacks, penalties, punt turnovers and interceptions. …

A 2022 NFL Tarot Prediction: Los Angeles Rams vs Buffalo Bills

UPDATE: Although the point-spread prediction was inaccurate, this reading did get three things right: 1) the Bills won (by a larger margin than expected); 2) the score was tied at halftime; and 3) the Bills defense shut down the Rams offense during the entire second half. The Bills didn't exactly "break it wide open," but …

“And the Winner Is . . .” – 2022 “Run for the Roses”

UPDATE: It turned out that the only thing accurate about this reading was that Epicenter would make a strong showing. The problem was that I limited the population of likely winners to horses with short odds, and the actual winner, Rich Strike, was a long shot at 80-1 and one of the least likely contenders. …

A “New-Style” NFL Gameplay Analysis

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the last of my sports posts for a while (I promise). As the old-time TV announcers used to say after a test of the Emergency Broadcasting System: "We now return to our regular program." In my last post I did a "retake" of a reading for a game between the Buffalo …

National Football League 2022 Season: Buffalo Bills Win-Loss Predictions

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is a lengthy experiment applying the "point gap" method I developed to replace the imperfect scoring technique I've used for predicting the outcome of NFL football games over the past few years. Rather than trying to project actual scores, it focuses on the point separation between the two teams at the end …

A New National Football League Prediction Model

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is my substantive post for today; I like sports forecasting because it offers immediate and irrefutable proof of the accuracy of one's techniques. For several years now I've been using the tarot to attempt prediction of the winning team in sporting events, particularly National Football League and Major League Baseball games in …

An American Football Prediction: Super Bowl LIV*

UPDATE: Since the 49ers won the coin  toss but chose to defer possession to the 2nd Half, the Chiefs took first possession of the football and therefore got the top row of the spread as Team "A." As predicted, Team "A" did in fact blow the game open with three touchdowns in the 4th quarter, …

2019 Super Bowl: Rams vs. Patriots

UPDATE #1: The Rams won the toss, so even though they deferred possession until the start of the second half, I'll stick with my model and predict a win for Los Angeles. UPDATE #2: The anemic scoring envisioned for the first half proved to be prophetic, and the half-time score was even lower than predicted. …

National Football Conference Championship: Saints vs. Rams

Update: The NFC championship game is over and the Rams won. The two things about this reading that were accurate were that the decision did come down to the final seconds, and the Rams did reassert themselves at the 11th hour by forcing a sudden-death overtime. Interestingly, my prediction for the Chiefs-Patriots game hints that …