NFL's FARCE Ratings and Week 15 Predictions

So close, yet so far.

The Detroit Lions lost again Sunday, this time a four-point loss to the Minnesota Vikings. The Vikings lost Gus Frerotte just before the half and Jared Allen seemed to have injured himself in the second quarter, yet the Lions still could not eke one out.

Down by four with 5:48 left and one timeout on the Vikings' 21-yard line, the Lions elected to kick the field goal and hope to stop the Vikings with enough time to go for the win.

The Lions did get the ball back—with 16 seconds left and after the Vikings themselves had kicked a field goal to go back up by four.

That said, the Lions did show some signs of confidence early on. Twice in the second half the Lions went for it on fourth-and-one, on the Vikings' 30 and inside the 10. Might the coaches have realized their mistake of twice kicking a field goal inside the 10 on their first two drives?

The Lions have such a bad FARCE rating that in each of the past five weeks their expected win score using the W-L ratings was a big, fat zero. If they were to win one of their final three games, they would improve by three points in their weighted yearly W-L rating.

What about on the other end of the spectrum? How much did Carolina's win over Tampa Bay on Monday Night Football improve their FARCE rating? Here are this week's FARCE Ratings.

There was a slight error with the Points ratings last week, but it only altered one week's set of the weekly ratings and shouldn't have affected the weighted average ratings too much.

Based on this week's W-L ratings (last week's did not have any errors in them), the biggest gainers are the 49ers (gain of 5.33 points), Eagles (4.52), Texans (3.96), Steelers (3.8), and Saints (3.58). Those who lost the most points were the Bills (5.0), Jaguars (4.47), Rams (4.13), Packers (3.8), and Raiders (3.38).

Here are Week 15's final score predictions, using the FARCE ratings above. Home team in CAPS.

The home-field advantage for the predictions was changed from three points to 2.2, the home team's winning margin this year. (Some teams predicted to beat the spread might not have based on these numbers due to slight rounding issues. I rounded the raw predicted score to the nearest tenth before adding in the home-field advantage, based the spread on that, then rounded it to the nearest number which are the results below.)

Saints over BEARS, 22-23. Vegas line: Bears -3

Packers over JAGUARS, 24-21. Vegas line: Packers -2.5

COLTS over Lions, 33-12. Vegas line: Colts -17

Redskins push BENGALS, 22-15. Vegas line: Redskins -6.5

BUCCANEERS over Falcons, 22-23. Vegas line: Falcons -3

DOLPHINS over 49ers, 24-17. Vegas line: Dolphins -6.5

RAMS over Seahawks, 22-21. Vegas line: Seahawks -3

JETS over Bills, 25-16. Vegas line: Jets -7

Titans over TEXANS, 28-16. Vegas line: Titans -3

Steelers over RAVENS, 16-18. Vegas line: Ravens -2.5

PANTHERS over Broncos, 28-19. Vegas line: Panthers -7.5

CHIEFS over Chargers, 21-26. Vegas line: Chargers -5.5

Vikings over CARDINALS, 22-25. Vegas line: Cardinals -3

RAIDERS over Patriots, 17-23. Vegas line: Patriots -7

Giants over COWBOYS, 25-19. Vegas line: Cowboys -3

Browns over EAGLES, 15-24. Vegas line: Eagles -14

Home teams predicted to go 7-9 against the spread and 9-7 straight up.