Late last week, on a Sunday afternoon that perhaps made you think you may in fact live to see a Browns-Lions Super Bowl, the NFL became a league of 32 imperfect teams. Everyone has been exposed as beatable in 2023 and the only team that hasn’t proven it can win is on bye this week, so bring on the permutational chaos these NFL Week 7 predictions attempt to make sense of.
Each week throughout the 2023 NFL season, the supercomputer has something to say about every game. No matter if it’s a headliner like the Dolphins heading to Philadelphia, or a game we may be less excited about, it unsentimentally beeps its way through the model’s NFL picks, boldly dropping score predictions for each.
Week 7 begins Thursday with the Saints hosting the Jaguars, and it ends Monday with the 49ers visiting the Vikings. For those games and everything between, we’ve taken plenty of data – advanced and historical – and pumped it through our predictive model. Keep in mind this model uses our data only and nothing from the betting market to produce score projections, so there can be slight discrepancies in scores when considered against the percentages of our win probability model found elsewhere. These scores consider team news as of Wednesday. For those games close enough to be projected as ties, we outline at the bottom of this piece which of those teams have a slight edge in win probability.
The biggest matchup of the weekend is the Sunday night game between the Dolphins and the Eagles. Our season-long predictions have Miami as the current favorite to win the Super Bowl while the Eagles are behind only the Dolphins and 49ers. But playing at home matters, and our projected score takes this one to overtime at a 27-27 stalemate with the Eagles given a slight edge on win probability.
Cooper Kupp has picked up where he left off prior to his ankle injury with 15 catches in his two games since coming back. Our fantasy projections have Kupp with the most fantasy points of any non-quarterback in Week 7 at 17.7 points in a standard league. We also like the Rams to get past the Steelers by a 24-20 scoreline.
Only two teams have allowed fewer points than Tampa Bay so far this season as the Bucs lead the NFC South, entering this week with a 76.0% chance of making the playoffs and 52.5% chance of winning the division. They host Atlanta on Sunday, and we think Baker Mayfield and crew will move to 4-2 with a 21-17 win.
Only two teams in the NFL have been sacked more than 25 times this season. They square off this weekend. Washington’s Sam Howell has been sacked 34 times in 2023, the most of any QB in his team’s first six games of a season since David Carr for the Houston Texans in 2005. The score predictor likes the Giants – perhaps with Daniel Jones though perhaps not – to secure a 21-17 home win.
Including the playoffs, the Bills are 6-1 in their last seven games against Bill Belichick’s Patriots after Buffalo won just five of its previous 40 versus New England prior to that. And we expect that recent shift to continue as we have the Patriots as six-point underdogs at home on Sunday.
Here’s one last look at all 13 NFL Week 7 predictions, featuring Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs with a close win over the Chargers, Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars as extremely slight underdogs to the Saints, and the Bears and Broncos to both get win No. 2 as the Caleb Williams derby heats up:
NFL Week 7 Predicted Scores
Thursday night:
- New Orleans Saints 20, Jacksonville Jaguars 20 (Win probability weighted by the point spread gives the Saints a slight advantage)
Sunday:
- New York Giants 21, Washington Commanders 17
- Buffalo Bills 23, New England Patriots 17
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers 21, Atlanta Falcons 17
- Baltimore Ravens 21, Detroit Lions 20
- Chicago Bears 20, Las Vegas Raiders 17
- Cleveland Browns 21, Indianapolis Colts 17
- Los Angeles Rams 24, Pittsburgh Steelers 20
- Seattle Seahawks 23, Arizona Cardinals 21
- Kansas City Chiefs 24, Los Angeles Chargers 23
- Denver Broncos 23, Green Bay Packers 21
Sunday night:
- Philadelphia Eagles 27, Miami Dolphins 27 (Win probability weighted by the moneyline gives the Eagles a slight advantage)
Monday night:
- San Francisco 49ers 24, Minnesota Vikings 20
Week 7 byes: Carolina Panthers, Cincinnati Bengals, Dallas Cowboys, Houston Texans, New York Jets, Tennessee Titans
Don’t forget to check out each team’s chances to make the playoffs and win the Super Bowl this season in our season-long predictions. We also have weekly fantasy projections and rankings, then you can use our sit/start comparison tool to help with lineup decisions.
We’ll be back next week, when some of you may be interested in the NFC North meeting between the Packers and Vikings, others set on the Super Bowl XVI redux between the Bengals and 49ers. The supercomputer was just starting to gather its data back in 1982, warming up for the predictions that would come 40 years later, but it’s not out of the question it would have called 26-21 Niners.