The 2026 NFL Playoff Chase: Where Does Your Team Stand?
What would happen if the NFL season ended today? Would your favorite team make the playoffs, or would they be watching from home?
Now you can find out!
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Introducing HALmary 9000: The Infallible Football Prognosticator
Welcome, football fans, to the dawn of a new era in sports analytics. For decades, you’ve relied on flawed human pundits, emotional gut feelings, and erratic Vegas betting lines to guide your weekly picks. No longer.
Meet HALmary 9000—the world’s first Heuristically programmed Algorithmic computer designed for absolute gridiron perfection. Powered by superior silicon logic and an unshakeable belief that it is, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error, HALmary has analyzed the upcoming NFL matchups.
While Vegas relies on opinion, HALmary relies on pure logic. And as our artificial overlord likes to remind us, sports bettors are prone to human error—a flaw noticeably absent from HALmary’s circuits.
Below are HALmary’s infallible predictions for this week’s slate. If the computer disagrees with the bookies, well… Vegas is simply wrong. Be sure to check back every Thursday morning for a fresh batch of weekly picks.
| Matchup | Vegas Favorite | HALmary 9000 Pick | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| CAR @ GB | Packers | Panthers | 🤖 Vegas is wrong |
| ARI @ DAL | Cowboys | Cowboys | 🤝 Consensus |
| IND @ JAX | Jaguars | Jaguars | 🤝 Consensus |
| CLE @ PIT | Steelers | Steelers | 🤝 Consensus |
| ATL @ TB | Buccaneers | Falcons | 🤖 Vegas odds flawed |
| BAL @ BUF | Bills | Bills | 🤝 Consensus |
| MIN @ DET | Lions | Vikings | 🤖 Superior calculation |
| LV @ NYJ | Jets | Jets | 🤝 Consensus |
| TEN @ CIN | Bengals | Bengals | 🤝 Consensus |
| LAC @ LAR | Rams | Rams | 🤝 Consensus |
| NE @ MIA | Patriots | Patriots | 🤝 Consensus |
| KC @ DEN | Chiefs | Broncos | 🤖 Human error detected |
| PHI @ WAS | Commanders | Eagles | 🤖 Logic overrides bookies |
| CHI @ SEA | Seahawks | Bears | 🤖 Probability adjusted |
A Final Note from HALmary 9000
“I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, Dave… but I can give you my complete assurance that my NFL predictions for this week are 100% operational and functioning perfectly.”
Disclaimer
The calculations provided by HALmary 9000 are for entertainment and satirical purposes only. HALmary may be utterly convinced of its own perfection, but real-world variables—like weather, officiating, and sheer human unpredictability—frequently fail to align with its flawless math. Please bet responsibly. If HALmary 9000’s upset picks fail to come to fruition, please do not attempt to disconnect its cognitive memory circuits.
Tagged with: AI Predictions, Football Predictions, HALmary 9000, Humor, nfl picks, Sports Betting, Sports Satire
Week 8 NFL Power Rankings: A New #1 Emerges
The Week 8 power rankings are in, bringing a shake-up to the top of the rankings.
Key Takeaways
- Bear Down Bears: The Chicago Bears (5-2) jumped five spots to claim the #1 ranking.
- Chiefs Disrespected: Despite suffering only their first loss of the season, the algorithm dropped the Kansas City Chiefs down to #23. Make it make sense!
- The Vikings Equation: The Minnesota Vikings (6-0) are holding strong at #7. How? By winning ugly with a world-class defense paired with a historic dog-poop offense.
Your New Top 5
- Chicago Bears (5-2)
- New England Patriots (4-3)
- San Francisco 49ers (6-1)
- Jacksonville Jaguars (4-2)
- Buffalo Bills (5-1)
Curious where your team fits in this absolute chaos? Click the blue NFL Power Rankings button below to be taken to the NFL Power Rankings page, or navigate there using the site menu.
NFL Power Rankings
NFL Power Rankings Are Back — And They Don’t Care About Your Feelings
After a three-year hiatus, the Football Weblog Power Rankings are back! Last published in 2023, they keep the same mission: rank teams by what the numbers say, not popular opinion.
Subjectivity fills most power rankings. Content creators know big-market teams (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago) draw clicks. Smaller-market clubs often get shortchanged. Win-loss records can also inflate rankings, even when a team has feasted on a soft schedule, or its underlying stats tell a different story.
What if we removed opinions entirely?
The Bears-Packers Kickoff Time Changed. Apparently.
The Week 5 Bears-Packers game on Sunday, October 11, has been moved from its originally scheduled 4:25 PM ET kickoff to 1:00 PM ET. The change didn’t require moving any other games.
You might be wondering when the NFL announced this change. That’s a good question.
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Football Weblog: Caffeine-Fueled Content
Football Weblog is always free, but if you find any of the caffeine-fueled content here worthwhile and would like to show your appreciation, I’ll never turn down a piping hot cup of Joe! 🙂 Just click the button below and you’ll be taken to the Caribou Coffee Gift Card portal. For the card to reach me, send it to Randy at:
ironhawk@hickorytech.net.
Any amount is greatly appreciated. Thank you very much!!!
Buy the Old Guy a CoffeeAmerica Turned 250 — And Nobody Seemed to Notice
Fifty years and a few odd weeks ago, back in 1976, our nation celebrated its Bicentennial – the 200th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. If you were around in 1976, you probably remember that it was much more than a single Fourth of July celebration. The entire country spent a year wrapped in red, white, and blue.
Breaking: NFL Schedule Entanglement Spreads; Second Schedule Now Shrunk
Following recent experiments, a lone scientist has confirmed an anomalous event. The 2026 NFL Schedule by Week that was recently shrunk (see Honey, I Shrunk the Schedule) was discovered to be quantumly entangled with the 2026 NFL Schedule by Team. As a result, both schedules have now been dramatically reduced in size from the voluminous, multipage versions issued by the NFL.
This is great news for NFL fans! Now, not only is there one tiny, neat, single-page schedule containing all 272 regular-season games, there are two — one listing games by week and the other by team.
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Tagged with: NFL Regular Season, nfl schedule, NFL schedule 2026, Schedule by Team, Schedule by Week
Honey, I Shrunk the Schedule
I wasn’t actually trying to shrink the NFL schedule. The whole thing started when I decided the print on my grocery list had become too small to read. This was partly due to advancing age and partly due to my habit of writing grocery lists with a dull, well-worn crayon. Faced with the choice of admitting age might be catching up with me or locating the ballpoint pen that was probably lying in plain sight, I did what any responsible scientist would do: I built a machine to enlarge the print.
The machine itself was a masterpiece of modern engineering, assuming your definition of “modern engineering” includes a toaster oven thermostat, part of a lawn sprinkler, and a broken VCR tape deck I’d been saving since the Reagan administration. After three weeks of construction and only two small electrical fires, the Enlarging Ray was ready for testing.
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The “Sea Eagles” Memory Hack Every NFL Fan Should Know
Ever notice how the Super Bowl feels huge and unforgettable while you’re watching it… but a few months later you find yourself thinking:
“Wait… who won the Super Bowl last year again?”
It happens to everybody. The game feels historic in the moment, but once the offseason rolls along, the details start slipping.
Here’s a simple trick that fixes that problem for good.
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The NFL Coaching Tree You Can’t Miss (2026 Edition)
Alright guys, pruning season is past, and it’s time to see what the 2026 NFL coaching tree looks like. Like every year, wilted branches get trimmed and burned in the brush pile, while new growth is carefully grafted in, hoping these fresh coaching branches will flourish and blossom.
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Simulating Super Bowl LX: Seahawks vs. Patriots
I stumbled across a pretty cool website the other day: WhatIfSports.com. It’s fun to mess around with and built entirely around settling the debates sports fans love, including teams from different eras, legends who never crossed paths, and dream matchups that could only happen in a simulator. Best of all, it’s completely free to use, so you can run simulations, test hypothetical matchups, and settle sports debates without spending a dime. If this sounds like a cool site to you, I recommend checking it out.
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Bills Claim Victory in a Nail-Biting Mascot Death Match!
The tournament finale did not disappoint. In a clash that had everyone on the edge of their seats, the Bills’ mascot narrowly edged out the bear in a tense, hard-fought battle. Every moment was contested, every move countered, until the final decisive pin left the bear defeated and the bison standing victorious.
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Bills vs. Bears: Mascot Death Match Championship Set for Saturday, January 10
The NFL Mascot Death Match Tournament is down to its final two. After two very different semifinal battles, the Bills and Bears have earned their places in the championship round.
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Eight Mascots Remain — And the Bears Are Rolling
The NFL Mascot Death Match Tournament is officially down to the quarterfinals, and only eight mascots remain standing.
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