What is LOWFI
Two NFL models that only read box scores - one that sees points, and one that only knows who won.
LOWFI rates every NFL team from box scores alone. No play-by-play, no personnel, no injury report - just who played, where, and what the score was.
LOWFI/0 is the original model. It learns only from who won each game, and it keeps one number per team: true strength, the chance that team beats an average opponent. LOWFI/1 sees points. It rates every offense and every defense in points per game against an average opponent, adjusts for who they've played, and starts each season from the betting market's win totals.
Every Tuesday, both models rate all 32 teams, forecast the week's games, and play out the rest of the season 10,000 times. Everything is archived before the week's first kickoff and read back unchanged, so the forecasts on this site are the ones that existed before the games - including the ones that missed.
LOWFI wasn't built to beat the market - and it usually doesn't! The comparison runs anyway, on the Scoreboard.
Read more
- Introducing LOWFI - why this exists
- How LOWFI/1 works and How LOWFI/0 works - how each model works
- Every rating, forecast and score is in the LOWFI data repo
- New writing goes out at Jake Davis Analytics