A model with one clear favourite
Opta pushed the 2026 season through its supercomputer on Tuesday and produced win probabilities for every Week 1 fixture. One number sits apart from the rest. The Los Angeles Chargers are given an 80.7% chance of beating Arizona, the widest gap anywhere on the opening slate.
The reasoning starts in the trenches. Jim Harbaugh’s first two seasons both finished 11-6 and both ended in lopsided wild-card defeats, and the offensive line explains why the third might read differently. Left tackle Joe Alt is back from the ankle injury that ended his November, and right tackle Rashawn Slater returns after missing all of 2025 with a ruptured left patellar tendon. Justin Herbert was hit 128 times last season, more than any quarterback in the league. In the 11 games Alt missed, Chargers running backs averaged 2.5 yards before contact, eighth worst in the NFL. In the six he played, that figure rose to 3.1, eighth best.
Opta ranks the Chargers ninth overall and gives them a 41.6% chance of winning the AFC West, which would end a wait stretching back to 2009. Arizona is handed 3.3% in the NFC West.
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Jacksonville and Detroit close behind
Two more teams clear 74%. Jacksonville sits at 75.7% against Cleveland after a 13-4 campaign that delivered the AFC South and ended with a 27-24 wild-card loss to Buffalo. Trevor Lawrence’s side carries a 63.0% playoff probability, third highest in the conference.
Cleveland occupies the other end of that equation. The Browns went 5-12, rank 31st in the team ratings and are projected for 5.17 wins, with Deshaun Watson starting for the first time since tearing his Achilles in Week 7 of 2024. Their defence graded third last season, but Myles Garrett and his record 23 sacks have left.
Detroit is at 74.2% at home to New Orleans. No team that missed the 2025 playoffs rates higher for a return than the Lions at 65.2%, and only the Rams (87.1%) sit above them in the NFC. Jahmyr Gibbs, now the highest-paid running back in league history, averaged 5.03 yards per carry last season, ninth in the NFL, and 6.51 on his 49 runs up the middle, the best mark in the league.
The one game the model cannot separate
Buffalo at Houston is the closest call of the week at 52.0%. Both teams finished 12-5 and both went out in the divisional round. When they met in Week 12, Houston sacked Josh Allen a career-high eight times and picked him off twice in a 23-19 win, largely by sitting in big nickel on 65.2% of Buffalo’s snaps against 4.6% in every other game last season. Allen averaged 3.3 yards per pass against that look.
The slate begins on a Wednesday for the first time since 2012, and Opta has left the Monday night meeting between Denver and Kansas City without a number for now.
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