NFL power ratings: Broncos QB adjustment, spread projections

After an incredible divisional round that started and ended with overtime classics, we’re left with four NFL teams vying to be Super Bowl champions in the Broncos, Patriots, Seahawks and Rams. The matchups give us two interesting angles, one involving part three of a divisional rivalry that this year started with a defensive slugfest and then gave us an overtime shootout to lay out the path to the No. 1 seed for Seattle. The other features an MVP candidate at QB who has struggled against top defenses in the postseason facing another, though in a much different QB matchup than we were expecting.

We’ll get into both games a bit more as I use my power ratings to project where I would set the spread for each, but first we need to talk about the difference between Bo Nix and Jarrett Stidham when it comes to rating the Broncos. When a team turns to a backup, a rating adjustment will typically follow in the market. In some cases there may not be a perceived difference between QBs, particularly if a struggling starter is outright benched, and the adjustment to the line will be little to nothing. In the other extreme, a player like Lamar Jackson going from projected starter to out can cause an adjustment as high as 10 points depending on the quality of the backup.

Typically, I’m reserving adjustments of seven points or higher to elite-level QBs like Jackson, Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes, and the size of the adjustment will depend on my faith in the backup. Mahomes to Gardner Minshew and Mahomes to Chris Oladokun are two very different scenarios for moving a line. If I see the fill-in starter as a potential disaster — and we’ve seen a few of those this year — I may push an adjustment just inside that 7-10 point window for a good but not elite QB. Knowing what we know now, you can make an argument for a seven-point adjustment from Mahomes to Minshew and then another seven-point adjustment from Minshew to Oladokun, moving the Chiefs from one of the highest rated teams to one of the lowest in two moves.

That brings us to this particular situation with the Broncos. Nix is not near that elite tier for me, although he has come up big in late game situations. He’s put the team on his back at times this season, but too often the Broncos offense has lacked the juice to put away bad opponents, leaving them in a lot of competitive games late even against opponents like the Jets and Raiders. I think it’s fair to put him mid-range and make him a four-point improvement over a generic QB, and part of that is due to Sean Payton being in place to elevate whoever gets the start at quarterback on a week-to-week basis.

Then we come to Stidham, a career backup whose claim to fame has been starting the final two games of two straight seasons in place of big-name QBs the team wanted to keep healthy in order to have no issues parting ways with them in the offseason. He played very well in his first start, taking the Raiders to overtime and throwing three TDs in a 37-34 overtime loss to a 49ers team that finished the year first in points allowed, but he struggled in his next start against the Chiefs. Cleaning up for the Broncos a year later, he won a low-scoring game against the Chargers and then got outplayed by Aidan O’Connell and his former team in the finale.

What I’m getting from that track record is that Stidham is an inconsistent QB who is not as bad as many of the backups we’ve seen forced into action this year, and on a good day he can play well enough to beat anybody. I’m comfortable making him a midrange backup on this profile with more potential to surprise on the high end than the low end, which is what we could generally say about Nix when rating him among starters. My ratings actually had a Broncos -2.5 projection prior to the divisional round as I had the Patriots as a half-point better but the Broncos getting three points for home-field advantage. I’m moving the Broncos 4.5 points with the QB change, and when coupled with a slight adjustment upward for New England, it means the best I can do is move the game to Patriots -2.5.

The sportsbooks and betting market felt differently. The Broncos opened as 4.5-point underdogs on Sunday, a six-point adjustment that is already either getting Nix close to that top tier of MVP candidates or Stidham down to the Trey Lance level of “this probably isn’t going to go very well.” The market then bet the Patriots up to 5.5, even touching 6 at some books on Sunday night. That’s getting to level of Mahomes to Minshew or Minshew to Oladokun, and you can judge for yourself if either of those is a comparable gap to Nix vs. Stidham. I’m almost certainly going to be on the ‘dog here, and we’ll get into that more below.

I’ll have my picks this week at SportsLine, where members are able to access all my picks as they’re made throughout the week and hopefully take advantage of some good line value. For now, let’s dive into our betting power ratings and then take a look at what the spread should be for both conference title games.

Conference championship power ratings

Taking a break from the AFC, I now have the two NFC finalists as dead even after a strong performance by the Seahawks offense. You could certainly give them the overall edge after the Rams offense struggled against a questionable Bears defense, and to do that I think you’d have to be sure Sam Darnold isn’t a concern in big spots any longer. He didn’t exactly get tested in the divisional round, watching the opening kickoff get returned for a touchdown and then completing 12 passes in a game that felt over by the end of the first quarter.

The Rams offense managed just 4.4 yards per play on the road against the Bears, and they certainly have seemed out of their element in the outdoor conditions in the first two rounds despite gutting out two wins. Matthew Stafford completed less than half of his pass attempts in the win, and he’s going to have to be a lot better on Sunday for the Rams to advance.

The Patriots get another bump from me despite the offense’s struggles, as I think it’s abundantly clear the defense is in a much better spot than it was for most of the season. While Drake Maye and Co. have not risen to the challenge of facing elite defenses after many questioned the ease of their schedule in the regular season, the defense has stepped up and then some.

Then we have the Broncos, and we talked about my ratings adjustment above. Making them a +1 team puts them 11th among the 14 playoff teams, including everyone who is eliminated but who received ratings adjustments after their final games. I’d definitely take the Broncos over the Panthers (-1) and Steelers (0), and I moved the 49ers without George Kittle down to zero as well. Are the Broncos in a worse place than those teams heading into this game? Could I potentially have them too low putting them behind a Texans squad that got horrendous play from its QB and a Chargers team with major offensive line issues that couldn’t be papered over against a good defense? Are we sure this team wouldn’t be a coin flip on a neutral field with the Packers or maybe even the Bears?

Let’s take a quick look at each game’s spread projection.

Patriots at Broncos

In order for a line of Patriots -6 to make sense to me, you’d have to make the Broncos an average team without Bo Nix, give them just two points of home-field advantage, then put the Patriots on level in my ratings with the Seahawks and Rams. I can’t do any of those things, so I see a lot of value backing the Broncos really at anything above 3.5.

That becomes even more of a key number in this situation of a home underdog in the playoffs. Heading into this postseason, home underdogs of four points or more were 9-0 ATS over the last 50 years, combining three straight close losses from 2012-20 with six outright wins from 1976 to 2011.

I pounded the table for the Panthers as 10.5-point underdogs in the wild card round for this reason, saying that these perceived bad teams outperform expectations consistently in the playoffs with everything on the line and the prospect of their season ending. I was told that this time is different, that the Rams were really good and the Panthers were really bad, as if the other situations when a team was laying more than a touchdown on the road in the playoffs didn’t have the same perception.

Once the spread got up to four against the Bears this past week, I backed the home team again. This one came close to being the streak ender before Caleb Williams unleashed one of the best passes in the history of postseason football to send the game into OT, where the Rams won but didn’t cover. That makes the home ‘dogs of four or more 11-0 against the spread heading into this matchup.

What would be the situation where the Broncos could cover or even win this game? Could it be an elite defense shutting down an offense that has not been in good form and reducing the impact of poor quarterback play? How often do we see that happen?

My spread for this game is Patriots -2.5.

Rams at Seahawks

Heading into the start of the week, this feels like a game where you could argue any range of spreads. The Seahawks probably have to be favored at home after a dominant win over the 49ers while the Rams barely survived in overtime, but what about the first two meetings in this matchup would give you confidence laying points with either team considering how close each was?

I think the easiest thing to do — and, in fact, what I’ve done — is to say these are two even teams and then make the spread whatever you give Seattle for home-field advantage. The defense is playing at a high level, giving up a total of 548 yards in its last three games combined, which all came against playoff teams (Panthers and the 49ers twice). But the game prior the defense allowed 587 yards to these Rams in Seattle in an overtime game won by the Seahawks’ decision to go for two and execute. The Rams turned the ball over three times in that one and still nearly won.

The spread for that shootout in Seattle was Seahawks -1.5, so moving this spread to 2.5 must either mean the Seahawks have gotten better since that game or the Rams have gotten worse. I’d chalk the point of line movement up to Stafford not looking 100% these last few weeks, but we’ll see if he can look more like the QB in the previous meeting as that will probably determine which of these teams is representing the NFC in the Super Bowl.

My spread for this game is Seahawks -2.5.