The voice and artificial intelligence behind your Windows phone has been predicting every NFL game for the last two seasons. Its prediction algorithm is modeled after Bing Predicts, and factors previous performance, statistics, location, weather and margin of victory to predict the outcome of matches. Cortana’s three biggest misses came in divisional games, as the Patriots, Panthers, and Seahawks all lost in upsets. Rounding out rest of its mistakes, Cortana failed to pick the Ravens, Redskins, or Bears in their wins last week.
All season long we’ve tracked Cortana’s progress up against FiveThirtyEight’s Elo model. Last week, Elo also went 10-6 in outright picks, missing on the same games as Cortana. It's week pushed its overall record to 159-81 (66%). This week, Cortana is riding with the favorites in Week 17. In the biggest game of the week, it thinks the Packers will beat the Vikings to clinch the NFC North, and thinks the Jets will beat the Bills in order to secure their first playoff berth since 2009. In the other playoff scenarios still up in the air, it thinks the Patriots and Panthers will both win and secure home-field advantage.
Cortana predicts that the Carolina Panthers have a 78% chance of winning, the highest in all games, followed by the Broncos (77%) and Bengals/Chiefs (74%).
As always, Cortana only picks the outright winner of every game, and the Vegas point-spread (in parentheses) is only included for comparison and they are provided courtesy of Oddsshark.com.
Week 17 Picks:
New York Jets (-3) @ Buffalo Bills — Jets 55% chance to win
New England Patriots (-10.5) @ Miami Dolphins — Patriots 69%
New Orleans Saints (+4) @ Atlanta Falcons — Saints 53%
Baltimore Ravens (+9) @ Cincinnati Bengals — Bengals 74%
Pittsburgh Steelers (-10) @ Cleveland Browns — Steelers 70%
Jacksonville Jaguars (+6) @ Houston Texans — Texans 63%
Tennessee Titans (+6) @ Indianapolis Colts — Colts 67%
Washington Redskins (+3.5) @ Dallas Cowboys — Cowboys 52%
Philadelphia Eagles (+3) @ New York Giants — Giants 58%
Detroit Lions (+1) @ Chicago Bears — Lions 52%
Tampa Bay Buccaneers (+10.5) @ Carolina Panthers — Panthers 78%
Oakland Raiders (+6.5) @ Kansas City Chiefs — Chiefs 74%
San Diego Chargers (+9) @ Denver Broncos — Broncos 77%
Seattle Seahawks (+6.5) @ Arizona Cardinals — Cardinals 67%
St. Louis Rams (-3.5) @ San Francisco 49ers — Rams 67%
Minnesota Vikings (+3) @ Green Bay Packers — Packers 58%