Big Blue View
Unlike Han Solo, I want to know the odds
The excitement surrounding the NFL’s annual schedule release has died down. We now know not only the New York Giants will be playing in 2025, but when they’ll be playing them.
The Giants’ schedule is daunting on paper, and we immediately began speculating on how the 2025 season will play out. Ed took the optimistic path and is predicting a 7-10 record for the Giants. Cynthia Frelund of NFL.com is modeling an average of 5.4 wins for the Giants.
Almost a year ago, I decided to take the human element out of it and used Pro Football Network’s playoff prediction machine to simulate the season 100 times.
That actually turned out to be an interesting exercise and it’s prediction of a 4-13 season for the Giants was disappointing but ultimately accurate. I don’t think their machine could have predicted Daniel Jones being released and Dexter Lawrence suffering a season-ending injury, but it was accurate.
So I decided to run the experiment again and see what the results were. Once again, the results are interesting — though we’ll have to wait and see just how accurate they are.
This is the question on everyone’s mind. Last year, the simulations predicted a 5-12 season for the Giants (4.77 wins on average), with 4-13 as the most common result.
This year, the simulations predict a similar 5-12 record, but with an interesting twist. The average wins is actually a bit worse, at 4.67 wins, however the most common result was a 6-11 season (22 instances).
Las Vegas set the Giants’ over/under at 5.5 wins, and this seems to fall in line with that.
All told, there were a combined 30 instances of three- and four-win seasons (11 and 19, respectively), compared to a combined 33 instances of six- and seven-win season (22 and 11, respectively).
It’s interesting that, at least according to the simulations, the Giants are as likely to come away from 2025 with a seven-win season as they are to finish with three wins. And while the simulations predict that it’s more likely that the Giants will finish with one win (4%) than eight, nine, or 10 wins, they do give the Giants a slightly better chance of having “eight or more” wins (5%).
The Giants’ lone playoff appearance came with a 10-7 record on the third simulation.
Given how the simulations panned out, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Giants finished fourth in the NFC East far more often than not.
There were 71 instances of a fourth-place finish, as opposed to 27 instances of a third-place finish.
The Giants did finish second in the NFC East twice, once making the playoffs and once just missing them. Ultimately, the Giants’ rank in the division — and their final record as a whole — usually came down to their season series with the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys frequently...
