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Thursday Night Football Preview: Seahawks @ Cardinals (Week 4, 2025)

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This week we have another divisional matchup between the Arizona Cardinals and the Seattle Seahawks. Both teams are 2-1, but they got there in very different ways. Both teams are tied with the Los Angeles Rams for bottom three spots in the tightly contested NFC West, with only the undefeated San Francisco 49ers having a clear lead over them. The Cardinals began the season on a strong note, narrowly holding on for a 20-13 road victory over New Orleans in Week 1, despite quarterback Kyler Murray dealing with an unknown illness. In Week 3, they suffered a tight 16-15 loss to the 49ers after taking the lead late in the fourth quarter on a safety, only to give up a game winning field goal in the final seconds. This will be the first game of the year that the Cardinals play without running back James Conner, who was carted off the field during the Week 3 loss with a season-ending ankle injury. The Seahawks recovered quickly after starting their season with a narrow 17-13 loss to the 49ers in...
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P.U.L.P. Predictions: Week 2

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Six years ago, someone with too much time on their hands set out to develop a perfect formula to predict the results of NFL games. It didn’t work. Instead, we ended up with a formula we call P.U.L.P. that we use to try and figure out which teams are currently playing the best football. The formula will not be explained here, but we will share with you what it says and how it is doing over the course of the season. This time of year, where there still isn't a ton of data on how teams are playing this season , P.U.L.P. doesn't work much better than flipping a coin to decide a winner. We used last year's final numbers to predict the results for Week 1 , and surprisingly went 9-5 (64% correct) in the games we did predict. While we don't like to give P.U.L.P. credit for retroactively picking winners for games that already happened, it is worth mentioning that it would have picked the Eagles to beat the Cowboys and the Chiefs to beat the Chargers in the first two games of the...
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Introducing P.U.L.P. Predictions

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Six years ago, someone with too much time on their hands set out to develop a perfect formula to predict the results of NFL games. It didn’t work. But instead, we wound up with a set of numbers that change every week, and become slightly more accurate as the season goes on. It generally is no better than a coin toss at picking winners for the first two weeks or the last two weeks of a given season, but it tends to do a pretty good job at figuring out who should win most games in that middle stretch. It can’t account for catastrophic changes to a team’s plan, like when a quarterback gets injured or a punt gets blocked and returned for a touchdown, but it does a pretty good job at setting a baseline for how likely a team is to endure the type of chaos that permeates every week in the NFL. We call this number the P.U.L.P. score, and this year we are publishing our predictions for each game of the regular season based on the difference in the P.U.L.P. score of the two teams playing any giv...
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Rule Changes for the 2025 NFL Season

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  The eve of the 2025 regular season is finally upon us. This year, things will kick off on Thursday night when the Dallas Cowboys will be in Philadelphia to take on the defending champion Eagles. Week 1 will also feature a Friday night game, with the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers heading to South America for the first ever NFL game in Brazil. That means two full games will already have gone final before the 1:00PM timeslot on Sunday even starts, and there will be plenty of opportunities for the newest changes to the NFL rulebook to make an impact on the game before most teams take the field for the first time. Here is a closer look at what new rules will be in effect for the 2025 regular season: Celebrations The NFL is putting a focus on unsportsmanlike conduct this year, especially in terms of what they are calling “violent gestures” during celebrations. Things that are no longer allowed under this rule include making the motion of a throat slash, mimicking a firear...
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The Rookie Jar: Will Campbell

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  When Will Campbell declared for the NFL Draft on December 3rd, 2024, he seemed like the perfect offensive line prospect. He had immediately earned his spot as the starting left tackle for the LSU Tigers when he arrived as a freshman, and spent the next three years shutting down the best pass rushers in the SEC. Over his 38 game college career, he only allowed 5 sacks. He stood an imposing 6’6” tall and weighed in at 320 pounds. He was a big part of the winning culture at LSU, serving as team captain for two seasons and helping get the team to a 29-11 during his time there. He even earned LSU’s famous #7 jersey, one of LSU’s highest team honors, becoming the first lineman to ever receive it even though he wasn’t allowed to actually wear it during games. With all of this going for him, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that he would be the first offensive lineman taken in the 2025 NFL Draft. But before the Patriots made that official, there was a lot of speculation over one part...
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Gilmore's Still Got More

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   Stephon Gilmore's career looked like it was coming to an end back in 2021. After winning the Super Bowl with the Patriots in 2018 and then winning Defensive Player of the Year in 2019, he finished 2020 with a quadriceps injury and opened the 2021 season on the Physically Unable to Perform list. By October of that year, the 31 year old defensive back was traded to the Carolina Panthers for a sixth round draft pick (which was later used to draft Kayshon Boutte).    Cornerback careers are notorious for coming to sudden ends at a certain age, especially after lower body injuries. The speed that is essential to their position doesn't always fully return, and without the ability to keep up with younger receivers, their drop off is usually pretty steep. Most players in Gilmore's position would quietly fade out of the league within a year or two of that injury and subsequent trade.   Instead, Gilmore beat the odds. He recovered from his quad injury and in t...
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The Rookie Jar: Abdul Carter

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Abdul Carter is one of the most exciting and versatile defensive players of the 2025 rookie class. With a rare blend of size, speed, and a high football IQ, he was able to shine as a traditional off-ball inside linebacker at Penn State before moving down to the line of scrimmage and becoming one of the best prospects in the nation. He took home several awards in his only season playing as an edge rusher, and helped bring the Nittany Lions on a deep postseason run in the newly expanded College Football Playoffs. The New York Giants selected him with their first round pick despite having two talented edge rushers on the roster already, leading to some speculation about how exactly they plan to use Carter going forward. This is a player with undeniable physical talent, but questions about his lack of experience at his current position and potential to play other positions make him one of the more intriguing players to watch as we head into the 2025 NFL season. Here is everything you need ...
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