By Ben Sullivan
Pennsylvanians went into the 2018 season believing that it might be a banner year for the state’s NFL teams.
The Eagles were league champs the season before, and the Pittsburgh Steelers had harbored their own championship aspirations before an upset playoff loss against Jacksonville.
Although we’ve never seen a Steelers-Eagles Super Bowl, we’ve come close a few times this century — both teams made the conference championship in 2008-09 (Eagles lost), 2004-05 (Steelers lost) and 2001-02 (both lost). There was reason to think 2018 might bring another chance for a clash between Eastern and Western PA on the game’s biggest stage.
Fourteen weeks later, that’s not looking so hot, according to 538.com..
The Steelers started strong despite a contract impasse with star running back Le’Veon Bell, but they’ve faltered recently in a three-game losing streak and now are in danger of missing the playoffs. And Pittsburgh is this year’s Pennsylvania success story. The defending-champion Eagles continue to suffer from one of history’s worst Super Bowl hangovers and are down to an 18 percent playoff probability after Sunday’s crushing loss to the Dallas Cowboys.
In the midst of all of that turmoil, though, Pennsylvania will be at the center of the football universe for Week 15 of the NFL season. According to our combination of matchup quality (i.e., the harmonic mean of the teams’ Elo ratings in each game) and game importance (how likely it is to swing every team’s odds of making the playoffs),1 the Steelers’ game against the New England Patriots on Sunday afternoon is the best of the week, while Philly’s Sunday-night clash against the Rams is tied for second-best:
Week 15 games by the highest average Elo rating (using the harmonic mean) plus the total potential swing for all NFL teams’ playoff chances based on the result, according to FiveThirtyEight’s NFL predictions
| PLAYOFF % | PLAYOFF % | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TEAM A | CURRENT | AVG. CHG* | TEAM B | CURRENT | AVG. CHG* | TOTAL CHANGE | GAME QUALITY |
| PIT | 62.3% | +/-23.1 | NE | 99.3% | +/-0.7 | 47.1 | 1617 |
| EAGLES | 17.6 | 14.7 | LAR | 100.0 | 0.0 | 30.8 | 1604 |
| MIN | 56.8 | 17.9 | MIA | 20.2 | 11.3 | 58.4 | 1491 |
| CAR | 8.9 | 9.4 | NO | 100.0 | 0.0 | 20.3 | 1605 |
| IND | 27.2 | 12.3 | DAL | 99.2 | 0.9 | 26.5 | 1546 |
| BAL | 54.6 | 15.1 | TB | 0.8 | 1.1 | 32.8 | 1508 |
| TEN | 34.5 | 19.1 | NYG | 0.5 | 0.5 | 40.8 | 1485 |
| LAC | 99.7 | 0.2 | KC | 100.0 | 0.0 | 4.0 | 1656 |
| GB | 3.2 | 4.2 | CHI | 99.9 | 0.2 | 10.0 | 1527 |
| HOU | 96.1 | 4.9 | NYJ | 0.0 | 0.0 | 12.7 | 1440 |
| WSH | 10.5 | 8.6 | JAX | 0.0 | 0.0 | 19.8 | 1429 |
| DEN | 5.1 | 3.2 | CLE | 0.5 | 0.7 | 9.0 | 1445 |
| DET | 3.5 | 3.3 | BUF | 0.0 | 0.0 | 10.1 | 1431 |
| SEA | 99.3 | 1.1 | SF | 0.0 | 0.0 | 3.3 | 1481 |
| ATL | 0.1 | 0.0 | ARI | 0.0 | 0.0 | 1.5 | 1409 |
| CIN | 0.4 | 0.3 | OAK | 0.0 | 0.0 | 2.4 | 1370 |
