Atlanta Falcons vs Pittsburgh Steelers — Win Probability

Steelers Edge Falcons; Model's Projection Holds Up in Week 1

Pittsburgh's 20-13 victory over Atlanta played out almost exactly as the model anticipated. The Steelers were favored at kickoff with a 68% win probability, and they delivered a non-upset result that fell just outside the projection's margin.

The model expected Pittsburgh to score 23.8 and Atlanta to post 17.7—a projected margin of 6.1 points. The actual final was 20-13, a 7-point Steelers win. That's a miss of just 0.9 points on the margin, well within the noise band of single-game prediction.

The market lined Pittsburgh at a 6-point favorite. The model's 6.1-point projection aligned tightly with that consensus, suggesting agreement between the quantitative and betting markets on where this game would land. Both were right to favor the Steelers, and both slightly overestimated how much Pittsburgh would win by.

Pittsburgh scored 3.8 points below projection; Atlanta scored 4.7 points below. Both offenses produced less than expected, but the gap between them narrowed by less than a point. The Steelers' ability to stay closer to their projection—and crucially, stay above the 20-point threshold—proved decisive.

This is a clean outcome for the model. It identified Pittsburgh as the clear favorite, pegged the likely margin within a point, and the market agreed. The Steelers won as expected. The actual score landed just outside the expected range, but not by enough to suggest a fundamental misread. Week 1 provides a baseline: when the model and the market align on a non-upset outcome, the margin projection typically lands within single digits of the result.