NFL 2025 Week 17 Predictions – Zoltar Struggles with Wild Vegas Point Spread Swings

Zoltar is my NFL football prediction computer program. It uses a neural network and a type of reinforcement learning. Here are Zoltar’s predictions for week #17 of the 2025 season.

Zoltar:  commanders  by    1  opp =     cowboys    | Vegas:  commanders  by  3.5
Zoltar:       lions  by    0  opp =     vikings    | Vegas:       lions  by    3
Zoltar:     broncos  by    0  opp =      chiefs    | Vegas:      chiefs  by  4.5
Zoltar:    chargers  by    4  opp =      texans    | Vegas:      texans  by  1.5
Zoltar:     packers  by    6  opp =      ravens    | Vegas:     packers  by  2.5
Zoltar:    seahawks  by    5  opp =    panthers    | Vegas:    seahawks  by  7.5
Zoltar:     bengals  by    6  opp =   cardinals    | Vegas:     bengals  by  6.5
Zoltar:      saints  by    0  opp =      titans    | Vegas:      titans  by  3.5
Zoltar:    steelers  by    9  opp =      browns    | Vegas:    steelers  by  2.5
Zoltar:     jaguars  by    0  opp =       colts    | Vegas:       colts  by  1.5
Zoltar:  buccaneers  by    0  opp =    dolphins    | Vegas:  buccaneers  by  1.5
Zoltar:    patriots  by    5  opp =        jets    | Vegas:    patriots  by  1.5
Zoltar:     raiders  by    2  opp =      giants    | Vegas:      giants  by  3.5
Zoltar:       bills  by    4  opp =      eagles    | Vegas:       bills  by  1.5
Zoltar: fortyniners  by    2  opp =       bears    | Vegas: fortyniners  by  3.5
Zoltar:        rams  by    4  opp =     falcons    | Vegas:        rams  by  8.5

Zoltar theoretically suggests betting when the Vegas line is significantly different from Zoltar’s prediction. For the last few weeks of this season I’ve been using a very conservative threshold of 5 points difference. During the middle of the season I used a more aggressive threshold of 3 points.

For week #17, using a conservative threshold of 5 points, Zoltar likes two Vegas underdogs and one Vegas favorite:

texans       at     chargers: Bet on Vegas underdog chargers
steelers     at       browns: Bet on Vegas favorite  steelers
giants       at      raiders: Bet on Vegas underdog raiders

A bet on the Vegas underdog Chargers against the Texans will pay off if the Chargers win by any score, or if the favored Texans win but by less than 1.5 points (i.e., 1 point). If a favored team wins by exactly the point spread, the wager is a push. This is why point spreads often have a 0.5 added — called “the hook” — to eliminate pushes.

I use the early Vegas point spreads, usually posted on late Monday night, right after the Monday Night Football game. By the time you read this, the point spreads will have changed. This season the point spreads are changing wildly. A swing of 7 points is not uncommon.

I speculate that this is due to a huge increase in betting. When a lot of money is bet on one team in a matchup, the bookmakers must make a huge change in the point spread to encourage betting on the other team. Bookmakers only make money when the betting amounts are close to equal on both teams.

This week, 7 of the 16 scheduled games had a swing of 5 points or more. For example, the Patriots-Jets game opened with the Patriots favored by 1.5 points. But by Tuesday morning, the Patriots had become favored by 13.5 points — a swing of 12 points.

At the end of the season, predictions get very dicey. Injuries have accumulated and teams that have nothing to gain often sit key players to avoid injuries.

Put another way, Zoltar’s predictions have to be taken with a huge grain of salt.

Theoretically, if you must bet $110 to win $100 (typical in Vegas) then you’ll make money if you predict at 53% accuracy or better. But realistically, you need to predict at 60% accuracy or better, to account for logistics and things like data entry errors.

In week #16, against the Vegas point spread, Zoltar went 1-3 using a conservative 5.0 points as the advice threshold. Bad week, including a very bad recommendation on the Texans-Raiders game.

For the season, against the spread, Zoltar is 43-27 (~61% accuracy).

Just for fun, I track how well Zoltar does when just trying to predict just which team will win a game. This isn’t useful except for parlay betting. In week #16, just predicting the winning team, Zoltar went 7-6 with 3 games too close for Zoltar to express an opinion, which is poor. Vegas was one very poor too, going just 8-8 when just predicting the winning team.

My prediction system is named after the Zoltar fortune teller machine that can be found in arcades. Coin operated fortune tellers have been around for well over 100 years.

Center: The strange Sega Astrodata fortune teller was manufactured in 1971. Users would input their birthdate and then the machine would punch holes in a card to indicate seven predictions for things like “Your financial prospects will be” (poor, favorable, good, very good, excellent). When I was a teenager, one summer I worked at a miniature golf course in Anaheim, California. The property had an arcade that had some nice machines including an Astrodata, but Astrodata was broken more than half the time.

Right: The nice Egyptian Seeress was manufactured in 1929 by the Exhibit Supply Company (ESCO), a prominent maker of arcade games from the 1920s through the 1960s. The machine would give the user a business card sized fortune like, “You have a happy optimistic disposition. You are artistic, idealistic, and sometimes impractical. You are sympathetic and loving. You like to travel and you are eager to improve your mind.”