Omaha 1.4.0
Released 4 September 2026
Rushing figures now count kneel-downs, the way official statistics do. Our quarterback rushing numbers were understated by about a quarter and now match what you would look up elsewhere.
How to read these numbers
Every figure below compares the simulation against a player’s own season average so far, scaled to how much of the game is left, roughly what a reader could work out without us. Zero means we add nothing over that. Positive means we beat it; negative means we are worse than it.
Measured across the 2024 season, weeks 1–18, rebuilding the model each week using only what was known at the time. 400 simulations per situation.
Accuracy by stat
| Stat | vs. season average | Change from 1.3.0 |
|---|---|---|
| Receiving touchdownsrare event | +20.5% | — |
| Rushing touchdownsrare event | +17.2% | — |
| Receiving yards | +12.9% | — |
| Rushing yards | +11.1% | — |
| Pass attempts | +10.8% | — |
| Passing yards | +9.7% | — |
| Completions | +8.0% | — |
| Passing touchdownsrare event | +6.6% | — |
| Receptions | +1.4% | — |
| Rush attempts | +1.3% | — |
| Targets | −0.2% | — |
| Average across all figures | +9.0% |
The average is an unweighted mean across the figures above. It is a summary of how we are doing, not a single score for the model: yards and counts are not measured in the same units, so combining them any more cleverly than this would just let passing yards decide the answer.
Each change carries the range the measurement can actually support. A change whose range crosses zero is shown in neutral rather than as a gain: we cannot tell it apart from no change, and we are not claiming it as one.
What changed
Official statistics count a knee as a rushing attempt for about a yard lost, and so do the books that settle rushing props. Ours did not count it at all. For a quarterback this is not a rounding error: kneel-downs are a median 24% of a quarterback's published rushing attempts across a season, and for one of them in 2023 they were 63%. Anyone checking our number against a box score saw a figure that was simply wrong.
Projected quarterback rushing attempts moved from well short of the published figure to 95% of it, against 90% for a season average.
A season average cannot know that a quarterback kneels only when his team is ahead and only in the last few minutes. It can only spread his season total evenly across the game. The simulation plays the clock and the scoreboard, so it knows. This is the one place where knowing the situation is worth a great deal.
In the fourth quarter a season average reaches 57% of a quarterback's real rushing attempts; the simulation reaches 93%.
Kneel-downs are now counted separately as well as inside the rushing total, so we can tell whether we are getting them right rather than judging them through a figure they can flatter. That check immediately found something: we project too many kneel-downs and too few real quarterback carries, and the two errors cancel. The total looked almost perfect while both halves of it were wrong.
In the fourth quarter we project 46% too many kneel-downs and 29% too few real carries, which sum to a total within 2% of reality.
What this version still gets wrong
- Overall accuracy is essentially unchanged, at an average of +9.0% against +9.1%. This release makes a published number correct rather than making the model better.
- The two offsetting errors above are real defects and both are still present. They will be fixed together, because correcting either one alone would make the published rushing figure worse while making the simulation more accurate.
- Running back rushing attempts are level with a player's own season average, at +0.1%. It is the largest group of numbers we publish and the one we add least to.
- Targets, at −0.2%, remains the one figure not better than a season average.
- We still project slightly too many pass attempts late, about 12% in the fourth quarter. The play mix and the play count are both correct, so this is something else, and it is not yet understood.