Omaha 1.5.0
Released 4 September 2026
Who catches the ball now depends on how far it traveled. Every figure we publish is now better than a player's own season average, targets, the last holdout, has turned.
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.
The change column is simply this version’s accuracy minus 1.4.0’s, each measured across everything that version covers, so the two columns you can see always account for it. We also measure the change on shared situations alone, which is a more sensitive test; where the two disagree we publish this one.
Accuracy by stat
| Stat | vs. season average | Change from 1.4.0 |
|---|---|---|
| Receiving touchdownsrare event | +20.5% | +0.04−0.47 to −0.20 |
| Rushing touchdownsrare event | +17.3% | +0.05+0.06 to +0.17 |
| Receiving yards | +13.4% | +0.54+0.41 to +0.67 |
| Rushing yards | +11.1% | +0.04−0.01 to +0.08 |
| Pass attempts | +10.8% | +0.00+0.00 to +0.00 |
| Passing yards | +9.7% | +0.00+0.00 to +0.00 |
| Completions | +8.0% | +0.00+0.00 to +0.00 |
| Passing touchdownsrare event | +6.6% | +0.00+0.00 to +0.00 |
| Rush attempts | +1.3% | +0.00−0.02 to +0.02 |
| Receptions | +0.9% | −0.50−0.71 to −0.34 |
| Targets | +0.2% | +0.37+0.28 to +0.47 |
| Average across all figures | +9.1% |
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
Backs take 38% of catches under five yards and 9% of those over twenty; receivers go the other way, 41% to 72%. The simulation knew how far each throw traveled and then chose the catcher without looking at it, so a screen and a forty-yard strike were handed out by identical odds. It now picks the kind of player the throw actually went to.
Receiving yards improved 0.5 points and targets 0.4, both measured against the same games and the same players as the previous version.
Targets have been our weakest number since we started publishing these pages, and the only one that lost to simply looking up a player's season average. It is now ahead, which means every figure on this page beats that benchmark.
Targets moved from −0.2% to +0.2%. It is a small margin and we are not claiming more than it is worth.
Passing attempts, completions, yards and touchdowns are untouched, exactly. The change only affects the choice of who receives the ball, and a quarterback's passing line does not go through that choice.
All four passing figures moved by 0.00.
What this version still gets wrong
- Receptions got worse, from +1.4% to +0.9%, and we understand why. The simulation is now right that backs catch a higher share of what is thrown at them, but it throws at them 21% more often than real teams do, so getting the catch rate right converted an existing error into more of it. Fixing how often backs are targeted is the next release, and should recover this.
- Overall accuracy is unchanged at +9.1%. This release moves accuracy between figures rather than adding to the total.
- Rush attempts and rushing yards are unchanged. The same effect exists for runs but is about half the size, and there are only one or two backs to choose between.
- The strength of a figure now depends on the simulation getting the distribution of play outcomes right, in a way it did not before. That is currently accurate, and it is something we now have to watch.