How did Week 10 of the NFL schedule shake up the possible 2024 NFL Draft order?

To get an update on where things stand, we turn to Austin Mock’s projections. Mock projects the score for every game and the final winning percentage for every team using his NFL betting model. The model phases out older data and uses data from this year as the season progresses. The simulation then runs 100,000 times after each day of games to give us, in this case, our projected top-10 draft order, plus each team’s projected win total and playoff chances.

A few thoughts on this week’s projections:

1. Is Chicago’s double-up dream fading?

Not that long ago, we were talking about the very real possibility that the Chicago Bears — thanks to that extra top-10 pick they’ll hold via the Carolina Panthers — could walk out of Round 1 with the QB of its choosing (Caleb Williams or Drake Maye) and all-world Ohio State receiver Marvin Harrison Jr.

The Bears’ Thursday night win over the Panthers did inch that Carolina draft slot closer to No. 1, but the Bears themselves now have three victories. Were the draft held today, their own pick would be No. 5.

They’d still be in phenomenal shape to pair Williams/Maye (if that’s the direction they go) with an elite prospect — Penn State OT Olu Fashanu, Georgia OT Amarius Mims and Georgia TE Brock Bowers were next up in Dane Brugler’s recent top 50. There’d be a different level of excitement, though, over pairing a potential franchise QB with Harrison, who could be one of the NFL’s best receivers from the moment he arrives.

Chicago now is projected to win 5.4 games this season, up from 4.9 a week ago. The upcoming schedule is daunting: two games with Detroit and trips to Minnesota and Cleveland. The final three weeks, however, could put wins on the board: Arizona, Atlanta, at Green Bay.

2. The Giants are (still) down bad

By virtue of having played one fewer game, Carolina (1-8) still holds the top spot in the actual, current draft order. Mock’s model, though, suggests that will flip by the slightest of margins when all is said and done — the New York Giants (2-8) fading all the way to that No. 1 pick.

Even a three-win projection feels optimistic for coach Brian Daboll’s club at this point, although upcoming home games against New England and Green Bay appear winnable. The outcomes of those matchups will go a long way toward ultimately settling the draft’s top 10. But the Giants haven’t even been competitive the past two weeks (a 30-6 loss to Las Vegas and a 49-17 setback at Dallas). The 17 points New York scored Sunday marked its highest offensive output since Week 2.

3. Denver moves out of the top 10

After “winning” a game that both teams aggressively tried to lose Monday night in Buffalo, the Denver Broncos (4-5) are on a three-game heater and find themselves back in the very tightly packed AFC wild-card race. Their projections here aren’t overly sunny — a win total of 7.6, a 6.9-percent playoff chance and a Hail Mary 0.3-percent shot at the division.

Those are slight bumps over last week, however (7.3 projected wins; 5.1-percent playoff chance), and they’re good enough to nudge the Broncos out of the top 10 this week.

Next up: A Sunday nighter against the surging Minnesota Vikings, in a game that’s suddenly taken on a lot of meaning.

4. Welcome to the top 10 …

… Green Bay. The Packers (6.7 projected wins) tumbled after a 23-19 loss to the Steelers, and any hopes they had of parlaying a win over the Rams into a second-half surge might be gone already.

The good news: Green Bay still has a 16.2-percent projected playoff chance, in large part because the remaining schedule includes games with the Panthers, Giants and Bears — not to mention a Lambeau Field date with the now 4-5 Buccaneers. The bad news is that the next three games are a gauntlet: the Chargers this Sunday, Thanksgiving Day in Detroit, then a home game versus the Chiefs. There’s a trip to Minnesota looming in December, too.

It’s not that hard to see the Packers, even with all their issues on offense, getting into that six-to-seven-win range, as the projections expect. It’d take something awfully special to push them beyond that and back into the playoff picture.

5. A Super Bowl preview in Week 11?

As things stand, the AFC playoffs would go through Kansas City (7-2) and the NFC through Philadelphia (8-1). Those teams will square up Monday night, in K.C., for what could be one of the games of the year.

Not surprisingly, the Chiefs and Eagles also are sitting pretty in Mock’s latest projections. Patrick Mahomes and company have the best Super Bowl shot (20.2 percent) and a whopping 96.8-percent chance to take the AFC West; Philadelphia is No. 2 on the Super Bowl list (15.2 percent), has the highest projected win total (13.1) and already is at 100 percent to make the playoffs (and 88.4 percent to win the NFC East).

For as rough as the Week 10 prime-time slate was, Week 11 — with Cincinnati at Baltimore leading things off Thursday — looks enticing.

(Photo: Cooper Neill / Getty Images)

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