NFL Week 18 power ratings for against the spread picks: What each Week 18 line should be, and where there's value

Welcome to Week 18 of the NFL season for the first time ever. While this is uncharted territory in terms of raw number of games played, we have plenty of experience trying to navigate the final week of an NFL season where motivation and rest factors come into play. That leads to some major gaps between what a power ratings system like mine projects a spread to be and where it actually is based on factors that have nothing to do with overall team quality.

Take the Packers, for example. Last week, they were favored by 11 points on the lookahead line for the Week 18 matchup with the Lions in Detroit. However, if they beat the Vikings while the Cowboys lost to the Cardinals, Green Bay would lock up the No. 1 seed in the NFC and have no incentive to go all-out for a win during the final week. That scenario has come to pass, and now the Packers are favored by less than a field goal.

Rather than trying to subjectively move the sliders on motivation and rest for every team, I've kept my power ratings based solely on each team giving 100% effort (or whatever 100% looks like for the basement-dwellers at this point) in Week 18. You'll see massive differences in some of the projected lines as a result, and then you'll have to determine how much the subjective motivation/rest factors are worth. I'll try and give my best guess at the end of this piece.

Read on to see my rating for all 32 teams, plus where I think the lines present the most value early in the week. 

Which lines are more than a point off their power rating projections for Week 17? And which teams are being undervalued by the market? ... Join SportsLine right now to see Week 17 power ratings from the expert who finished 2020 on an outstanding 80-59 run on NFL picks!