Week 10 NFL betting power ratings for against the spread picks: Josh Allen elbow injury puts Bills in limbo

The big news of the week that could shake up the playoff race for the rest of the year isn't the Colts moving on from Frank Reich and appointing an interim coach in Jeff Saturday who hasn't coached before. Instead, it's the status of Josh Allen's elbow.

The Buffalo Bills quarterback is being evaluated for a potential UCL injury, one that the team was not willing to speak on Monday, instead choosing to wait for more information before addressing the situation Tuesday. If Allen's injury is deemed long-term, it's going to put a major obstacle in place for the Bills to win their first Super Bowl after being favorites to do so all year. But the chances they overcome the injury wouldn't be zero.

In fact, we have precedent for a team doing just that in recent years, when Nick Foles led the Eagles to an improbable win in Super Bowl LII. That quarterback injury happened much later in the season, allowing Philadelphia to maintain the No. 1 seed in the NFC and stay at home during their run to the Super Bowl, but it does show an elite team isn't necessarily sunk if it has to turn to its backup quarterback.

That would be the case in Buffalo as well if Case Keenum is needed to close out the season as the starter. In fact, that same season in which the Eagles won the Super Bowl behind Foles, Keenum went 11-3 as the Vikings' starter. Minnesota took the No. 2 seed in the NFC before ultimately getting blown out in Philadelphia in the NFC title game. He hasn't found success since that year, but Keenum is clearly capable of leading a winning team if he's put in the right situation. And in Buffalo, he'd have a great receiving corps (including his former top target Stefon Diggs) and an even better defense, which has played like a championship-level unit all year.

On a different team, the downgrade from Allen to Keenum would likely be at least worth 10 points in NFL power ratings. But that would make them below average in my power ratings, and I think they're anything but even with Keenum at quarterback. If Allen is out this week, I'm dropping the Bills six points to a +2.5 rating, putting them just ahead of the Vikings. That means I'd still take the Bills on a neutral field in a theoretical matchup, which is not so theoretical since those teams play each other in Week 10.

What are power ratings? Well, anyone who has followed football (or really any sport) for any length of time has encountered a power rankings list that projects teams from best to worst. Where power ratings for NFL betting differs is that you're affixing a point total to each team that tells you how much better or worse it is from an average team. For example, if you think the Seahawks are the midpoint of the league, their power rating would be a zero. If you think the Chargers are a little bit better, you might make them a +1. The Vikings may be another step above and worth a +2 rating. Going the other way, you may think the Cardinals are a -1 or -2 team (or even worse).

After you've rated all 32 teams in this fashion, you can take the difference between two teams in a scheduled matchup to determine what the line would be on a neutral field. In our example above, we'd say the Vikings should be favored by two points against the Seahawks on a neutral field. Then you add in home field advantage, which for a long time was considered three points as a standard but is actually lower on average in this era of football. I actually determine unique home field advantage totals for each team based on data from the last five years, and you can find my breakdown of this year's home-field advantage ratings here. I updated the HFA numbers of a few teams in my weekly workbook after six weeks with a better understanding of which teams are good and bad, and which fan bases are likely to be more engaged than previously anticipated (looking at you, New York).

I've dived into each Week 10 game and evaluated my Week 10 power ratings to see what needed to be adjusted. I've also shared analysis of the most extreme differences between my projected lines and the market, as well as done the math to project the spread of every game based on my power ratings.

Which lines are several points off their power rating projections for Week 10? And which teams are being undervalued by the market? ... Join SportsLine right now to see Week 10 power ratings from the expert who's 445-378-24 on ATS picks from 2017-21, returning $2,542 to $100 players!