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Where the Home Margin forecasts miss

Weekly EPA-OLS replay compared with recorded market spreads on the same completed games. Development and already-inspected confirmation remain separate. These are retrospective results, not frozen prospective forecasts.

Average error on common games

evidence system n mae rmse bias
already_inspected_confirmation epa_ols 1022 12.761 15.968 -0.089
already_inspected_confirmation market_recorded 1022 11.982 15.142 -0.871
retrospective_development epa_ols 2826 13.213 16.768 0.136
retrospective_development market_recorded 2826 12.244 15.581 0.137

MAE is average absolute point error. RMSE gives more weight to large misses. Bias is predicted minus actual Home Margin: positive means overstating the home side. A bias near zero can hide large errors that cancel.

Predicted versus actual Home Margin and
signed residual distributions, separated by evaluation evidence

Inspect every cohort and game

Team cohorts include both venues but keep the home-side error sign. Samples below 30 common games are flagged sparse. Larger samples remain descriptive; games share teams and weeks. Error quantiles are not confidence intervals or a calibrated prediction distribution.

Coverage describes saved lined projections only. Games omitted before export cannot be counted here. Recorded spreads lack verified pre-kickoff capture times.

Home Margin alone cannot determine totals. Win and cover probabilities need a validated distribution or calibration mapping. No forecast mapping changed.

Read the evaluation inventory and cutoff audit