At this moment, the dawning of the 2017 regular season, every fan is wondering just how the next 17 weeks of action (and the playoffs that follow) will pan out. While there are some things that pretty much every sensible observer agrees with (the Patriots will win the AFC East, the Seahawks will win the NFC West, the Jets passing attack will be cringeworthy), there are endless scenarios that can be imagined.

Enter Madden NFL 18 to produce one of them. We simulated the entirety of the 2017 season in Franchise mode, one week at a time. For the sake of full disclosure, the simulation took place with the Seahawks as the ‘user-controlled’ team but with all games simulated and no training undertaken, a community-submitted roster update to reflect moves made since the last official update (such as the Sheldon Richardson trade), CPU teams releasing and signing players but not trading them, and the game difficulty set to All-Pro with no slider adjustments.

Additionally, the simulation is unable to account for the fact that the Buccaneers-Dolphins game scheduled for this weekend has been moved to the teams’ shared Week 11 bye due to the impending arrival of Hurricane Irma. (We wish good fortune to all those at risk of being hit by this historically bad storm.)

With those caveats in mind, let’s run through this electronically generated piece of soothsaying one week at a time and find out what Madden predicts…