Learn FDI
How First Down Intel works
First Down Intel is built on a few ideas that shape everything on the Desk: separate what the market says from what a model says, say so plainly when the evidence is not there, and freeze a model's output before kickoff so it can be checked honestly afterward. These guides explain each one in plain language.
The guides
- What the Intel Score meansThe Intel Score measures how strongly the available evidence supports the way a read was built. It is not a win, cover or hit probability, an expected return, or a certainty.
- Why NO READ existsNO READ means First Down Intel has no scored read it can present for a game. It is not a pass and not an instruction — and weak information is never filled in just to populate a screen.
- Prospective tracking: predictions frozen before kickoffHow First Down Intel freezes a model output before kickoff, joins the result back after the game, and never rewrites the original — including how games a player misses are handled.
- Model vs market: projections, lines and pricesThe difference between an FDI projection, a sportsbook line, the arithmetic gap between them, the prices on each side, and why the time of a quote matters.
The principle behind them
Find clean reads. Avoid chaos. Most of the NFL week is noise: lines move, news breaks, numbers disagree. FDI's job is to show what is known, show how well it is known, and stay quiet where it is not — rather than force an opinion onto every game.
See it in practice
The public sample shows each of these ideas on one frozen, historical game from the member Desk.