FiveThirtyEight’s top stories this week

1 A [FiveThirtyEight]( email [Popular This Week] Sunday, January 6, 2019 [1. Can The Eagles Beat The Bears? Can Houston Stop Andrew Luck?]( [SportsChat-1231-4×3]( sara.ziegler (Sara Ziegler, assistant sports editor): The NFL’s 2018 regular season is finally in the books. Before the playoffs get rolling, let’s look back on an interesting Week 17 and preview next weekend’s wild-card round. We’ll end with giving our Super Bowl predictions again, just to keep us honest. [Read more]( [2. The Public Blamed Trump For The Shutdown — But That May Be Changing]( [0104_POLLA-4×3]( Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup. [Read more]( [3. With No Runaway Favorites, The NFL Playoffs Should Be Wild]( [Chicago Bears v Minnesota Vikings]( With the NFL’s playoff bracket finally set, it’s time to survey the field and handicap the race for the Super Bowl. What’s interesting about this season is that there are plenty of very good teams but few that could be classified as truly dominant. Nine teams have an Elo rating of at least 1600, but none of them has cracked 1700 on the eve of the playoffs. In only one other season since 1990 — when the NFL expanded its postseason to the current format — have this many teams been squeezed into the 1600-to-1700 range on the Elo scale, and even that season (2015) had one team above 1700: [Read more]( [4. How Elizabeth Warren Could Win The 2020 Democratic Primary]( [Labor Activists Rally On Capitol Hill After Puzder Withdraws Nomination]( It’s as if we skipped right from 2018 to 2020. On Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren became the first major Democratic candidate to formally dip a toe in the water of the 2020 presidential campaign, announcing the creation of an exploratory committee. Not everyone who creates an exploratory committee ends up becoming an official candidate, but Warren is very likely to. For all intents and purposes, she is now running for president. [Read more]( [5. Kirk Cousins Is Not Better Than Joe Montana. So Let’s Fix Passer Rating.]( [San Francisco 49ers v Tampa Bay Buccaneers]( According to the NFL’s official passer rating system, the most efficient quarterback in NFL history is Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers, with a lifetime mark of 103.1. That makes sense: Rodgers is generally regarded as one of the greatest QBs to ever play the game. But if you scroll further down the list, the results become much harder to explain. In the world of passer rating, Kirk Cousins is better than Joe Montana; Derek Carr and Matt Schaub top Dan Marino; and, after one season, Broadway Sam Darnold is running circles around Broadway Joe Namath. [Read more]( [6. The Best Players And Biggest Upsets Of 2018 In (Almost) Any Sport]( [World Series – Boston Red Sox v Los Angeles Dodgers – Game Five]( As 2018 draws to its conclusion, we wanted to look back at the year in sports — the best (and worst) teams, the results that surprised us most and the athletes who inspired us. On Friday, we covered the best and worst teams of 2018, so now it’s time to look at the best players and upsets of the year. [Read more]( [7. The 45 Best — And Weirdest — Charts We Made In 2018]( [promo-charts-2018-4×3]( Another year, another few hundred charts and maps on FiveThirtyEight. (Not to mention our interactive graphics and updating dashboards.) To celebrate the end of the year, our team of visual journalists got together and looked back at some of their favorite graphics. Here are 45, in no particular order. If one really whets your appetite, click on the chart and you’ll be brought to the story from which it sprang. [Read more]( [8. The Best And Worst Teams Of 2018 In (Almost) Any Sport]( [World Series – Boston Red Sox v Los Angeles Dodgers – Game Five]( The 2018 calendar year has been pretty incredible for sports fans. We saw a Winter Olympics and a World Cup, with Norway setting a new record for medals in the former and France’s young stars bursting onto the scene in the latter. In America’s professional ranks, some teams won their first-ever championships, while others kept winning so much we wondered if they’d broken their sport. And in college, the usual suspects continued to dominate. [Read more]( [9. Republicans In Congress Have Been Very Loyal To Trump. Will It Last?]( [US-POLITICS-TRUMP-TAX-REFORM]( It’s the first day of business for the newly sworn-in 116th Congress, and House Democrats have already held several votes — on a bill to fund the government and a package of rule changes to House procedures. Both passed, but not without some intraparty tension. As the freshly minted majority party in the House, Democrats must wrestle with the question of how they will vote in this era of divided government. Will they vote together against President Trump’s agenda, or will tensions arise between the more progressive and centrist factions of the party, splintering the Democrats’ newfound power? [Read more]( [10. The Sacramento Kings Are Turning Their Games Into Track Meets]( [Portland Trail Blazers v Sacramento Kings]( You could be forgiven if you didn’t think much of the Sacramento Kings’ chances coming into this season. The club, which was coming off a 27-victory campaign last year, hasn’t posted a 35-win season in more than a decade and is one of the NBA’s youngest teams. Sacramento also had a relatively quiet offseason aside from adding No. 2 overall pick Marvin Bagley. [Read more]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly Listen [Play]( [Politics Podcast: Our 2018 Politics Awards]( [FiveThirtyEight] [View in browser]( [ABC News]( [Unsubscribe]( Our mailing address: FiveThirtyEight, 147 Columbus Avenue, New York, NY 10023.