We Checked 11 Years of NFL Weather Data. Wind and Rain Torch Your Passing Game - Your Running Back Couldn't Care Less.

Every year around Week 10, some guy on your league's group chat starts posting screenshots of a wind forecast like he just cracked the Zodiac Killer case. "Bench your WR1, it's gonna be 20 mph in Chicago." Sometimes he's right. Sometimes he's just a guy with an opinion and a Weather app. We don't do vibes here, so we pulled every real weather reading we have — going back to 2015 — lined it up against every real stat line from those same games, and found out who's actually right. Spoiler: it's complicated, and one entire position group didn't get the memo that weather is supposed to matter.

The Setup

We took every completed NFL game from 2015 through 2025 with a real, synced weather reading — over 2,100 outdoor games (domes don't count, obviously, nobody's rationing rushing yards because of a light drizzle 60 feet above a retractable roof). A game counted as "inclement" if it had sustained wind of 15+ mph, any measurable rain, or any snow at all. Everything else — calm, dry, boring — is the baseline. About 1 in 4 outdoor games in our database clears that bar. Then we looked at real per-player performances: every quarterback who actually threw a pass, every running back who actually got a carry, every receiver who actually saw a target, sorted into "normal" and "inclement," and averaged it out.

Your Quarterback Feels the Wind

This is the one the group-chat guy actually gets right. Wind messes with ball flight, rain messes with grip and footing, and a quarterback who normally rips a comeback route on a rope suddenly has to loft it and hope. 6% doesn't sound like a lot until you're the guy who started a QB projected for 260 and got 200.

Your Wide Receiver Feels It Too — Sort Of

Before you panic-bench your WR1: this almost certainly isn't receivers getting worse in the rain, it's quarterbacks throwing fewer and shorter passes in the rain. Same weather, same drop, most likely the same root cause counted twice.

Your Running Back Does Not Care

Your running back isn't reading the forecast, and it turns out he doesn't need to. He wasn't relying on the ball traveling 40 yards through the air in the first place. A 15 mph crosswind doesn't make a hole in the offensive line any smaller. Our own prediction model agrees, mostly — after controlling for opponent strength and game script, rushing yards get nudged just a bit in bad weather, nowhere close to what passing takes. Passing yards is still the one stat where weather earns a real seat at the table.

Why We're Telling You This

This isn't just a fun eleven-year fact for your league chat, though feel free to use it that way. It's also exactly why our player projections already dock a quarterback's passing-yard number for real wind and precipitation, and nudge his receivers' yards down a little too — while his running back's rushing total barely moves. Some sites either ignore weather completely or slap a vague "weather could be a factor" note on every outdoor game regardless of what the data actually says. We'd rather move each number by exactly as much as the numbers say it should move, and not a yard more.

Based on every completed NFL game with a synced weather reading, 2015-2025 (2,100+ outdoor games). Averages are per real player-game performance, not team totals. see this week's weather-adjusted projections. Gamble responsibly, 21+ only.