Meet Paul Bessire, a veteran sports writer and statistician who built an NFL prediction website called the PredictionMachine.com, offering "in-depth analysis" and, as you can surmise, predictions to NFL games using a machine creatively named the Predictalator. The Predictalator takes into account "best possible inputs for players' statistics, progression over time and age, roles, health and playing time as well as teams' coaching styles and weather" as keys of its accuracy while also applying:
strength-of-schedule-adjusted, relevant statistics from the player's most recent 64 professional games (~4 seasons of data that are weighted more heavily on the most recent 16 games) to a fairly traditional player development curve that considers age and previous playing time. Not only does this development curve help to set average inputs, it combines with health history to dictate the variance ("boom or bust" potential) of a player's inputs.
The Predictalator ran the entire 2011 season 50,000 times and predicted that the Bengals will win six games this season -- which is six more than the most panicked fans are predicting right now. We know that it's not much comfort for a machine to pump out win probabilities for games that still have to be played. Bessire points out that his machine/technology has accurately predicted games at a 62% clip against the spread.