Final 2006 DVOA Ratings

by Aaron Schatz

Baltimore is the number one team in the NFL for 2006, according to the Football Outsiders DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average) system. Nearly every statistical indicator points to the Ravens as the Super Bowl favorite. They are number one both in total DVOA and in weighted DVOA. They finished the season with the most Pythagorean wins, projected from points scored and allowed. Since Brian Billick took over the playcalling duties in Week 8, the Ravens rank in the top ten in offense, defense, and special teams.

Once again, Week 17 games are not adjusted for teams that sat their starters, although this was a much smaller issue than in years past. Carolina-New Orleans was probably the only game affected by the "sit the starters" problem.

The FOXSports.com commentary is now online [1], featuring reasons for optimism and pessimism for each of the 20 non-playoff teams. A couple of interesting notes from the final ratings that didn't make it into the FOXSports.com commentary:

Although the top teams in DVOA for 2006 were generally ranked in the teens in 2005, New Orleans is the only team ranked 20th or lower last year and 14th or higher this year.
Thanks to results at the end of the year that actually made some sense -- close losses to good New England and Kansas City teams -- the 2006 Jaguars do not end up with the highest VARIANCE in DVOA history. They end up fourth, behind the 2005 49ers, 2003 Bills, and 2003 49ers.
Oakland does not end up with the worst offense of the DVOA era. The current bottom five: 2005 49ers (-39.8%), 2002 Texans (-37.8%), 2004 Bears (-36.5%), 2006 Raiders (-35.5%), and 1997 Saints (-35.2%).
Chicago's 7.6% special teams ends up as the third best of the DVOA era, behind the 2002 Saints (10.0%) and 1998 Cowboys (7.8%).
The Colts' offensive DVOA of 33.8% is the second best of the DVOA era, behind the 2004 Colts (39.9%) and just ahead of the 2002 Chiefs (33.3%). Out of the top 10 offenses of the DVOA era, four are the Colts, five are Vermeil or Martz Rams/Chiefs teams, and the other one is the 1998 Broncos.
The Ravens defense is not quite as impressive as the Colts offense or Bears special teams, seventh in the DVOA era. Three of the top seven defenses of the DVOA era are the Ravens, although the 2002 Bucs are the best (-33.6%).
The two New York teams both end up with DVOA ratings that disagree with both their actual win-loss records and Pythagorean wins. I'm not quite sure what's up with the Giants, but I address some of the issues with the Jets in this week's commentary.
Pittsburgh ends the year ranked 12th in DVOA, which isn't that ridiculous for a defending Super Bowl champion. Their season sure would have looked different if they had just mixed those wins up instead of starting 2-6 and ending 6-2.

All stats pages are now updated with (unofficial) 2006 final totals. That includes the team stats, the individual stats, adjusted line yards, and the drive stats. I'm waiting to hear from Mike Harris on the Playoff Odds Report. We hope to have some other cool fun stuff for you later this week. We'll have our usual playoff previews chock full of stats. I'm planning on going through the game charting stats and posting some interesting things about the playoff teams over on the FO FOX blog [2]. And I'll be doing an online chat Wednesday at 1pm Eastern on BaseballProspectus.com [3], taking your questions on the playoffs as well as the off-season needs of the 20 teams that fell short.

* * * * *

These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings for the 2006 regular season, measured by our proprietary Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) system that breaks down every single play and compares a team's performance to the league average based on situation in order to determine value over average. (Explained further here [4].)

OFFENSE and DEFENSE DVOA are adjusted based on strength of opponent as well as to consider all fumbles, kept or lost, as equal value. SPECIAL TEAMS DVOA is adjusted for type of stadium (warm, cold, dome, Denver/Mexico City) and week of season.

WEIGHTED DVOA is based on a formula which discounts games more than eight weeks ago in order to get a more accurate picture of how teams are playing now. This is the formula used for the rankings at FOXSports.com. LAST YEAR represents rank in 2005 [5].

To save people some time, we remind everyone to put their angry troll hatred into the official zlionsfan angry troll hatred Mad Libs form:

<team> is clearly ranked <too high/too low> because <reason unrelated to DVOA>. <subjective ranking system> is way better than this. <unrelated team-supporting or -denigrating comment, preferably with poor spelling and/or chat-acceptable spelling>

	TEAM	TOTAL DVOA	LAST WEEK	LAST YEAR	W-L	WEI. DVOA	RANK	OFFENSE DVOA	OFF. RANK	DEFENSE DVOA	DEF. RANK	SPECIAL DVOA	S.T. RANK
1	BAL	31.9%	2	19	13-3	35.8%	1	2.8%	14	-25.6%	1	3.5%	4
2	SD	29.9%	1	6	14-2	26.0%	3	24.4%	2	-1.1%	14	4.4%	3
3	PHI	24.2%	4	18	10-6	17.2%	6	19.9%	3	-6.2%	11	-1.9%	22
4	CHI	24.0%	3	14	13-3	12.3%	7	-3.9%	18	-20.3%	2	7.6%	1
5	NE	23.3%	5	12	12-4	27.5%	2	12.2%	7	-8.4%	8	2.6%	8
6	JAC	21.9%	6	10	8-8	19.2%	5	4.4%	12	-17.7%	3	-0.2%	20
7	IND	19.4%	7	1	12-4	21.6%	4	33.8%	1	11.3%	27	-3.1%	26
8	NO	10.8%	8	30	10-6	11.6%	8	13.7%	5	3.6%	19	0.7%	14
9	NYG	10.8%	10	8	8-8	5.6%	14	8.7%	9	-1.7%	13	0.4%	16
10	DAL	10.2%	9	15	9-7	8.3%	10	10.3%	8	-0.1%	16	-0.2%	19
11	CIN	8.7%	11	9	8-8	7.7%	11	14.6%	4	7.3%	25	1.4%	12
12	PIT	7.8%	12	3	8-8	8.6%	9	5.4%	11	-6.6%	10	-4.2%	30
13	KC	4.0%	13	4	9-7	1.5%	16	5.5%	10	2.7%	18	1.2%	13
14	CAR	2.8%	14	11	8-8	7.4%	12	-4.2%	19	-9.9%	5	-2.8%	24
15	GB	-1.4%	20	23	8-8	6.5%	13	-6.3%	20	-8.9%	6	-3.9%	29
16	BUF	-2.7%	15	28	7-9	0.4%	18	-8.6%	24	-0.2%	15	5.8%	2
	TEAM	TOTAL DVOA	LAST WEEK	LAST YEAR	W-L	WEI. DVOA	RANK	OFFENSE DVOA	OFF. RANK	DEFENSE DVOA	DEF. RANK	SPECIAL DVOA	S.T. RANK
17	MIA	-3.6%	17	13	6-10	0.7%	17	-11.8%	28	-8.9%	7	-0.7%	21
18	DEN	-3.7%	16	2	9-7	-9.6%	21	-8.1%	23	-3.7%	12	0.7%	15
19	NYJ	-4.7%	19	27	10-6	0.3%	19	2.7%	15	10.7%	26	3.2%	5
20	STL	-5.2%	24	29	8-8	-11.5%	23	12.3%	6	13.1%	29	-4.4%	31
21	ATL	-8.2%	21	17	7-9	-11.5%	24	-2.5%	17	2.3%	17	-3.4%	27
22	MIN	-8.7%	18	21	6-10	-11.1%	22	-15.7%	29	-10.5%	4	-3.5%	28
23	WAS	-11.5%	22	7	5-11	-16.4%	27	4.1%	13	17.4%	32	1.7%	11
24	TEN	-12.7%	23	25	8-8	2.6%	15	-8.9%	25	6.2%	24	2.4%	9
25	SEA	-13.5%	25	5	9-7	-14.7%	26	-11.6%	27	4.5%	20	2.6%	7
26	ARI	-18.1%	29	22	5-11	-7.3%	20	-7.3%	21	6.0%	23	-4.8%	32
27	DET	-19.5%	30	26	3-13	-17.3%	28	-8.9%	26	13.4%	30	2.7%	6
28	HOU	-19.9%	28	31	6-10	-13.2%	25	-2.3%	16	15.5%	31	-2.1%	23
29	SF	-20.3%	31	32	7-9	-17.6%	29	-8.0%	22	12.3%	28	0.1%	18
30	CLE	-20.9%	26	24	4-12	-25.6%	31	-18.2%	31	5.0%	21	2.3%	10
31	TB	-22.8%	27	16	4-12	-22.3%	30	-17.9%	30	5.0%	22	0.1%	17
32	OAK	-30.2%	32	20	2-14	-25.6%	32	-35.5%	32	-8.3%	9	-3.0%	25

NON-ADJ VOA shows what the rating looks like without adjustments for strength of schedule, luck recovering fumbles, or weather and altitude on special teams.
ESTIMATED WINS [6] uses a statistic known as "Forest Index" that emphasizes consistency as well as DVOA in the most important specific situations: red zone defense, first quarter offense, and performance in the second half when the score is close. It then projects a number of wins adjusted to a league-average schedule and a league-average rate of recovering fumbles. Teams that have had their bye week are projected as if they had played one game per week.
2006 SCHEDULE lists average DVOA of opponents played this season, ranked from hardest schedule (#1, most positive) to easiest schedule (#32, most negative).
PYTHAGOREAN WINS [7] represent the number of wins projected from the team's points scored and allowed, as described here [8].
VARIANCE [9] measures the statistical variance of the team's weekly DVOA performance. Teams are ranked from least consistent (#1, highest variance) to most consistent (#32, smallest variance).

	TEAM	TOTAL DVOA	W-L	NON-ADJ TOT VOA	ESTIM. WINS	RANK	2006 SCHED	RANK	PYTH WINS	RANK	VARIANCE	RANK
1	BAL	31.9%	13-3	35.0%	12.0	2	-2.6%	25	12.7	1	16.9%	12
2	SD	29.9%	14-2	36.0%	12.0	1	-6.6%	30	12.1	4	8.8%	29
3	PHI	24.2%	10-6	20.0%	11.6	3	-0.7%	18	9.8	8	13.3%	21
4	CHI	24.0%	13-3	30.3%	10.8	5	-7.3%	31	12.4	2	28.5%	2
5	NE	23.3%	12-4	25.9%	11.0	4	-0.9%	19	12.2	3	18.7%	7
6	JAC	21.9%	8-8	19.2%	9.6	7	2.0%	11	10.8	5	30.1%	1
7	IND	19.4%	12-4	16.8%	10.6	6	1.8%	12	9.6	9	17.2%	11
8	NO	10.8%	10-6	12.0%	9.1	8	-1.1%	22	10.3	6	16.3%	16
9	NYG	10.8%	8-8	7.3%	9.0	9	3.0%	8	7.8	16	12.5%	24
10	DAL	10.2%	9-7	10.1%	8.6	10	0.0%	17	9.8	7	17.9%	9
11	CIN	8.7%	8-8	5.6%	8.6	11	3.9%	5	9.1	10	9.6%	27
12	PIT	7.8%	8-8	4.0%	8.6	12	2.5%	10	9.1	11	17.3%	10
13	KC	4.0%	9-7	3.7%	8.5	13	-1.2%	24	8.5	13	19.1%	6
14	CAR	2.8%	8-8	1.0%	7.9	15	0.4%	14	6.9	21	13.7%	20
15	GB	-1.4%	8-8	-3.0%	7.6	18	-1.1%	23	6.2	23	23.2%	3
16	BUF	-2.7%	7-9	-8.3%	7.8	16	5.9%	2	7.7	17	15.8%	17
	TEAM	TOTAL DVOA	W-L	NON-ADJ TOT VOA	ESTIM. WINS	RANK	2006 SCHED	RANK	PYTH WINS	RANK	VARIANCE	RANK
17	MIA	-3.6%	6-10	-0.6%	7.2	21	2.9%	9	7.2	19	13.1%	23
18	DEN	-3.7%	9-7	-3.1%	7.1	22	1.3%	13	8.4	14	16.5%	15
19	NYJ	-4.7%	10-6	-1.8%	7.6	17	-0.9%	20	8.7	12	15.3%	18
20	STL	-5.2%	8-8	3.7%	7.4	20	-7.4%	32	7.6	18	16.6%	14
21	ATL	-8.2%	7-9	-3.0%	7.4	19	0.3%	16	6.9	20	18.5%	8
22	MIN	-8.7%	6-10	-5.0%	7.9	14	-3.0%	27	6.6	22	8.0%	32
23	WAS	-11.5%	5-11	-14.8%	6.8	23	4.2%	4	6.1	24	9.5%	28
24	TEN	-12.7%	8-8	-16.1%	6.8	24	9.4%	1	6.0	25	16.7%	13
25	SEA	-13.5%	9-7	-9.3%	6.2	25	-6.5%	29	7.8	15	10.4%	25
26	ARI	-18.1%	5-11	-10.7%	6.2	27	-5.1%	28	6.0	26	19.5%	5
27	DET	-19.5%	3-13	-20.3%	5.8	29	-0.9%	21	5.6	27	8.7%	30
28	HOU	-19.9%	6-10	-18.8%	5.9	28	3.3%	7	5.1	28	14.0%	19
29	SF	-20.3%	7-9	-19.9%	6.2	26	-2.8%	26	5.1	29	20.0%	4
30	CLE	-20.9%	4-12	-25.9%	4.8	31	3.4%	6	4.4	30	13.2%	22
31	TB	-22.8%	4-12	-29.3%	5.1	30	4.5%	3	3.6	31	8.3%	31
32	OAK	-30.2%	2-14	-36.1%	3.9	32	0.4%	15	2.7	32	10.0%	26