Week 3 DVOA Ratings

by Aaron Schatz

We have to learn to trust the numbers.

When our preseason projections [1] had Tampa Bay as the best team in the NFC South, and New Orleans at the bottom of the division, we assumed something was wrong [2]. It wasn't fair to judge New Orleans based on two-year trends that included a year lost to a hurricane, right? The Bucs had reached the end of an era and were entering a rebuilding phase, right?

When we did our subjective staff predictions [3], and each staff member picked a team that would do better than projected and a team that would do worse than projected, I wouldn't even let people pick New Orleans and Tampa Bay. We all agreed those projections were a bit off. Although we were more optimistic about Tampa Bay than other analysts, nobody wanted to pencil them in for a division title.

Now here we are, three weeks into the season. Tampa Bay is one of the top five teams in VOA and New Orleans is the worst team in the league, one of the worst teams we've ever measured through three weeks. The strangest part of this is that the projection system didn't actually project it. The projection system didn't like the Saints because their defense was going to collapse, but only four teams had a better offensive projection. Instead, the defense has been bad and the offense has been worse. The offensive line has totally imploded. Drew Brees' decision-making skills went out the window. Devery Henderson disappeared. Reggie Bush regressed back to the start of last year. Sean Payton forgot how to surprise defenses. Deuce McAllister tore his other ACL. The Saints looked horrible last night.

The moral of the story: Trust the numbers. Unless the numbers are telling you that the Dallas Cowboys are going to collapse, in which case you probably shouldn't trust the numbers. (Actually, look at how many of us picked Dallas as "the team that would exceed their projection." We didn't really trust those numbers either.)

Dallas is having one of the best starts that we've ever measured with our play-by-play breakdown. Then again, the same goes for New England and Pittsburgh. You'll find more commentary on these teams below this week's ratings.

You can also check out the new Playoff Odds Report [4], which we are unveiling a week earlier than expected. This report plays out the season 5,000 times based on the current DAVE ratings. Thanks to Mike Harris for all his work on that.

* * * * *

These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through three weeks of 2007, 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 [5].) OFFENSE and DEFENSE VOA are adjusted 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.

There are no opponent adjustments in VOA until the fourth week of the season, which is why it is VOA right now rather than DVOA. Instead, we use DAVE, which combines the preseason projection with the results of early games to give us a better prediction of how each team will rank at the end of the year. In this week's DAVE ratings, the preseason projection counts for 55 percent, and the current VOA counts for 45 percent. (Last week, the ratio was 75/25.)

All stats pages are now updated, including offensive line [6] and defensive front seven [7] for the first time this season. The DVOA Premium Database [8] is also updated through Week 3. Loser League [9] will be updated later tonight.

The second table that usually appears with DVOA -- schedule ratings, variation, estimated wins, etc. -- will begin to appear next week.

To save people some time, please use the following format for all complaints:

<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	DAVE	RANK	NON-ADJ TOT VOA	W-L	OFFENSE DVOA	OFF. RANK	DEFENSE DVOA	DEF. RANK	S.T. DVOA	S.T. RANK
1	NE	85.5%	1	56.9%	1	86.0%	3-0	53.5%	1	-28.0%	2	4.1%	10
2	PIT	79.9%	2	41.5%	2	80.1%	3-0	31.5%	4	-38.1%	1	10.3%	3
3	DAL	60.1%	3	21.6%	6	64.7%	3-0	46.7%	2	-9.3%	9	4.1%	11
4	IND	42.9%	5	23.2%	5	43.4%	3-0	35.0%	3	-18.4%	5	-10.5%	28
5	TB	42.3%	12	24.8%	4	39.1%	2-1	18.0%	7	-20.4%	3	3.9%	12
6	PHI	24.9%	19	25.5%	3	25.7%	1-2	19.9%	5	-9.2%	10	-4.2%	21
7	GB	24.3%	9	14.0%	9	19.6%	3-0	14.5%	10	-2.7%	13	7.1%	6
8	BAL	22.1%	7	16.5%	7	17.4%	2-1	-4.1%	21	-10.0%	8	16.2%	1
9	DEN	15.4%	6	7.0%	10	18.4%	2-1	11.3%	11	-19.5%	4	-15.4%	31
10	MIN	13.6%	10	1.1%	15	11.4%	1-2	-8.2%	24	-17.2%	6	4.6%	9
11	TEN	12.8%	20	2.1%	14	15.3%	2-1	7.0%	14	-8.0%	11	-2.1%	19
12	HOU	12.6%	4	-3.9%	17	15.8%	2-1	-3.9%	20	-1.1%	15	15.4%	2
13	ARI	7.1%	11	-7.0%	18	11.2%	1-2	16.9%	9	3.9%	18	-5.9%	23
14	SEA	6.5%	14	2.9%	12	9.1%	2-1	8.4%	12	9.6%	20	7.7%	5
15	JAC	3.8%	16	15.3%	8	4.2%	2-1	3.7%	17	2.6%	17	2.7%	13
16	CIN	2.0%	15	-1.0%	16	2.3%	1-2	19.5%	6	-0.4%	16	-17.9%	32
	TEAM	TOTAL DVOA	LAST WEEK	DAVE	RANK	NON-ADJ TOT VOA	W-L	OFFENSE DVOA	OFF. RANK	DEFENSE DVOA	DEF. RANK	S.T. DVOA	S.T. RANK
17	WAS	0.3%	13	3.7%	11	10.5%	2-1	-3.9%	19	-3.0%	12	1.2%	15
18	CAR	-7.3%	22	2.4%	13	-1.4%	2-1	17.4%	8	15.8%	23	-9.0%	27
19	DET	-11.4%	8	-10.4%	20	-11.7%	2-1	4.9%	16	15.8%	24	-0.5%	17
20	MIA	-16.0%	23	-15.1%	26	-22.5%	0-3	7.0%	13	17.5%	25	-5.5%	22
21	CLE	-20.0%	25	-12.2%	21	-14.5%	1-2	-6.5%	22	22.4%	28	8.9%	4
22	KC	-23.6%	27	-24.7%	29	-19.3%	1-2	-25.9%	29	-13.6%	7	-11.3%	29
23	NYG	-26.2%	28	-13.8%	25	-26.9%	1-2	6.4%	15	28.7%	29	-3.9%	20
24	SF	-27.6%	21	-13.3%	23	-25.2%	2-1	-22.8%	28	6.1%	19	1.3%	14
25	SD	-28.9%	24	-8.2%	19	-30.1%	1-2	-11.2%	25	18.8%	26	1.1%	16
26	ATL	-29.5%	26	-13.2%	22	-30.5%	0-3	-2.2%	18	20.6%	27	-6.7%	25
27	CHI	-34.2%	18	-13.3%	24	-35.1%	1-2	-40.3%	32	-1.4%	14	4.7%	8
28	OAK	-38.0%	30	-23.8%	28	-30.3%	1-2	-13.4%	26	12.2%	21	-12.4%	30
29	STL	-41.4%	17	-32.3%	31	-39.7%	0-3	-20.7%	27	14.1%	22	-6.5%	24
30	NYJ	-49.1%	31	-17.8%	27	-44.3%	1-2	-7.0%	23	41.0%	32	-1.0%	18
31	BUF	-58.5%	29	-28.9%	30	-56.5%	0-3	-30.2%	31	35.1%	31	6.8%	7
32	NO	-68.6%	32	-33.3%	32	-65.1%	0-3	-28.8%	30	32.8%	30	-7.1%	26

Does it seem like it has been a long time since any team dominated its early competition like New England and Pittsburgh have? That's because it has been a long time: 11 years, in fact.

Only two teams in the DVOA era -- yes, the staff decided to keep that term -- have single-game VOA ratings over 80% in each of their first three games: the 1996 Packers and the 2007 Patriots. Only three teams have single-game VOA ratings over 70% in each of their first three games: the 1996 Packers, 2007 Patriots, and 2007 Steelers. Only six teams have single-game VOA ratings over 50% in each of their first three games, and three of those teams are playing right now:

Team	Year	Opponents	Game 1	Game 2	Game 3	Total VOA
GB	1996	at TB, vs. PHI, vs. SD	121.6%	82.2%	94.1%	99.3%
NE	2007	at NYJ, vs. SD, vs. BUF	89.7%	85.5%	81.6%	85.6%
PIT	2007	at CLE, vs. BUF, vs. SF	92.8%	70.3%	77.2%	80.1%
DAL	2007	vs. NYG, at MIA, at CHI	58.9%	53.5%	88.7%	67.0%
KC	2003	vs. SD, vs. PIT, at HOU	51.4%	62.3%	68.5%	63.2%
DEN	2003	at CIN, at SD, vs. OAK	60.1%	54.1%	60.9%	57.4%

Remember, we aren't considering opponent adjustments here, because it is so early in the season. Some of these wins are over bad teams and will be rated lower when the season ends. Still, to have three teams start this strong is pretty remarkable. Let's look back into the past as well. Dallas has outscored opponents by 68 points this year, Pittsburgh by 71, and New England by 79. Only nine other teams since 1990 have outscored their first three opponents by 65 points or more:

1996 Packers (89)
1991 Redskins (81)
2001 Packers (80)
1992 Bills (74)
1999 Rams (73)
1995 Dolphins (68)
1998 Seahawks (67)
2000 Bucs (67)
2003 Broncos (65)

Four of the top five teams made it to the Super Bowl, and three of them won it. On the other hand, the 1998 Seahawks lost their next three games and finished the season 8-8, so nothing is guaranteed.

In yesterday's Audibles [10], I asked people to hold off on the "can the Patriots go undefeated" discussion until they had taken care of their harder road games. Well, as part of the Playoff Odds Report [4], I asked Mike Harris to give me the odds for each of the five undefeated teams to finish the season 16-0. It turns out the question we should be asking is not "Can the Patriots go 16-0?" but rather "Can the Steelers go 16-0?" The Steelers finished the season undefeated in 0.98% of simulations. Remember, the Steelers don't have to face the Colts, and they play the NFC West while the Patriots have to play the NFC East. (On the other hand, they have to play the Ravens twice, not once, and they play the Patriots in Foxboro rather than at home.) The Patriots were undefeated in 0.52% of simulations, the Cowboys in 0.14%, and the Colts and Packers each in 0.12%.

Just as extreme as those three great starts has been the Saints' horrible start. Here's a list of teams starting with three straight games below -50%:

Team	Year	Opponents	Game 1	Game 2	Game 3	Total VOA
CIN	2000	vs. CLE, at JAC, at BAL	-69.3%	-61.8%	-131.5%	-87.5%
WAS	2001	at SD, at GB, vs. KC	-80.0%	-83.1%	-94.4%	-85.8%
NO	2007	at IND, at TB, vs. TEN	-82.2%	-74.5%	-54.4%	-68.6%
SEA	1996	at SD, vs. DEN, vs. KC	-71.4%	-58.0%	-68.6%	-66.0%