2009 Postseason DVOA I

by Aaron Schatz

Once again, it is time for postseason DVOA ratings. We're ranking all 32 teams, whether they are in the playoffs or not. Teams which did not play in the wild card round are treated as if they had a bye week. (That includes both the 20 non-playoff teams and the four teams with byes.)

All numbers are weighted DVOA. That means that Weeks 1-4 are not included, while Weeks 5-10 are somewhat discounted. If you want to see the actual regular season final ratings, click here [1].

The playoff odds report [2] is updated through the wild card games. Showing how even things are, four teams have at least a 15 percent chance to win the Super Bowl, and six teams are at 10 percent or higher. We'll have playoff matchup pages up on DVOA Premium shortly.

Before we get to the DVOA ratings, let's answer the question: "Did Mike Scifres have the best day of any punter in playoff history?" Unfortunately, we can't compare Scifres to punters before our play-by-play database starts in 1995. However, looking only at playoff games since 1995, the answer is "probably."

We have two measures for punting. The one we use in computing total team special teams DVOA is based on net punting value, both the punt and the return. Based on that measure, San Diego had the fifth-best punting game since 1995; other teams finish higher because they forced fumbles by the punt returners. The best game in terms of net punting was 4.53 points worth of field position by the 2005 Redskins in the Divisional round against Seattle. Derrick Frost had seven punts, averaging 42.4 gross yards. However, because he was punting from lousy field position all day, not one of those punts came down any farther than the Seattle 19-yard line. Four of the punts were returned: a one-yard gain, a zero-yard gain, a two-yard loss with a fumble recovered by the Seahawks, and a muff that the Redskins recovered on the Seattle 39-yard line. So it was a good day for the Washington punt coverage team. It was a bad day for the rest of the Redskins, and they lost 20-10.

This is probably not the best way to judge Scifres because he can't control his coverage team, so instead we'll use our other punt measure, which only measures gross distance by assuming that every punt that is returnable will have a league-average return. Based on this measure, Scifres was worth 3.82 points over average. That's the second highest total since 1995. Narrowly edging out Scifres is Matt Turk of the 1999 Washington Redskins, in the Divisional round against Tampa Bay. Turk had eight punts that were worth a total of 3.83 points over averag once we adjust for the cold weather. Turk landed two punts at the Tampa Bay 7 and one at the Tampa Bay 5. He didn't have as many punts inside the 20 as Scifres did because Turk was mostly punting from deep in Washington territory. Overall, each of his punts went at least 35 yards and only one was returned.

Since Turk had two more opportunities, Scifres does have the best figure on a per-punt basis. I'm comfortable saying he had the best day of any punter since at least 1995. No punter other than Turk and Scifres had a playoff game worth more than three points over average.

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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>

I'm not going to bother to run the whole DVOA explanation; if you are new to the website, you can read about it here [3]. As always, positive numbers represent more points so DEFENSE is better when it is NEGATIVE.

	TEAM	WEI. DVOA	LAST WEEK	W-L	WEI OFF DVOA	OFF. RANK	WEI DEF DVOA	DEF. RANK	WEI S.T. DVOA	S.T. RANK
	TEAM	WEI. DVOA	LAST WEEK	W-L	WEI OFF DVOA	OFF. RANK	WEI DEF DVOA	DEF. RANK	WEI S.T. DVOA	S.T. RANK
1	BAL	34.2%	3	12-5	6.8%	15	-24.7%	2	2.7%	13
2	PHI	32.8%	2	10-6-1	6.7%	16	-23.2%	3	2.9%	12
3	PIT	30.7%	1	12-4	4.9%	17	-28.1%	1	-2.3%	23
4	TEN	24.5%	4	13-3	11.3%	11	-10.1%	5	3.1%	11
5	NYG	24.0%	5	12-4	20.0%	6	-2.1%	8	1.9%	15
6	CAR	22.3%	7	12-4	23.1%	3	4.5%	13	3.7%	8
7	IND	21.9%	6	12-5	25.1%	2	0.5%	11	-2.7%	26
8	NE	17.7%	8	11-5	21.7%	4	6.1%	16	2.1%	14
9	NO	16.4%	9	8-8	28.2%	1	9.6%	20	-2.2%	22
10	SD	15.1%	10	9-8	21.5%	5	9.9%	22	3.5%	9
11	DAL	8.6%	12	9-7	3.5%	20	-7.8%	6	-2.7%	27
12	ATL	6.9%	11	11-6	13.5%	10	11.3%	23	4.7%	6
13	MIA	4.1%	13	11-6	14.8%	9	7.5%	18	-3.2%	28
14	MIN	3.8%	14	10-7	-6.5%	23	-14.8%	4	-4.4%	30
15	GB	3.5%	15	6-10	10.5%	12	5.0%	14	-2.0%	21
16	NYJ	2.9%	16	9-7	4.7%	18	6.0%	15	4.2%	7
	TEAM	WEI. DVOA	LAST WEEK	W-L	WEI OFF DVOA	OFF. RANK	WEI DEF DVOA	DEF. RANK	WEI S.T. DVOA	S.T. RANK
	TEAM	WEI. DVOA	LAST WEEK	W-L	WEI OFF DVOA	OFF. RANK	WEI DEF DVOA	DEF. RANK	WEI S.T. DVOA	S.T. RANK
17	TB	2.4%	17	9-7	2.3%	21	-0.1%	10	-0.1%	18
18	CHI	-0.1%	18	9-7	-8.4%	25	-2.5%	7	5.7%	4
19	HOU	-2.5%	19	8-8	15.1%	8	17.7%	29	0.1%	17
20	ARI	-3.4%	21	10-7	8.6%	13	7.9%	19	-4.1%	29
21	WAS	-4.4%	20	8-8	0.1%	22	4.2%	12	-0.4%	20
22	JAC	-10.6%	22	5-11	7.4%	14	15.5%	25	-2.5%	25
23	CIN	-14.6%	23	4-11-1	-12.9%	27	-0.6%	9	-2.3%	24
24	BUF	-18.0%	24	7-9	-9.4%	26	16.6%	27	8.0%	1
25	SEA	-18.3%	25	4-12	-8.0%	24	15.6%	26	5.3%	5
26	KC	-19.7%	27	2-14	4.6%	19	17.9%	30	-6.4%	31
27	DEN	-20.0%	26	8-8	18.7%	7	30.5%	32	-8.2%	32
28	OAK	-20.1%	28	5-11	-16.7%	30	9.7%	21	6.3%	2
29	SF	-22.5%	29	7-9	-14.1%	28	14.5%	24	6.0%	3
30	CLE	-24.7%	30	4-12	-20.8%	32	7.3%	17	3.4%	10
31	STL	-35.0%	31	2-14	-17.3%	31	17.3%	28	-0.4%	19
32	DET	-42.0%	32	0-16	-14.4%	29	28.8%	31	1.2%	16

Here are the one-game DVOA ratings for the first round of the playoffs. Remember that these include opponent adjustments.

TEAM	TOT	OFF	DEF	ST
ARI	44%	13%	-36%	-4%
ATL	-23%	-23%	13%	13%
SD	18%	4%	3%	17%
IND	15%	17%	-9%	-10%
BAL	80%	21%	-49%	9%
MIA	-27%	-9%	15%	-4%
PHI	59%	29%	-12%	19%
MIN	-9%	0%	-3%	-11%

Here is the same table, often requested in years past, with VOAf instead of DVOA. This still has adjustments for fumble luck and special teams weather, but does not include opponent adjustments.

TEAM	TOT	OFF	DEF	ST
ARI	31%	17%	-18%	-4%
ATL	-22%	-18%	17%	13%
SD	2%	6%	21%	17%
IND	5%	21%	6%	-10%
BAL	62%	18%	-34%	9%
MIA	-56%	-34%	18%	-4%
PHI	45%	6%	-20%	19%
MIN	-37%	-20%	6%	-11%