DVOA Analysis

Tampa Bay takes a huge lead in DVOA with a huge win over Green Bay, the biggest single game of the season. And on the other side of the ledger, the Jets are far behind the rest of the league.

It's a weird week with some scrambled DVOA ratings. Minnesota and Houston rank among the best 1-4 teams we've ever measured, while Chicago and (sort of) Cleveland are among the worst 4-1 teams.

The introduction of opponent adjustments scrambles our ratings a bit, with Tampa Bay emerging as a surprising, balanced No. 1 team. Kansas City, Baltimore, Indianapolis, and Green Bay round out the top five.

Led by defense, Indianapolis is a surprise No. 1 in the Football Outsiders DVOA ratings. Pittsburgh and San Francisco follow them. Plus: the worst 3-0 teams in DVOA history, and yet another hot Buffalo start follows a decade filled with hot Buffalo starts.

Baltimore is dominating the DVOA ratings after two weeks, followed by Seattle and Pittsburgh. Plus: Are the Saints better than they looked on Monday night, and are the Eagles completely screwed?

Baltimore starts the year at No. 1 again, which is not a surprise. But some of the lower ratings after Week 1 are a surprise. What is Minnesota doing ahead of Green Bay, and why is Kansas City only 16th after what looked like a dominating Opening Night performance?

Our updated DVOA projections for 2020 still have New Orleans and Kansas City, and then Baltimore, far ahead of the rest of the league. COVID-19 opt outs help contribute to a good amount of movement since the book, especially with a couple of larger drops by teams in the AFC East.

Introducing a new upgraded version of our main DVOA metric that will count scrambles as pass plays instead of runs while also fixing some errors that underrated dome defenses in our past ratings.

DVOA can tell us how each team performed compared to an average squad, but guest columnist Matt Bittle breaks down the standard deviation of each year to see who really stood out from the pack.

Six years ago, we ran an article estimating DVOA all the way back to 1950 based on standard stats. Let's update those tables now that we have real play-by-play breakdown for 1985-1988 and six additional seasons since 2014. The 2018 Chiefs and 2019 Ravens are among the teams now appearing on these best-ever tables.