Giants Lead 2022 DVOA Overachievers

NFL Offseason - Every year, we here at Football Outsiders do our best to accurately forecast the upcoming season. We run thousands of simulations taking into account major offseason personnel changes, players returning from injury, potential development from draft picks, continuity on the offensive line, and numerous other variables in an attempt to provide the best predictions out there.

In other words, we attempt to predict the future, and it turns out, that's quite hard. And 2022 proved harder than usual. In 2021, there was a .73 correlation between our projected DVOA and teams' actual DVOA, but that fell to .48 last year. It was a tumultuous offseason with a lot of personnel turnover and new coaches for nearly a third of the league. That's going to inject more uncertainty than a random given season.

It's interesting to look back and see just where the projections were off the most. Remember, at this time last season, the general consensus was for the AFC West to be one of the most competitive divisions we had ever seen, for Matt Ryan to spark a Colts comeback, and for the Ravens to rally behind a healthy Lamar Jackson. As the old NFL commercial used to say, it's time to get our story straight.

Today, we're looking at the five teams that outperformed their DVOA projections the most, looking at just what we missed and whether or not last year's success was sustainable, or just a mirage. Stay tuned for a look at the year's biggest underachievers next week.

A quick methodological note before we begin. Our rankings are based on how many standard deviations each team beat or fell short of its projection rather than just raw differences. When you run thousands and thousands of simulations, it's a very rare team indeed that has an average DVOA over 20.0% or performs better than 12-5. But each NFL season only happens one time, so outlier results not only happen, but are expected—someone will keep rolling sevens all season long, it's just difficult to predict who. We're not here to explain that the best teams were better than their projections because simulations are, by their very nature, conservative. We want to focus on the teams that got grouped wrong to begin with: the bad teams that became average or the average teams that became good.

5. Detroit Lions (+1.24)

Projected DVOA: -6.3%; -0.78 standard deviations
Actual DVOA: 7.7%; +0.46 standard deviations

Our final projections had Detroit climbing out of the cellar of the DVOA ratings, all the way to 22nd—still below average, but beginning to approach a certain level of respectability. Dan Campbell's second year didn't have tons of potential, but the Almanac suggested the Lions could be a "mediocre team that makes for a tough out week-in and week-out"—not a terrible situation to be in, considering they had traded Matthew Stafford just 18 months prior, but not exactly something that sends you screaming to the ticket office.

That wasn't a terrible description of Detroit over the first half of the season. Through week 10, Detroit was 24th in DVOA at -13.8%. They were middle-of-the-pack on offense and second-worst on defense; a little bit better than projected on offense and a little bit worse than projected on defense. After some initial highs in the first two weeks, it got to the point where Walkthrough ended up calling Campbell a "sincere snake-oil salesman," noting that the Lions were not "gritty, tough, promising or fun."

A switch was flipped over the last half of the season, however, as the Lions roared back to finish the year 6-2 and just miss out on the postseason. Over those last eight weeks, Detroit ranked fourth in total DVOA, third on offense and 20th on defense; legitimately exciting contenders who would have been a more than worthy wild-card team. The offensive line gelled together to become one of the best in football, which in turn gave Jamaal Williams plenty of room to run, which in turn reinvigorated Jared Goff. The young defense, led by rookies Aidan Hutchinson, Malcolm Rodriguez, and Kerby Joseph, began to find itself too—still a work in progress, but with clear progress over the course of the year. And when you don't need to score 87 points every week to win, you see better results. Amazing how that works!

It did end up being too little, too late, but Lions fans have more optimism now than they have in years. And, hey, they sent Aaron Rodgers packing out of Green Bay with a loss, knocking them out of the playoffs. That'll do, for now.

4. Jacksonville Jaguars (+1.27)

Projected DVOA: -8.7%; -1.07 standard deviations
Actual DVOA: 3.3%; +0.19 standard deviations

All predictions are uncertain, but some predictions are more uncertain than others. Quantifying the impact of a coaching change is difficult. We all knew that Urban Meyer's tenure had been disastrous, and we knew that Doug Pederson had a strong pedigree behind him. While we were cautiously optimistic that Pederson could get Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars' offense up to speed, we knew there was a long way between what we saw in 2021 and a .500 team, much less a competitive one.

If you want to make an argument that Meyer is the worst coach in NFL history, the night-and-day difference between the 2021 Jaguars and the 2022 edition on the offensive side of the ball is your second argument right behind all the nonsense he did off the field. The 2021 Jaguars were an awful mishmash of Meyer's spread and Darrell Bevell's dropback offense that lacked vision, creativity, and any of the modern motion concepts that have become nearly synonymous with successful football. Pederson's emphasis on pre-snap motion brought spark and life to a moribund passing attack. Pederson did a much better job finding ways to use skill position players, moving them around and finding them matchups they could win. Putting your players in positions where they can succeed; a revolutionary tactic. All in all, Jacksonville's offensive DVOA jumped from -15.1% to 7.7%, hanging out at the bottom of the top 10.

Of course, it helps that Trevor Lawrence took a significant step forward in Year 2, something that was expected but couldn't be counted on. Adding talent in the form of Christian Kirk and Evan Engram certainly didn't hurt, either, even if the Jaguars had to overpay to get them in—the Duval tax, from years of bad performance. That's not to say the offense was perfect by any means; they were 16th in the red zone and could stand to clean up some of their situational results. But Pederson and the new arrivals brought competent offensive football back to Jacksonville for the first time since the David Garrard era, and that's worth celebrating.

And yet, Pederson didn't win Coach of the Year, in part because there's a different new head coach who's going to appear in a few more slots on this countdown. No respect, I tells ya.

3. Seattle Seahawks (+1.38)

Projected DVOA: -8.4%; -1.03 standard deviations
Actual DVOA: 5.8%; +0.34 standard deviations

Trading away the greatest quarterback in franchise history and replacing him with the two-headed monster of Drew Lock and Geno Smith did not exactly scream competitive football. "[Pete] Carroll had made it clear that the NFL had passed him by, and that his team was going to play an obsolete brand of football as long as he was in charge," we said in the Almanac, and we weren't alone. They seemed determined to double down on the run-first, defense, and special teams philosophy that Carroll had been pushing for years, frustrating Russell Wilson to the point where he essentially demanded out. The Seahawks offense, run by Geno Smith? It was horrendous in 2021, averaging 25.4 yards and 1.68 points in 38 drives and scoring a touchdown 18.4% of the time, all of which would have ranked in the bottom 10 in the league. This was going to be a lost season.

Cut to Geno Smith on stage accepting the Comeback Player of the Year award. Smith finished the year with a career-high 7.9% passing DVOA and was ninth in the league with 764 passing DYAR; he had had -471 DYAR in the nine years prior. Expecting Smith to bust out like that was unreasonable; there are very few examples in NFL history of someone being as bad as Smith was for so long before breaking out. And so, while our projections had Seattle ranked 30th in offensive DVOA, they instead finished 14th, including eighth in passing offense. It was Smith's deep passing, especially, that sparked the Seattle offensive resurgence—fifth in the league with a 93.6% DVOA on passes to targets more than 15 yards downfield. The only passers who had a higher DVOA and DYAR on deep shots than Smith? Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, and Tua Tagovailoa. Not a bad set of guys to be behind.

And yes, it's basically just Geno and the passing attack that pushed the Seahawks forward. We projected Seattle to be 18th on defense; they slipped to 21st. Their No. 23 rushing DVOA was their worst since 2017. But Smith's connection with Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf was enough to push Seattle well past even our wildest expectations. For half a season, at least.

Before Seattle went to Germany to face the Buccaneers, Seattle ranked sixth in offensive DVOA at 13.8%, and fourth in pass offense at 33.0%. Starting in Week 10, however, Seattle fell all the way to 20th (-2.9%) and 14th (14.8%) respectively. They struggled to stay on schedule and keep the chains moving, becoming more reliant on occasional big splash plays—the same complaints Wilson had before leaving. Don't get us wrong; even the second-half Seahawks were far better than our projections had them. But their climb to the third spot in these rankings is due to those first eight games, not the back half of the year.

2. San Francisco 49ers (+1.88)

Projected DVOA: -1.6%; -0.20 standard deviations
Actual DVOA: 27.5%, +1.68 standard deviations

The trouble with projecting the 2022 49ers, of course, was the mystery box at quarterback. San Francisco had finally moved on from Jimmy Garoppolo, and it was Trey Lance's team from here on out. How on Earth do you project that? We're talking a player with 71 career NFL pass attempts entering the season. A player with 318 career collegiate passing attempts, and in the Mountain Valley Conference to boot. Obviously blessed with tremendous talent, Lance's NFL potential was as much of a question mark as any quarterback in modern memory. The San Francisco season would live or die with his development.

… or, at least it did for a game and a quarter, until Lance fractured his ankle. Season over, see you in 2023.

Obviously, our projections had no way of knowing that Jimmy Garoppolo would start the bulk of the season for San Francisco; he wasn't even practicing with the team when our projections came out. We also had no way of knowing that Garoppolo would then get hurt, sending Mr. Irrelevant Brock Purdy under center … nor that Purdy would far exceed expectations, putting up the sixth-best passing DVOA for a rookie with at least 150 pass attempts in our database. Nor, for that matter, could we have predicted the mid-season acquisition of Christian McCaffrey, which sent the 49ers' offensive DVOA from 2.2% before the bye to 25.6% after it. Of course our predictions underestimated the 49ers' offense; we were projecting an entirely different offense from the one we ended up getting! Finishing sixth when we had them 19th is certainly overperforming, but I think the extenuating circumstances are enough to absolve us there.

Not so much on the defense, which we had finishing 13th and instead was best in the league. We were worried about the secondary, not convinced that Charvarius Ward would be enough to bolster the weak links at cornerback. Well, the secondary was San Francisco's weak link again, if only because the front seven was dominant once more. While they still gave up their one contractually mandated deep shot per game, the 49ers' defense ended up second in adjusted line yards, fifth in pass rush win rate, and so strong against passes over the middle of the field that offenses started avoiding the area entirely. Defense is generally less consistent from year to year, but the 49ers not only shrugged off regression, they actively improved.

This is the one overperforming team who went from an OK projection to actively being good, which is impressive in its own right—most of the overperforming teams were ones we expected to be terrible. And speaking of which…

1. New York Giants (+1.96)

Projected DVOA: -18.2%; -2.24 standard deviations
Actual DVOA: -4.5%; -0.28 standard deviations

The Giants were a little bit fortunate to make the postseason last year. They finished with 9.5 wins, but only had 8.3 Pythagorean wins. Flip any of their eight one-score victories to a loss and the Giants are sitting at home in January. They were a below-average team with above-average luck who parlayed that into a minor postseason run against a team who deserved to be there even less than they did.

And all of that is fantastic, considering that by our numbers, the Giants were supposed to be the worst team in the league by a substantial margin. We projected them with a -18.2% DVOA; the next-worst team was Carolina at -10.6%. We had New York ranked 32nd in defense and 31st in offense. We gave them a 13.2% chance to make the postseason; the next-lowest mark was the Falcons at 25.6%. Four of us picked the Giants to use the first pick in the draft in our staff predictions. There was zero faith in them to do anything of note.

That's not to say we had nothing positive to say about New York. The Almanac praised the hiring of Brian Daboll and Joe Schoen, not just from a "something had to change" perspective, but in terms of being the right people to dig the Giants out of the massive hole left behind from the Dave Gettleman regime. We praised Schoen for jettisoning the flotsam of the Gettleman era, saying he was trying to avoid "humiliation in 2022 while preserving flexibility in 2023." We praised Daboll for buying in and immediately improving the culture of the locker room. We just figured it would take a couple of years to actually see improvements on the field.

Instead, Daniel Jones had a career campaign, finishing with a positive DVOA for the first time in his career. A healthy Saquon Barkley produced more DYAR than he had hit in any year since his rookie season. Darius Slayton and Richie James both set career highs in receiving DYAR. The defense was still terrible, and the offensive line remains a work in progress, but Daboll was able to squeeze the most out of the pieces left to him and produce something respectable. And it was something that got better over the course of the year—the Giants went from a DVOA of -7.8% over the first half of the season to -1.5% over the second half, ranking in the top seven in both passing and rushing offense.

Is that enough to justify signing Jones to a long-term deal and franchise tagging Barkley? That's a harder call, and it's clear there's still a lot of work to be done here before we can take the Giants seriously as year-in, year-out playoff contenders. But they're a good year ahead of schedule at this point, and New York fans should enjoy the first time the Giants have actually had hope since Eli Manning retired.