Rams Up to No. 3 in Weighted DVOA
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NFL Wild Card – The Los Angeles Rams put up over 100% DVOA for their huge blowout win over the Arizona Cardinals last night and move up to third in weighted DVOA this week. The Rams now come out as the highest-rated remaining team in the NFC. However, they would be essentially tied with the Green Bay Packers if we removed the games where Green Bay had to use a backup quarterback. Also, the Rams are high in part because of weighted special teams being at No. 1, and as we know, special teams is the least consistent of the three phases of the game.
One important note for the Rams is that Tampa Bay falls to sixth in weighted DVOA despite the big win over the Eagles. Tampa Bay is the only remaining team in the postseason with a weighted DVOA lower than its total DVOA (including the playoffs).
A reminder again on how playoff DVOA works:
- All 32 teams are ranked, whether they made the playoffs or not.
- Teams are ranked in order of weighted DVOA, not total season DVOA. Since weighted DVOA is meant to lower the strength of older games, these ratings do not include Weeks 1-3, and Weeks 4-11 are somewhat discounted.
- The ratings listed do not include the adjustments used in the ratings for our playoff odds report. For example, Green Bay moves up significantly in those ratings because I removed Week 18 as well as the offense from Week 9 (Jordan Love).
- Only weighted DVOA is listed for offense, defense, and special teams. Total DVOA is also listed, but one game doesn’t change much in a 17-game sample so these ratings will be similar to those from the end of the season.
- Teams which did not play in the wild-card round are treated as if they had a bye week. (That includes both the 18 non-playoff teams and the two teams with byes.)
The numbers below are slightly different from the numbers we ran for weighted DVOA yesterday because we discovered an error in the calculation of weighted special teams including the playoffs. The changes are small but they do result in Buffalo coming out No. 1 in weighted DVOA, slightly ahead of the eliminated Dallas Cowboys.
Yesterday, I ran a list of the top playoff games in DVOA history. In the comments, reader “andrew” asked where the Patriots came out on the opposite list, a list of the worst playoff games in DVOA history. For various reasons — special teams, penalties, opponent adjustments — one team’s DVOA is not a mirror image of the other team’s DVOA. So for comparison purposes, here is the list of the worst playoff games by DVOA since 1983. The Patriots come out seventh.
| Worst Playoff Games by Total DVOA, 1983-2021 | |||||||||
| Team | Year | Week | Opp. | Total DVOA |
Off DVOA |
Def DVOA |
ST DVOA |
Score | Opp Rank |
| IND | 2002 | WC | NYJ | -128.8% | -54.8% | 47.5% | -26.6% | 41-0 | 6 |
| MIN | 2000 | CCG | NYG | -124.1% | -78.2% | 39.2% | -6.8% | 41-0 | 11 |
| NYG | 1993 | DIV | SF | -109.1% | -77.9% | 29.2% | -2.0% | 44-3 | 2 |
| NO | 1987 | WC | MIN | -107.3% | -69.4% | 15.4% | -22.5% | 44-10 | 11 |
| MIA | 1999 | DIV | JAX | -105.2% | -76.0% | 30.4% | 1.2% | 62-7 | 2 |
| DEN | 2011 | DIV | NE | -103.9% | -59.9% | 37.4% | -6.7% | 45-10 | 4 |
| NE | 2021 | WC | BUF | -98.3% | -8.3% | 84.6% | -5.5% | 47-17 | 2 |
| NYG | 2005 | WC | CAR | -97.8% | -67.1% | 25.7% | -5.0% | 23-0 | 9 |
| LARM | 1983 | DIV | WAS | -97.2% | -45.1% | 28.6% | -23.5% | 51-7 | 1 |
| SD | 1992 | DIV | MIA | -95.9% | -71.1% | 14.1% | -10.7% | 31-0 | 11 |
| NYG | 2000 | SB | BAL | -95.2% | -96.2% | -11.1% | -10.0% | 34-7 | 3 |
It’s kind of amazing that the Giants end up with negative special teams in the worst Super Bowl performance ever, despite the Ron Dixon 97-yard kickoff return touchdown. But Dixon also fumbled away a kickoff return, and the Giants allowed their own kickoff return touchdown to Jermaine Lewis.
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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>
If you are new to our website, you can read the explanation of how DVOA is figured here. As always, positive numbers represent more points so DEFENSE is better when it is NEGATIVE.
There are no adjustments here for sitting starters in Week 18, although we do adjust the ratings that we use in the playoff odds report.
Teams in yellow are still alive in the playoffs. Teams in gray lost this past weekend.
Click here for a look at full-season DVOA with offensive and defensive splits.
Next, let’s look at all the single-game ratings from wild-card weekend.
https://www.footballoutsiders.com/dvoa-analysis/2022/rams-no-3-weighted-dvoa
