2024-25 College Basketball Power Rankings (March 3)
Mike Randle
We’re excited to officially introduce DVOA for the 1978 season this week! Today, we’re doing team stats from 1978 with player stats coming tomorrow.
As you may know, the 1978 season was one of the most important inflection points in the history of the NFL. First, it was the introduction of the 16-game season that lasted (except for strike seasons) until 2020. Second, the playoffs expanded to five teams per conference with the introduction of a second wild card and the wild-card round where the two wild cards faced off in each conference for a chance to advance along with the three division champions. Third, 1978 brought the significant liberalization of passing rules.
The biggest change was illegal contact, the rule that defenders could only make contact with receivers within five yards of the line of scrimmage (before the ball was thrown). In addition, pass blocking rules were extended to permit extended arms and open hands. And this has nothing to do with pass defense, but modern players are very happy that hurdling a defender was made legal in 1978.
It took teams a while to get used to the new passing rules, and the game was still very run-heavy in 1978. In fact, one thing that surprised me is that the standard deviation of pass/run ratio among the 28 teams was actually very low in 1978. Most teams were still using the old strategies. That started to change in 1979 and then especially in 1980 as the game opened up.
The top team of 1978 by DVOA was the defending champion Dallas Cowboys, who went on to lose to the Pittsburgh Steelers 35-31 in Super Bowl XIII. However, Pittsburgh’s rating comes with a bit of an asterisk because the Steelers sat their starters in the second half of their Week 16 game against the Denver Broncos. They had a 21-0 lead at halftime and won the game 21-17. Without the second half of that game, the Steelers would have 28.9% DVOA for the season and would have ranked No. 1 ahead of the Cowboys. Pittsburgh, of course, would go on to be No. 1 in DVOA in 1979 with another Super Bowl title in Super Bowl XIV.
The New England Patriots had the league’s top offense, the Los Angeles Rams had the top defense, and the Washington Redskins had the top special teams unit. Here are the ratings for 1978:
| RK | TEAM | DVOA | W-L | OFF | RK | DEF | RK | ST | RK | SCHED | RK |
| 1 | DAL | 26.9% | 12-4 | 15.3% | 2 | -12.3% | 3 | -0.7% | 18 | -1.4% | 20 |
| 2 | PIT | 25.5% | 14-2 | 8.1% | 6 | -15.5% | 2 | 2.0% | 7 | -3.7% | 24 |
| 3 | LARM | 23.0% | 12-4 | 5.3% | 9 | -17.3% | 1 | 0.4% | 12 | -3.7% | 25 |
| 4 | DEN | 19.1% | 10-6 | 4.2% | 13 | -11.8% | 4 | 3.1% | 5 | 0.3% | 13 |
| 5 | SD | 16.5% | 9-7 | 6.5% | 7 | -10.0% | 5 | -0.1% | 14 | 1.8% | 8 |
| 6 | MIA | 15.0% | 11-5 | 9.6% | 5 | -1.5% | 12 | 3.8% | 3 | -1.1% | 19 |
| 7 | OAK | 12.0% | 9-7 | 1.5% | 17 | -8.0% | 7 | 2.5% | 6 | 2.3% | 7 |
| 8 | NE | 10.6% | 11-5 | 16.2% | 1 | 2.6% | 16 | -3.0% | 23 | -0.6% | 14 |
| 9 | NYJ | 2.7% | 8-8 | 5.2% | 10 | 10.1% | 25 | 7.6% | 2 | 1.6% | 10 |
| 10 | CLE1 | 2.5% | 8-8 | 3.4% | 14 | 2.4% | 15 | 1.4% | 9 | -0.9% | 18 |
| 11 | GB | 2.4% | 8-7-1 | -6.7% | 21 | -5.5% | 9 | 3.6% | 4 | 1.1% | 11 |
| 12 | PHI | 2.1% | 9-7 | 2.8% | 16 | -2.2% | 11 | -2.9% | 22 | 1.7% | 9 |
| 13 | HOIL | 1.1% | 10-6 | 5.6% | 8 | 2.8% | 17 | -1.8% | 21 | 3.5% | 4 |
| 14 | NO | -0.8% | 7-9 | 10.1% | 4 | 3.9% | 20 | -7.1% | 28 | -0.8% | 17 |
| RK | TEAM | DVOA | W-L | OFF | RK | DEF | RK | ST | RK | SCHED | RK |
| 15 | WAS | -2.7% | 8-8 | -7.4% | 22 | 3.0% | 18 | 7.6% | 1 | -1.8% | 22 |
| 16 | STLC | -5.3% | 6-10 | 5.1% | 11 | 6.0% | 22 | -4.5% | 26 | -1.5% | 21 |
| 17 | SEA | -6.5% | 9-7 | 10.9% | 3 | 13.5% | 27 | -3.9% | 25 | 3.5% | 3 |
| 18 | KC | -6.5% | 4-12 | 5.0% | 12 | 12.2% | 26 | 0.6% | 11 | 3.5% | 5 |
| 19 | CIN | -7.2% | 4-12 | -11.7% | 24 | -4.6% | 10 | -0.2% | 17 | 4.6% | 2 |
| 20 | DET | -7.2% | 7-9 | -8.2% | 23 | -1.1% | 13 | -0.1% | 16 | -3.8% | 27 |
| 21 | TB | -7.6% | 5-11 | -13.4% | 25 | -5.9% | 8 | -0.1% | 15 | -7.1% | 28 |
| 22 | CHI | -7.8% | 7-9 | -2.6% | 18 | 6.8% | 23 | 1.6% | 8 | -3.8% | 26 |
| 23 | ATL | -8.1% | 9-7 | -18.3% | 27 | -8.9% | 6 | 1.3% | 10 | -2.4% | 23 |
| 24 | NYG | -10.4% | 6-10 | -6.5% | 20 | 4.2% | 21 | 0.3% | 13 | -0.8% | 16 |
| 25 | MIN | -14.4% | 8-7-1 | -5.2% | 19 | 3.1% | 19 | -6.1% | 27 | 3.2% | 6 |
| 26 | BUF | -14.9% | 5-11 | 3.3% | 15 | 17.4% | 28 | -0.8% | 19 | -0.7% | 15 |
| 27 | BALC | -28.9% | 5-11 | -16.6% | 26 | 9.0% | 24 | -3.3% | 24 | 5.5% | 1 |
| 28 | SF | -31.5% | 2-14 | -28.2% | 28 | 1.9% | 14 | -1.4% | 20 | 0.5% | 12 |
You may have questions about the teams with winning records that finished near the bottom of the league in DVOA. The 9-7 Falcons were outscored by opponents 290-240 and went on to finish 6-10 the following season with a slightly lower DVOA. The 1978 Vikings are a little more complicated, finishing 25th despite an 8-7-1 record. They were only outscored by opponents 306-294 and should get a boost in DVOA from a tough schedule. One issue here is that the Vikings defense had absurdly good fumble luck, recovering 18 out of 25 offensive fumbles. On offense, the Vikings had a reasonable success rate but ranked 25th with 4.3 yards per play.
As noted above, the league took a while to move on from the run-heavy strategies of the 1970s and the best example of this is the team that finished No. 1 in offensive DVOA, the New England Patriots. The Patriots led the NFL in rush offense DVOA but finished only sixth in pass offense DVOA. In today’s NFL, there’s no way a team with those ranks would be the No. 1 offense overall, but the Patriots used that very good running game a lot. I mean a lot. The Patriots had 671 official carries in the 1978 regular season, the third-highest total in the NFL since 1950. The only teams ahead of them were the 1977 Oakland Raiders with 681 carries (in 14 games) and the 1984 Chicago Bears with 674 carries. The 1978 Patriots also earned 181 first downs on the ground, which is second all-time behind the 2019 Baltimore Ravens with 188.
The 1978 Patriots had three different running backs with at least 140 carries apiece plus 76 carries for fourth running back Don Calhoun and 81 carries for quarterback Steve Grogan. All five of these players had positive run DVOA including fullback Sam Cunningham who averaged only 3.9 yards per carry but converted a ton of short-yardage carries and was 13th among qualifying backs with a 53% running back success rate.
The Patriots weren’t a particularly strong No. 1 offense. Their 16.2% DVOA is the second lowest for a team leading the league. In fact, the three lowest offensive ratings by top offenses are now all in the first three years of DVOA: the 1979 Chargers were at 14.4% and the 1980 Chargers were at 17.8%.
Like the Patriots, the Seahawks also did very well in offensive DVOA because of their running game. They were third running and eighth passing, but that combined to be third overall. Other top offenses did things in the more pass-forward way we are used to now, including the No. 2 Cowboys (first passing, 12th rushing), the No. 4 Saints (third passing, 16th rushing), and the No. 6 Steelers (second passing, 18th rushing).
The worst offense of 1978 was much, much worse than the best offense was good. The 1978 49ers were just dismal overall, going 2-14 with only one win of more than three points (28-12 over the Bengals). The 49ers had traded five draft picks for 31-year-old running back O.J. Simpson before the season — in fact, they traded away the first-round pick that turned into the No. 1 overall selection of the 1979 draft — and Simpson played just 10 games at just 3.7 yards per carry. But the running game wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the passing game with quarterbacks Steve DeBerg and Scott Bull. The 49ers were even forced to use wide receiver Freddie Solomon as a quarterback occasionally. As a team, the 49ers had nine passing touchdowns and 36 interceptions with 5.3 yards per attempt. By DVOA, this was the third worst passing offense of the last 47 years.
| Worst Pass Offense DVOA, 1978-2024 | |||
| YEAR | TEAM | DVOA | Quarterbacks |
| 1992 | SEA | -51.7% | S.Gelbaugh, K.Stouffer |
| 2005 | SF | -40.7% | A.Smith, T.Rattay, K.Dorsey |
| 1978 | SF | -39.5% | S.DeBerg, S.Bull |
| 2004 | CHI | -38.9% | C.Hutchinson, C.Krenzel, J.Quinn, R.Grossman |
| 2010 | ARI | -37.9% | D.Anderson, J.Skelton, M.Hall |
| 2018 | ARI | -37.0% | J.Rosen, S.Bradford |
| 2010 | CAR | -36.0% | J.Clausen, M.Moore |
| 2007 | SF | -35.2% | A.Smith, T.Dilfer, S.Hill |
| 2009 | STL | -34.2% | M.Bulger, K.Boller, K.Null |
| 2011 | JAX | -33.9% | B.Gabbert, L.McCown |
| 2006 | OAK | -32.3% | A.Walter, A.Brooks |
| 2000 | CIN | -31.3% | A.Smith, S.Mitchell |
The Rams led the league in defensive DVOA with the defense that would eventually get to the Super Bowl one year later, followed by the Steelers and the Cowboys. The Broncos were fourth with the Orange Crush defense, ranking first against the pass but 13th against the run.
The Buffalo Bills had the worst defense in the league by DVOA, and were last against both the pass and the run. Pro Football Reference lists eight of their 11 starters that year as age 24 or younger.
The Washington Redskins and New York Jets were essentially tied for first in special teams. Washington was good in every part of special teams while the Jets had poor punting but made up for it with great kickoffs, field goals, and punt returns. The New Orleans Saints were last in special teams DVOA.
The Bengals had the fifth-lowest punt return value in DVOA history without having any fumbles caused by their opponents. They had four muffed punts, one of which was recovered by the opponent, but more importantly they had seven different punt returns that lost yardage including one that became a safety, while not having a return any longer than 17 yards.
You’ll now find 1978 and 2024 added to the team stats workbook on the DVOA Downloads page for subscribers. Players on the way tomorrow!
