Week 5 DVOA: 49ers Join the Hunt for Historical Greatness

Like probably every power rating around the Internet, both statistical and subjective, DVOA has the San Francisco 49ers on top after their huge 42-10 victory over the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday night. The surprise around here instead is the relatively small gap between the unbeaten 49ers and the 3-2 Buffalo Bills.

Let’s heap some praise on the 49ers before we go talking about the Bills some more. San Francisco is the only team in the league to rank in the top 10 in all three phases: second on offense behind only Miami, seventh on defense, and 10th on special teams. They are the only team with a positive DVOA for all five games this season and they aren’t just over 0% in every game, they’re over 25% in every game. The win over the Cowboys is currently the No. 4 best single game this year. (Games 2-5 are all between 78.9% and 80.3% so small changes in opponent adjustments will change the order over time.)

The 49ers have been good enough to replace the Bills on our list of the best teams in DVOA history through X number of games. The 49ers are now the No. 7 best team ever tracked by DVOA. What’s remarkable is that this is the best five-game start for any San Francisco team in our data. All those years of the San Francisco 49ers dynasty in the 80s and 90s, when the 49ers ranked in the top five of DVOA for 16 straight years, they never started a season off this strong.

First, let’s look at the best San Francisco 49ers starts. These are the 10 49ers teams that had DVOA of 30% or higher after five games. The teams with an asterisk had a bye week, so they are listed with DVOA after Week 6 rather than Week 5.

Interesting that with the exception of 1984, these are not the championship 49ers teams. Those teams generally started well, but not this well. The 1994 49ers famously had the 40-8 Eagles loss in Week 5. The 1981 champions were 3-2 with -11.9% DVOA after five games.

Now, here’s the list of all the teams with the best DVOA after five games. Normally, I run these lists with either 10 teams or a dozen teams. This one I’m going to do with 20 teams, because that puts two current teams on the table.

I know, you’re asking yourself what the Buffalo Bills are doing on this list after two losses. As I pointed out last week, the Bills were absurdly dominant in Weeks 2-4. Then in Week 5’s loss to Jacksonville, the Bills were… still pretty good. It was Buffalo’s worst game on defense this season, but their second-best game on offense. Overall, the Bills had a 29% DVOA for the game despite the loss. Jacksonville had a single-game DVOA of 30%. Now, this doesn’t mean the game was “essentially a tie.” Jacksonville ran 81 plays to just 53 plays for the Bills. That’s not predictive of the future, which is why DVOA doesn’t account for how many plays you run, but it certainly tells a lot about who was better in this game. Jacksonville had a Post-Game Win Expectancy of 85% (explained here), primarily because of they ran so many more plays. But the underlying stats for the game suggest that the Bills are still very, very good.

At this point, it seems like self parody for me to write that the Bills are “the best 3-2 team ever,” but the Bills really are the best 3-2 team ever, at least by DVOA (which means “ever” only goes back to 1981). I mean, somebody has to be the best 3-2 team ever, just like somebody has to be the best 1-4 team ever (the 2000 Patriots) or the best 0-5 team ever (the 1995 Saints). What happened to the previous best 3-2 teams? Well, the only other 3-2 team with DVOA over 40% was the 2003 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That was a weird team, coming off a Super Bowl championship, having some bad luck early in the season and then totally dissolving in locker room infighting (mostly involving Keyshawn Johnson) and front office tension to finish 7-9 and out of the playoffs. However, 10 out of the top 12 DVOA teams at 3-2 did eventually make the playoffs. Six of them went at least 11-5 and two of them made the Super Bowl, where they played against each other (the 2005 Seahawks and Steelers).

Obviously, with the recent 2021 Bills on this list, the Bills fans know that it’s not enough to have a nice rating early in the season. Your team has to come through in the playoffs. And we know something that DVOA doesn’t know when it comes to the future performance of the Bills. We know that Matt Milano is done for the season, and that the Bills have lost two of their three best defensive players in the last two weeks (Milano and Tre’Davious White) while the third (Von Miller) may not be fully healthy yet. Nonetheless, I still think the Bills have a shot in the AFC. It’s not as good a shot as it was before they lost Milano and picked up an L against Jacksonville, but it’s a shot.

The Detroit Lions are No. 3 in DVOA, same as last week, but as each week goes on it becomes more unusual to see the Lions show up this high. I tweeted about this earlier in the week, but this is by far the highest the Lions have ever ranked after five games. No other season even comes close.

Miami moves up three spots to No. 4 after a big win over the Giants. The Dolphins are the best offense and are still on the list of the best-ever offenses early in the season but their defense has dropped to 25th in the league and their special teams are 30th. The defense has really been a disappointment compared to expectations of what Vic Fangio would be able to do with the Miami defensive talent, even without Jalen Ramsey.

The Dolphins have been breaking a ton of offensive records such as the most average yards per game after five games, but they come out a little lower in DVOA because a lot of those yards have come in garbage time of blowouts and because of normalization variables. Essentially, the Dolphins’ offensive output is slightly less impressive than the 2000 Rams’ output when you compare the average output in 2023 to the average output in 2000.

Philadelphia moves up a spot to No. 5 and Kansas City moves up two spots to No. 6. Baltimore moves down three spots to No. 7 after their close loss to Pittsburgh. It’s interesting to note that the Ravens are being carried by defense even though we all thought this was the year the offense would really flourish while the defense was just OK. Oh, and the Ravens are 26th on special teams, which is even stranger than the Patriots being dead last on special teams.

Seattle, Cleveland, and New Orleans finish up the top 10. Cleveland’s No. 1 defense will get a huge test with San Francisco next Sunday. New Orleans jumps up eight spots with the blowout of the Patriots but their offense is still just 23rd in the league.

Big blowouts also mean big drops. The Cowboys are down seven spots to No. 12. The Patriots drop seven spots to No. 27. The Bengals had less of a blowout win, but the Cardinals drop five spots to No. 21.

The New York Giants are dead last in DVOA and dead last on offense. There’s a big gap between the Giants and everyone else. The gap between the Giants and No. 31 Carolina is about the same as the gap between Carolina and No. 25 Atlanta. The worst teams early in the season tend to be a little worse than the best teams are good, so the Giants are just No. 12 on the list of worst teams ever through five games.

The Broncos defense is still historically bad, however. Here’s an updated list of the worst defenses through five games:

Your eyes do not deceive you. Previous to this year’s Broncos, the three worst defenses through five games belonged to teams that all played in the same season, 1998. These three teams weighed down the defensive ratings so heavily that 17 of 30 teams had negative (i.e. above-average) defensive DVOA after Week 5. The 1998 Bengals, in particular, are a weird team. I had to double check to make sure our numbers were right. The Bengals only allowed 23.0 points per game in their first five games of 1998. That doesn’t sound like one of the worst defenses ever. However, the Bengals also allowed 6.1 net yards per play and a 45% success rate against an easy schedule of opposing offenses. The NFL averages at that point in the 1998 season were 5.1 net yards per play and a 38% success rate. Oh, and the Bengals averaged one DPI of more than 20 yards per game.

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These are the FTN DVOA and DAVE ratings through five weeks of 2023. Our Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) system breaks down every single play and compares a team’s performance to the league average based on situation in order to determine value over average. (Explained further here.) Opponent adjustments are currently at 50% strength.

OFFENSE and DEFENSE DVOA are adjusted for performance indoors and consider all fumbles, kept or lost, as equal value. SPECIAL TEAMS DVOA is adjusted for type of stadium (warm, cold, dome, Denver) and week of season. As always, positive numbers represent more points so DEFENSE is better when it is NEGATIVE.

DAVE is a formula which combines our preseason forecast with current DVOA to get a more accurate projection of how a team will play the rest of the season. DAVE is currently 65% preseason forecast and 35% actual performance for teams with five games and 70% forecast with 30% actual performance for teams with four games.