Aaron Schatz's Articles

Kirk Cousins didn't have one of the best DYAR games ever, but he had the best game so far this year. Plus, the rest of the best and worst of Week 5.

FTN's Aaron Schatz offers up his favorite bets for Week 5 of the NFL season based on DVOA.

Defense drives the Vikings into the top spot. Plus: the best 2-2 teams in DVOA history, why DVOA and EPA differ on the Commanders, and more!

Few quarterbacks have ever started their career hotter than Jayden Daniels of the Commanders. Can he keep it up? Plus, best and worst players of Week 4 by DYAR.

FTN's Aaron Schatz offers up his favorite bets for Week 4 of the NFL season based on DVOA.

The Bills climb to No. 1 with a big Monday night win. Plus: How bad is the Washington defense vs. historically bad defenses?

In a bit of a surprise, Malik Nabers doesn't finish among Week 3's top wide receivers, but he's part of a strong rookie class so far.

FTN's Aaron Schatz offers up his favorite bets for Week 3 of the NFL season based on DVOA.

The Saints continue to dominate early, the Panthers are terrible, the Seahawks have been surprisingly good, and the Chiefs... mediocre?

It was a big week for Kyler Murray, Geno Smith, and... Malik Willis? Yes, Malik Willis!

FTN's Aaron Schatz offers up his favorite bets for Week 2 of the NFL season based on DVOA.

Just how much does it mean for the New Orleans Saints to destroy a bad opponent in Week 1?

One NFC South quarterback had the best day of his career yesterday, but it may not be the one you expected. Plus, all the DYAR stats from Week 1.

FTN's Aaron Schatz offers up his favorite bets for Week 1 of the NFL season based on DVOA.

Updated 2024 projections are here, with San Francisco as our Super Bowl LIX favorites.

Learn more about the FTN Football Almanac 2024, plus download the free sample L.A. Chargers chapter!

We’re continuing our look at 1979 and 1980 DVOA ratings with the unveiling of the 1980 player DVOA and DYAR ratings. Earl Campbell was an absolute beast in 1980, even better than he was in 1979. Dan Fouts had another great year. The Falcons and Browns had very strong offenses, and the Patriots had a […]

The Philadelphia Eagles top the ratings as the best team of 1980, narrowly surpassing the surprising Atlanta Falcons. This makes two straight years on top for the Eagles, as they also rank No. 1 for the 1981 season. The Oakland Raiders, who became the first wild-card team since the merger to win the Super Bowl […]

Let’s continue our look back at 1979 and 1980 DVOA ratings. Today we have player DVOA and DYAR from the 1979 season. It was a good year for the Cowboys, Chargers, and Patriots offenses. It was a very good year for Earl Campbell and the Houston Oilers running game. A reminder, here’s the complete schedule […]

Today, DVOA finally reaches all the way back to the 1970s. All this week, I’ll be introducing DVOA ratings from 1979 and 1980. That means we’re back to the Steel Curtain Pittsburgh Steelers, and it will not shock you that the champions of Super Bowl XIV were also the No. 1 team in the NFL […]

It’s the offseason, which means it’s a good time to look at fun past games of NFL history. Today, let’s look at the 10 best DVOA ratings ever scored in games where the team lost anyway. These are generally very good, close games against teams that ranked very high in DVOA and therefore had strong […]

Earlier this week, we examined adjusted games lost at the team level. Today, we’ll switch perspectives to evaluate the impact of injuries on each position. Note that adjusted games lost totals do not include the postseason. As we noted in our first article, injury totals were down across the NFL this year, so there aren’t […]

The Houston Texans were a surprise playoff team in 2023, and they made it to the playoffs despite leading the league in injuries to significant players according to our adjusted games lost (AGL) numbers. Cleveland also made it to the playoffs despite a high AGL in 2023. Other teams that suffered a ton of injuries […]

A couple of years ago, I developed a new metric alled Post-Game Win Expectancy (PGWE). The idea was to explore games where the losing team has a higher DVOA rating than the winning team. How unlikely are these losses? PGWE has nothing to do with how good the teams are on the season, or coming […]

Recently, I was hit up by a local reporter to talk about this year’s Philadelphia Eagles collapse down the stretch. The next day, Ross Tucker tweeted out about how public perception of Jalen Hurts has fallen way too low because of those last few games. I happen to be in agreement with him about this, […]

The Kansas City Chiefs ended up with a higher DVOA than the San Francisco 49ers in their Super Bowl LVIII win. But as you might imagine given how good the Niners were in the regular season, that’s because of opponent adjustments. As befits a game where the Chiefs recovered six of seven fumbles including both […]

Well, here we are again with the question of whether we have to consider Patrick Mahomes as “playoff LeBron.” Does Mahomes specifically raise his game in the playoffs, to the point where we can’t accurately analyze the Super Bowl LVIII matchup because we can’t use past statistics to determine Kansas City’s strengths and weaknesses? Last […]

This was my fourth year as an official Associated Press voter for both the All-Pro team and the end-of-season awards. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a long article about my All-Pro votes. With the NFL awards now given out, I wanted to do the same and divulge my award ballot. Sign up for […]

I’m currently working on my 21st Super Bowl preview. That should run in the middle of next week, a few days before Super Bowl Sunday, but this means waiting more than a week before unveiling all the stat tidbits that get you ready for the big matchup. It was one thing when I was the […]

Welcome to Week 22 of our DVOA-based picks. Each week, I pick (almost) every game straight up and against the spread, as well as over-under totals. This does not make this advice to bet every single game! You’ve got to pick and choose and be smart about it. But for people in office pools, we […]

Continuing with my traditions from the old site, we’re not going to bother with the full 32-team table of weighted DVOA ratings, since there are only two teams left and most teams haven’t played for three weeks. We’ll just take a quick look at both teams set for Super Bowl LVIII: The San Francisco 49ers […]

Here are the best and worst players of the conference championship games according to our DYAR stats. Quarterbacks Rk Player Team CP/AT Yds TD INT Sacks TotalDYAR PassDYAR RushDYAR Opp 1. Patrick Mahomes KC 30/39 241 1 0 2 147 139 8 BAL Mahomes had 125 passing DYAR before halftime and 13 passing DYAR after […]