Aaron Schatz's Articles

Welcome to Week 6 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 […]

You may remember that back in the preseason, I introduced a new concept called Route DVOA. I’ve been doing receiving DVOA for 20 years, but it’s always been based on value per target. Route DVOA is based on value per routes run, which accounts for the skill of getting open and earning targets. It’s probably […]

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 […]

Take a look at the passing DYAR stats for the first five games of the 2023 season and you’ll see some unexpected names at the top of the list. For example, Patrick Mahomes is only fourth, in part due to opponent adjustments for an easier schedule. Justin Herbert is only eighth. Jalen Hurts is 13th. […]

Welcome to Week 5 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 […]

Daniel Kelley wrote yesterday about the NFL storylines we would be talking about if Weeks 1-2 had never happened. Well, what if just Week 1 had never happened? If the Buffalo Bills had not lost to the Zach Wilson-led Jets on Monday Night Football, would we be talking about them the way we talked about […]

Updated with Monday Night Football as of Tuesday 10:30 am EDT. Week 4 is the week I start introducing opponent adjustments to my numbers (at 40% strength) so this is a good time to look at which players have taken advantage of an easy schedule so far… or have been hurt by a tough schedule […]

Welcome to Week 4 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 […]

The biggest game of Week 4 features a division battle between the Buffalo Bills, coming off two dominating blowout victories, against the Miami Dolphins, who just put up a ridiculous 70 points on Denver last week. You don’t need advanced stats to tell you that this is a great matchup, but they’ll tell you that […]

The Miami Dolphins offense is a steamroller. You will not be surprised to learn that the Dolphins now have the best offensive DVOA we’ve ever measured through three games. But you might be surprised by: Just how much the Dolphins are ahead of every other team in DVOA history; Yet the Dolphins did not have […]

Here’s a special delayed Quick Reads for Week 3, since I was off yesterday for the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. Just going to run the table of the best and worst DYAR with a couple of comments: As of now, De’Von Achane has the No. 4 best rookie running back game in DYAR history. […]

Welcome to Week 3 of our DVOA-based picks. I’m going to do the same thing here that I used to do over at Football Outsiders. I’m picking (almost) every game straight up and against the spread. I’m also doing over-under totals, which were added to the picks last year. This does not make this advice […]

There are a few surprises if you look at this week’s DVOA ratings, but the biggest surprise of the year is probably sitting at No. 18. There you’ll find the Arizona Cardinals, currently the second-highest 0-2 team behind the Minnesota Vikings. The Cardinals were supposed to be completely tanking this season, but they’ve played two […]

The Dallas Cowboys are kicking ass and taking names. They started out with a 40-0 blowout against the New York Giants, and they followed up with a dominating 30-10 win over the New York Jets. The Cowboys are historically great on defense and are enjoying the best start of any Cowboys team in the last […]

Updated with Monday Night Football as of Tuesday 9:30 am EDT. Tua Tagovailoa of the Miami Dolphins had a good Week 2 game. It wasn’t a great game, although the Miami offense certainly looked unstoppable at times. Other times, the Patriots defense stopped them. Tagovailoa ended the week with 119 passing DYAR, ranked seventh among […]

Welcome to Week 2 of our DVOA-based picks. I’m going to do the same thing here that I used to do over at Football Outsiders. I’m picking (almost) every game straight up and against the spread. I’m also doing over-under totals, which were added to the picks last year. This does not make this advice […]

The Dallas Cowboys opened the 2023 season as the top team in our DVOA projections, surprising a lot of people. Then the Cowboys went out and whuped up on the New York Giants by the score of 40-0. So it’s no surprise that the Cowboys are also No. 1 in the actual DVOA ratings after […]

NOTE: Updated with Monday Night Football at 11am EDT. Welcome to Quick Reads! For readers who are new to my work and my stats, this is a weekly column where I will talk about the best and worst performances of the week according to my DYAR stats. That’s Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement, the “total” stat […]

Welcome to Week 1 of our DVOA-based picks. I’m going to do the same thing here that I used to do over at Football Outsiders. I’m picking (almost) every game straight up and against the spread. I’m also doing over-under totals, which were added to the picks last year. This does not make this advice […]

This is a guest column from Ajit Kirpekar. Better late than never, let’s look at 2022 Rate of Adjusted Pressure (RAP) numbers. For those unfamiliar, Rate of Adjusted Pressure is an opponent-adjusted metric for measuring a team’s success at generating or avoiding pressure. It’s calculated using a machine learning model that first predicts the probability […]

We’re still working on a permanent home page for the DVOA playoff odds report but in the meantime, we wanted to share with our readers all the (almost) preseason odds. There are a couple of differences between these odds and those from the 2023 preseason projections article. Thursday night’s Detroit win over Kansas City is […]

Here are my DVOA projections for 2023, updated from the season forecasts in FTN Football Almanac 2023. For those new to my work since it began appearing on FTN Network, you can find an explanation of DVOA here. Note that there’s a big difference between DVOA and projected DVOA. The DVOA ratings that appear on […]

Warning! This article is going to get deep into the weeds on how DVOA works. If you’re a longtime FTN reader and new to my DVOA stats, beware! If you’re a longtime Football Outsiders reader and want to know about the latest version of DVOA, read on. The main goal behind DVOA v8.0 is to […]

Fast receivers such as Tyreek Hill and DK Metcalf win on curl routes by scaring defenders into playing off coverage. Amari Cooper and Garrett Wilson ate on slant routes despite not necessarily having the best quarterbacks. And receiver screens are generally bad – unless you are the Philadelphia Eagles. Those are some of the lessons […]

When I first created my advanced stats DVOA and DYAR for receivers 20 years ago, there was a bit of a breakthrough about which plays we were counting. At the time, there wasn’t much of a concept of “targets” in the public data. Receivers were tracked by receptions and yards per reception. Official gamebooks did […]

It’s a big season for Kolton Miller, Dylan Parham, and the other members of the Las Vegas Raiders offensive line. They’re under a lot of pressure to prevent pressure. What’s the reason? Look at the track record of new Raiders quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. He’s consistently been one of the worst quarterbacks in the league under […]

THE ULTRA-SHORT VERSION DVOA measures a team’s efficiency by comparing success on every single play to a league average based on situation and opponent. THE SHORT VERSION DVOA is a method of evaluating teams, units, or players. It takes every single play during the NFL season and compares each one to a league-average baseline based […]