Prime-Time Props — Thursday Night Football, Week 1
Prop God
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 one week of the 2023 season.
In fact, the surprise might be that the Cowboys aren’t higher than 79.1%. It’s actually a bit rare not to have a game over 80% in the first week of the season! At least one team in Week 1 reached that mark in 27 of the previous 42 years of DVOA, which goes back to the 1981 season.
One big reason the Cowboys don’t come out higher is that DVOA doesn’t give them credit for their big blocked field goal and the return for the touchdown. The reason is that special teams DVOA does not include what I call “non-predictive” plays. These are plays that are not luck; they require skill and practice. But blocked field goals and punts (and long returns off them) are so rare that they do nothing to predict how well the special teams unit will play in the future. An eventual goal is to create a second “descriptive” special teams rating that includes all the non-predictive stuff (blocks, 2-point conversions, onside kicks, fakes) but that is all left out for now.
The Cowboys also don’t get any credit for two of the Giants’ five fumbles because they were aborted snaps. Those plays are negative for offense but not positive for defense.
The aborted snaps are also a reason the Giants come out more negative than the Cowboys do positive. The Giants get -103.4% DVOA for their Week 1 loss. Does this doom them to a terrible season? Nope. The Giants are the 31st team to start the year with a DVOA under -100%. The previous 30 teams averaged 6.1 wins, but five of these teams made the playoffs: the 1985 Jets, the 1989 Oilers, the 1989 Steelers, the 1991 Lions, and the 2020 Browns.
When we get into the season, we’ll have teams where DVOA ratings and win-loss records are in complete disagreement. That’s not really the case after Week 1, however. For the most part, the winners had good DVOA ratings and the losers were negative. Fifteen of the top 17 teams are 1-0, with the only interlopers New England (14th) and Buffalo (15th). Las Vegas is the only 1-0 team below that; the Raiders are 21st, just three spots below the Denver team they beat.
(That Buffalo ranking probably has a lot of people wondering, which is why I must bring the reminder, especially for our newer readers. Although I’m calling our main metric DVOA here, it is actually VOA because there are no opponent adjustments right now. We do not apply opponent adjustments until after Week 4, so in Weeks 1-3 DVOA and VOA are the same thing. The Buffalo defensive rating is not adjusted for facing Zach Wilson, for example.)
Some of the teams at the top of our ratings are teams we projected highly for this season, such as Dallas (1), San Francisco (5), and Philadelphia (10). Others are teams we had as more mediocre. We were higher than conventional wisdom on Cleveland (3) but we got bigger than expected Week 1 wins from teams such as Jacksonville (2) and Green Bay (4).
Meanwhile, the top three teams in the AFC going into the season — at least according to the markets, if not the DVOA projections — all lost in Week 1. However, they lost in very different ways. Kansas City and Buffalo lost close games. Cincinnati, on the other hand, got crushed. The Bengals rank 31st in DVOA after one week.
This is where we bring in our DAVE ratings. DAVE ratings combine our preseason projection with the results of early games to give us a better prediction of how each team will rank at the end of the year. For those who don’t know the story, this metric is called DAVE as a reaction to criticism that our stats are too much alphabet soup. I mean, who can argue with a guy named Dave? (Technically, it stands for “DVOA Adjusted for Variation Early.”)
In these week’s DAVE, the preseason forecast still counts for 93% of the rating. Kansas City and Buffalo barely move. Cincinnati is a different story, in part because our projections had them lower than conventional wisdom (i.e., slightly below Cleveland) and in part because they had a terrible Week 1 game. The Bengals drop to 14th in DAVE and our playoff odds simulation (which you will find here each week) drops them way down to just 1.2% Super Bowl odds. That’s probably too low, to be honest. The Bengals will most likely bounce back from their bad Week 1 performance. Still, I think their terrible offensive day is a bigger worry than the close losses for Kansas City or Buffalo.
The big move in DAVE and the playoff odds belongs to the New York Jets, because the projection portion of the DAVE formula is now adjusted to consider Zach Wilson as the Jets’ quarterback. The Jets drop from 10th in the preseason offensive projections to 28th in offensive DAVE after Week 1. We now only have the Jets making the playoffs in 28.6% of simulations despite their great defense, and they win the Super Bowl less than 1.0% of the time.
If you’re a new reader since my move to FTN, you can look for DVOA commentary every Tuesday afternoon during the season and then Mondays during the playoffs. Meanwhile, check back daily as we’re working on gradually getting all the stats online so you can look at things like individual player DVOA/DYAR, adjusted line yards, and defense vs. types of receivers.
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These are the FTN DVOA and DAVE ratings through one week 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.) Please note that there are no opponent adjustments in DVOA until after Week 4.
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 93% preseason forecast and 7% actual performance. DAVE ratings for the New York Jets are now based on Zach Wilson as starting quarterback.
| RK | TEAM | TOTAL DVOA |
DAVE | RANK | W-L | OFF. DVOA |
OFF. RANK |
DEF. DVOA |
DEF. RANK |
S.T. DVOA |
S.T. RANK |
| 1 | DAL | 79.1% | 21.1% | 1 | 1-0 | 14.7% | 9 | -66.6% | 1 | -2.3% | 21 |
| 2 | JAX | 58.0% | 6.6% | 8 | 1-0 | 10.7% | 12 | -35.2% | 3 | 12.1% | 2 |
| 3 | CLE | 51.8% | 12.3% | 5 | 1-0 | 12.9% | 10 | -39.3% | 2 | -0.4% | 19 |
| 4 | GB | 50.1% | 4.8% | 12 | 1-0 | 20.6% | 5 | -18.2% | 9 | 11.3% | 3 |
| 5 | SF | 45.1% | 15.6% | 2 | 1-0 | 18.1% | 7 | -26.4% | 4 | 0.5% | 17 |
| 6 | BAL | 31.4% | 10.0% | 7 | 1-0 | 3.3% | 16 | -26.2% | 5 | 1.8% | 13 |
| 7 | MIA | 27.8% | 6.4% | 9 | 1-0 | 64.7% | 1 | 37.3% | 31 | 0.3% | 18 |
| 8 | ATL | 26.2% | 4.5% | 13 | 1-0 | 2.4% | 17 | -26.1% | 6 | -2.4% | 22 |
| 9 | WAS | 22.5% | 0.9% | 19 | 1-0 | -3.2% | 19 | -24.3% | 7 | 1.5% | 14 |
| 10 | PHI | 17.1% | 11.6% | 6 | 1-0 | 4.7% | 15 | -3.1% | 14 | 9.2% | 5 |
| 11 | LAR | 13.6% | -8.1% | 23 | 1-0 | 34.6% | 3 | 8.1% | 22 | -12.9% | 30 |
| 12 | NO | 9.1% | 2.2% | 15 | 1-0 | -7.9% | 22 | -21.5% | 8 | -4.5% | 24 |
| 13 | DET | 6.9% | 6.3% | 10 | 1-0 | 19.1% | 6 | 14.3% | 24 | 2.1% | 12 |
| 14 | NE | 2.7% | 1.6% | 17 | 0-1 | 8.7% | 14 | 0.6% | 17 | -5.5% | 26 |
| 15 | BUF | 2.5% | 15.2% | 3 | 0-1 | -2.4% | 18 | -17.8% | 10 | -12.9% | 31 |
| 16 | TB | 1.7% | -8.7% | 24 | 1-0 | -5.3% | 20 | -1.5% | 15 | 5.5% | 8 |
| RK | TEAM | TOTAL DVOA |
DAVE | RANK | W-L | OFF. DVOA |
OFF. RANK |
DEF. DVOA |
DEF. RANK |
S.T. DVOA |
S.T. RANK |
| 17 | NYJ | 0.3% | -2.2% | 21 | 1-0 | -19.8% | 24 | 0.0% | 16 | 20.1% | 1 |
| 18 | DEN | -2.5% | -2.3% | 22 | 0-1 | 24.9% | 4 | 16.8% | 25 | -10.5% | 29 |
| 19 | MIN | -4.1% | -9.2% | 25 | 0-1 | -7.3% | 21 | -7.4% | 11 | -4.2% | 23 |
| 20 | KC | -5.3% | 14.1% | 4 | 0-1 | 15.4% | 8 | 27.5% | 29 | 6.8% | 7 |
| 21 | LV | -6.7% | 1.0% | 18 | 1-0 | 10.5% | 13 | 19.5% | 27 | 2.3% | 11 |
| 22 | ARI | -16.8% | -21.7% | 32 | 0-1 | -32.5% | 30 | -6.2% | 12 | 9.4% | 4 |
| 23 | CAR | -17.9% | -13.7% | 28 | 0-1 | -21.7% | 25 | 3.6% | 18 | 7.4% | 6 |
| 24 | SEA | -18.8% | -1.7% | 20 | 0-1 | 10.8% | 11 | 30.2% | 30 | 0.6% | 16 |
| 25 | TEN | -27.6% | -10.3% | 26 | 0-1 | -31.7% | 29 | -3.4% | 13 | 0.7% | 15 |
| 26 | HOU | -28.6% | -20.0% | 31 | 0-1 | -27.3% | 27 | 5.7% | 20 | 4.4% | 9 |
| 27 | LAC | -29.9% | 5.4% | 11 | 0-1 | 40.7% | 2 | 73.3% | 32 | 2.7% | 10 |
| 28 | IND | -34.7% | -16.9% | 29 | 0-1 | -22.5% | 26 | 5.5% | 19 | -6.8% | 27 |
| 29 | CHI | -42.0% | -17.7% | 30 | 0-1 | -18.7% | 23 | 21.9% | 28 | -1.4% | 20 |
| 30 | PIT | -51.5% | 2.2% | 16 | 0-1 | -27.8% | 28 | 19.0% | 26 | -4.6% | 25 |
| 31 | CIN | -61.3% | 3.4% | 14 | 0-1 | -42.9% | 31 | 8.0% | 21 | -10.4% | 28 |
| 32 | NYG | -103.4% | -12.9% | 27 | 0-1 | -75.2% | 32 | 13.3% | 23 | -14.8% | 32 |
