Week 11 DVOA: Lions Among Historical Greats

The Detroit Lions are back among the all-time DVOA greats after their colossal 52-6 stomping of the Jacksonville Jaguars this week. Because of opponent adjustments, this game gets “only” 93.1% DVOA. The Lions have positive DVOA in every single game this season, with their lowest rating way back in Week 1 when they beat the Rams 26-20 (5.5% DVOA). The Lions move up to now stand as the third-best team in DVOA history through 10 games.

The Lions outgained the Jaguars by 475 yards. You may have seen this, but this was the biggest gap in total yardage between two teams since a 1979 game where the Rams held the Seahawks to -7 net yards total. In fact, the surprise about the Lions game is that it doesn’t come out as one of the top games in DVOA history, even if we look at the best games without opponent adjustments. The top games are actually a bit surprising.

The top total VOA game is 160.1% when the Washington Redskins beat the San Francisco 49ers 52-17 in Week 7 of 2005. Yes, the best game still had the winner allow 17 points. The 49ers scored 10 of those points very late in meaningless action. Without the late 72-yard Frank Gore touchdown run, the Redskins outgained the 49ers 7.5 to 2.7 yards per play. Most of the other top games by VOA are the kind of 48-0 massacres you would expect. By comparison, Detroit’s VOA against Jacksonville was “only” 112.8%.

The top offensive VOA game is 101.2% for the Kansas City Chiefs in a 37-21 victory over Cleveland in Week 9 of 2018. This one is an interesting artifact of not including many penalties in DVOA. The Chiefs in that game kept getting penalized and then converting these huge long-distance situations, so the DVOA system sees them as being extraordinarily efficient. By comparison, Detroit’s offensive VOA against Jacksonville was “only” 68.6%.

Baltimore’s Defense is Secretly Reasonable

If you’ve been following DVOA commentary each week, you know that the Ravens have a historically good offense this year. It fell a bit this week but still ranks as the eighth-best offense in DVOA history through 11 games. You also know that the Ravens have had a terrible defense this year. Or at least, we think it’s a terrible defense. Baltimore’s performance against Pittsburgh lifted the Ravens to 13th with an above-average defense by DVOA. Yet the Ravens rank 29th in the official NFL rankings based on total yardage allowed. They have allowed more passing yards than any other defense. What the heck is going on there?

The first issue is, of course, the difference between run defense and pass defense. The Ravens rank sixth in run defense DVOA with just 3.4 yards allowed per carry. They rank 17th in pass defense DVOA, though, which is still a huge difference from allowing the most passing yards. Let’s explore:

• The Ravens have allowed the most passing yards because they have faced the most passes. The Ravens have faced 434 pass attempts this year. No other defense has faced more than 390 pass attempts. Baltimore’s 6.7 net yards allowed per pass attempt is tied for 26th in the league, not 32nd. So that’s part of it.
• The Ravens have allowed a few really long pass plays but have a better success rate than you think against the pass. If we include scrambles, the Ravens have limited offenses to a 47.3% success rate on pass plays. That ranks 21st in the NFL.
• The Ravens also get a slight bump up in DVOA from a slightly harder than average schedule of opposing pass offenses, going from 10.6% VOA to 8.8% DVOA.

I hope that helps explain a little bit how the Ravens can have an above-average defense despite giving up all those pass yards.

Big Movers in the DVOA Ranks

Buffalo moves up three spots to third place this week, with Kansas City dropping two spots to fifth place after losing to the Bills. The big mover this week is Denver, up to No. 10 with the big win over Atlanta. The Broncos are now 20th on offense to go with fourth on defense and sixth on special teams.

Our big dropper this week is Washington, which falls from seventh to 13th after losing to the Eagles (who are now seventh instead). The Falcons remain the only team with a winning record to have a DVOA lower than any team with a losing record this season.

Weighted DVOA vs. Total DVOA

Now that we’re 11 weeks into the season, we’re starting to see some differences between total DVOA and weighted DVOA which lowers the importance of early games. Here’s a list of the biggest differences:

Teams that were better early in the season: New Orleans, Minnesota, Seattle, Tampa Bay, Atlanta

Teams that were better more recently: Philadelphia, Miami, Detroit, Los Angeles Chargers, Jacksonville

Full Week 11 DVOA Table

These are the FTN DVOA and DAVE ratings through 11 weeks of 2024. 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.)

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. The projections are adjusted for a few quarterback changes as well as injuries and trades. DAVE is currently 24% preseason forecast and 76% actual performance for teams with 10 games and 16% forecast with 84% actual performance for teams with 11 games.