Week 12 DVOA: Schedules Past and Present

The Detroit Lions remain the No. 1 team in DVOA, although their rating did drop a little bit with their win over the Indianapolis Colts coming by “only” 18 points. The Lions are now the fifth-best team measured by DVOA through 11 games.

The Ravens moved up a little bit with their win over the Los Angeles Chargers on Monday Night Football, with a DVOA now closer to Detroit than to No. 3 Buffalo. Baltimore now ranks as the seventh-best offense in DVOA history through 12 games.

Buffalo and Minnesota remain in third and fourth place, respectively, but the Philadelphia Eagles are on the rise at No. 5. The Eagles’ last six games have been their best six games of the year by DVOA. In weighted DVOA, which gives less weight to games early in the season, the Eagles are up to third behind only the Lions and the Ravens.

The Packers climb two spots to sixth and the Chiefs drop two spots to seventh. What are we going to do with the Chiefs? We all assume they’re going to “turn it on” when the playoffs come, but at this point they are one of the lowest-rated 10-1 teams in DVOA history. Not near the bottom, because the 1984 Broncos and 2012 Falcons were much lower than the rest of the 10-1 teams, but the Chiefs are roughly equivalent to last year’s Eagles before their late-season collapse. This is despite a tough schedule and a big opponent adjustment! If we looked at unadjusted VOA, the Chiefs would rank 13th!

Finally, we should say something about the bottom of our table, where the New England Patriots barely passed the Cleveland Browns as the worst team in the NFL this year. This is the first time the Patriots have been in last place since Week 7 of 1993. They were also in last place for most of 1990 and 1992. That’s how bad the Patriots are this year: it’s like the pre-Parcells era. With the worst DVOA and one of the toughest remaining schedules, we have the Patriots now as the favorite to earn the No. 1 draft selection in 2025.

Schedule Strength: Past and Future

In yesterday’s Quick Reads column, in discussing Saquon Barkley’s MVP candidacy, I noted that the Philadelphia Eagles had played the easiest schedule of opposing defenses so far this season. This may be confusing because, if you look at the main DVOA table, you will see that the Eagles are listed with the No. 30 schedule, not the No. 32 schedule. The reason for that difference is that there’s a difference between the schedule you face on offense and the schedule you face on defense.

The Eagles are a great example of this. Philadelphia’s schedule so far has been the league’s easiest against opposing defenses. But for the Eagles defense, their schedule has been the seventh-hardest based on opposing offenses. So while the offense looks better than it really is because of who the Eagles have faced, the defense doesn’t look as good as it really is.

The Eagles are not the only team with a split like this. The Cleveland Browns schedule so far ranks 30th on offense and sixth on defense. The Cincinnati Bengals schedule so far ranks 29th on offense and eighth on defense. The Kansas City Chiefs schedule so far ranks 20th on offense and third on defense.

There are also big differences if we flip things around. The most substantial is the New York Jets schedule, which is the fourth-hardest for their offense but the easiest in the league for their defense. The Indianapolis Colts schedule ranks first on offense but 22nd on defense. The Jacksonville Jaguars schedule ranks third on offense but 25th on defense.

We can do this same analysis for the schedule going forward, looking at the last six weeks based on current DVOA ratings. The schedule flips for the Chiefs, who will now face the fourth-hardest offensive schedule but the 28th-ranked defensive schedule. The Ravens schedule going forward is sixth on offense but 27th on defense. The Bengals schedule is seventh on offense but 32nd on defense. In the other direction, we have the Saints (11th on defense, 29th on offense) and the Raiders (seventh on defense, 26th on offense).

Here’s the full table for your enjoyment, giving the past and future schedule on both offense and defense based on average DVOA of opponents. Offensive schedule is the average of the opposing defenses (lower is tougher) while defensive schedule is the average of the opposing offenses (higher is tougher). Remember that you can see these numbers update every week with an FTN Fantasy subscription!

Full DVOA Table Through Week 12

These are the FTN DVOA and DAVE ratings through 12 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. WEIGHTED DVOA represents an attempt to figure out how a team is playing right now, as opposed to over the season as a whole, by making recent games more important than earlier games.

(I’m listing WEIGHTED DVOA here instead of DAVE because by this point, DAVE is almost entirely made up of in-season performance. If you would still like to see DAVE for the next two weeks, you can click here.)