First TD Bets — Wild Card Monday Slate
Alex Christenson
The Baltimore Ravens are easily still the No. 1 team in FTN’s DVOA ratings but it was the Houston Texans who had the biggest win of the wild-card round according to DVOA. After adjusting for playing a good Chargers team, the Texans came out with a single-game DVOA slightly over 100%, only the third game all year to be over 100%. Here are the five best single games of 2024 by DVOA, adjusted of course for opponent:
- Week 18: Denver 38, Kansas City 0, 140.8% DVOA (nonsense Chiefs backups asterisk warning)
- Week 9: Baltimore 41, Denver 10, 107.2% DVOA
- Wild-Card Round: Houston 32, Los Angeles Chargers 12, 100.8% DVOA
- Week 4: Washington 42, Arizona 14, 99.1% DVOA
- Week 15: Green Bay 30, Seattle 13, 95.8% DVOA
It was the second-best defensive game of the year, also behind the silly Denver win in Week 18 over the Chiefs backups. So in essence, this was the best real defensive game of the year where starters played starters.
Three of this weekend’s games had Post-Game Win Expectancy over 99.5%. The Philadelphia win over Green Bay was at 97%. But the Washington victory over Tampa Bay was at 20% PGWE! Tampa Bay had a higher single-game DVOA rating, 24.0% to -1.7% and outgained the Commanders on a per-play basis, 6.5 yards per play to 5.1 yards per play. The big problem was the blown handoff on the jet sweep. Offenses are not penalized as much for those aborted plays because they are usually recovered by the offense, and defenses get no credit because they did nothing to cause a fumble. The Commanders just got really lucky to pounce on it.
Updated DVOA Through Week 19
As always, the following rules apply for postseason DVOA ratings:
- All 32 teams are ranked, whether they made the playoffs or not.
- Teams are ranked in order of weighted DVOA, not total season DVOA. Since weighted DVOA is meant to lower the strength of older games, these ratings do not include Weeks 1-4, and Weeks 5-12 are somewhat discounted.
- The ratings listed do not include the adjustments used in the ratings for our playoff odds report, which include adjustments for sitting starters in Week 18 and adjusting Philadelphia for games missed by Jalen Hurts. This is very important for the Kansas City Chiefs, as their backups got completely manhandled in Week 18!
- Only weighted DVOA is listed for offense, defense, and special teams. Total DVOA is also listed, but one game doesn’t change much in an 18-game sample so these ratings will be similar to those from the end of the season.
- Teams which did not play in the wild-card round are treated as if they had a bye week. (That includes the 18 non-playoff teams, the two teams with byes, and the two teams that have not played yet as of Monday morning.)
If you are new to our website, you can read the explanation of how DVOA is figured here. As always, positive numbers represent more points so DEFENSE is better when it is NEGATIVE.
We will adjust these ratings by updating this article after Monday Night Football.
| TEAM | TOTAL DVOA |
RK | WEI. DVOA |
RK | LAST WEEK WEI |
W-L | WEI OFF DVOA |
RK | WEI DEF DVOA |
RK | WEI S.T. DVOA |
RK |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BAL | 41.6% | 1 | 46.0% | 1 | 1 | 13-5 | 38.9% | 1 | -9.6% | 4 | -2.5% | 25 |
| PHI | 23.6% | 4 | 32.2% | 2 | 4 | 15-3 | 5.8% | 13 | -24.8% | 1 | 1.6% | 12 |
| DET | 34.8% | 2 | 30.5% | 3 | 2 | 15-2 | 22.1% | 3 | -4.1% | 8 | 4.3% | 3 |
| GB | 22.8% | 5 | 27.5% | 4 | 3 | 11-7 | 17.3% | 4 | -10.1% | 3 | 0.1% | 18 |
| BUF | 24.8% | 3 | 25.7% | 5 | 6 | 14-4 | 25.3% | 2 | -1.0% | 11 | -0.6% | 22 |
| DEN | 13.6% | 8 | 15.8% | 6 | 5 | 10-8 | 5.1% | 14 | -8.2% | 5 | 2.5% | 6 |
| LAR | 5.1% | 17 | 13.1% | 7 | 9 | 10-7 | 14.0% | 7 | 2.2% | 18 | 1.3% | 14 |
| WAS | 10.8% | 9 | 10.5% | 8 | 8 | 13-5 | 10.5% | 9 | 1.8% | 17 | 1.8% | 10 |
| ARI | 8.8% | 12 | 9.7% | 9 | 14 | 8-9 | 9.6% | 11 | -0.4% | 14 | -0.3% | 20 |
| CIN | 7.0% | 14 | 9.1% | 10 | 12 | 9-8 | 14.9% | 5 | 6.5% | 24 | 0.7% | 16 |
| TB | 10.4% | 10 | 9.1% | 11 | 13 | 10-8 | 14.0% | 6 | 2.8% | 19 | -2.1% | 24 |
| KC | 14.7% | 7 | 8.9% | 12 | 10 | 15-2 | 12.3% | 8 | 4.8% | 22 | 1.4% | 13 |
| HOU | 10.2% | 11 | 8.5% | 13 | 17 | 11-7 | -12.5% | 26 | -18.1% | 2 | 2.9% | 5 |
| MIN | 16.1% | 6 | 8.1% | 14 | 11 | 14-3 | 5.0% | 15 | -7.6% | 6 | -4.6% | 28 |
| LAC | 7.9% | 13 | 7.5% | 15 | 7 | 11-7 | 8.6% | 12 | 0.5% | 16 | -0.5% | 21 |
| MIA | -9.8% | 21 | 2.8% | 16 | 16 | 8-9 | 0.0% | 17 | -0.6% | 13 | 2.3% | 8 |
| TEAM | TOTAL DVOA |
RK | WEI. DVOA |
RK | LAST WEEK WEI |
W-L | WEI OFF DVOA |
RK | WEI DEF DVOA |
RK | WEI S.T. DVOA |
RK |
| PIT | 5.8% | 16 | 2.2% | 17 | 15 | 10-8 | -3.7% | 20 | -0.6% | 12 | 5.3% | 2 |
| SF | 6.7% | 15 | -1.2% | 18 | 18 | 6-11 | 9.8% | 10 | 6.3% | 23 | -4.6% | 29 |
| SEA | 2.3% | 18 | -2.2% | 19 | 19 | 10-7 | -9.4% | 23 | -4.9% | 7 | 2.4% | 7 |
| DAL | -11.6% | 24 | -7.1% | 20 | 20 | 7-10 | -11.4% | 25 | -2.3% | 9 | 2.0% | 9 |
| IND | -7.1% | 19 | -8.4% | 21 | 21 | 8-9 | -5.5% | 22 | -0.3% | 15 | -3.2% | 27 |
| NYJ | -11.4% | 23 | -8.7% | 22 | 22 | 5-12 | -3.3% | 19 | 4.5% | 21 | -0.9% | 23 |
| CHI | -12.7% | 25 | -12.4% | 23 | 23 | 5-12 | -10.7% | 24 | 7.6% | 27 | 5.8% | 1 |
| ATL | -7.3% | 20 | -14.5% | 24 | 25 | 8-9 | 1.3% | 16 | 9.7% | 30 | -6.1% | 32 |
| LV | -19.6% | 27 | -14.5% | 25 | 26 | 4-13 | -15.3% | 28 | -1.1% | 10 | -0.3% | 19 |
| JAX | -17.7% | 26 | -14.6% | 26 | 24 | 4-13 | -1.4% | 18 | 16.8% | 31 | 3.5% | 4 |
| NE | -29.7% | 29 | -23.2% | 27 | 29 | 4-13 | -14.5% | 27 | 9.1% | 29 | 0.5% | 17 |
| NO | -10.6% | 22 | -23.3% | 28 | 27 | 5-12 | -16.9% | 29 | 7.4% | 26 | 1.1% | 15 |
| NYG | -21.9% | 28 | -24.3% | 29 | 28 | 3-14 | -19.1% | 30 | 7.0% | 25 | 1.7% | 11 |
| CAR | -32.9% | 30 | -27.5% | 30 | 30 | 5-12 | -3.8% | 21 | 20.9% | 32 | -2.8% | 26 |
| CLE | -39.9% | 32 | -38.1% | 31 | 31 | 3-14 | -29.9% | 32 | 3.2% | 20 | -4.9% | 30 |
| TEN | -33.5% | 31 | -39.3% | 32 | 32 | 3-14 | -25.3% | 31 | 8.4% | 28 | -5.6% | 31 |
Single-Game DVOA for Wild-Card Weekend
Here are the single-game DVOA ratings for the first five games of Wild-Card Weekend. Subscribers can download all the 2024 playoff stats from the DVOA Historical Archive, and those will be updated each week.
| DVOA (with opponent adjustments) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TEAM | TOT | OFF | DEF | ST |
| LAC | -76% | -53% | 18% | -6% |
| HOU | 101% | 20% | -73% | 8% |
| PIT | 8% | 18% | 20% | 10% |
| BAL | 36% | 52% | 12% | -4% |
| DEN | -34% | -14% | 9% | -11% |
| BUF | 59% | 36% | -13% | 10% |
| GB | -7% | 8% | 0% | -15% |
| PHI | 66% | 19% | -37% | 10% |
| WAS | -2% | 5% | 14% | 7% |
| TB | 24% | 13% | -9% | 2% |
| VOA (no opponent adjustments) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TEAM | TOT | OFF | DEF | ST |
| LAC | -82% | -68% | 8% | -6% |
| HOU | 86% | 13% | -65% | 8% |
| PIT | -31% | 9% | 50% | 10% |
| BAL | 34% | 46% | 8% | -4% |
| DEN | -56% | -18% | 27% | -11% |
| BUF | 47% | 22% | -15% | 10% |
| GB | -36% | -10% | 10% | -15% |
| PHI | 38% | 9% | -19% | 10% |
| WAS | -17% | 2% | 26% | 7% |
| TB | 19% | 18% | 2% | 2% |
