First TD Bets — Wild Card Monday Slate
Alex Christenson
We’re down to the final four in the NFL for the 2024 season, and just as everyone expected all along, it includes the Washington Commanders.
Doing DVOA for the final four teams is difficult because three of these teams sat their starters in Week 18. The Chiefs in particular got completely hammered by the Broncos in a game that meant nothing for them. We also really need to adjust the Eagles for the Jalen Hurts injury in Weeks 16-18. (I’m assuming here that Hurts will be fine to play next weekend against Washington, although that’s not assured.)
We’ve got a table here that does weighted DVOA for the final four teams, except I’ve adjusted for these things. The ratings here give more weight to recent games but remove Week 18 for Buffalo, Kansas City, and Philadelphia plus Weeks 16-17 for the Philadelphia offense.
| Weighted DVOA Adjusted for Week 18/Hurts Injury | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TEAM | WEI. DVOA |
RK | WEI OFF DVOA |
RK | WEI DEF DVOA |
RK | WEI S.T. DVOA |
RK |
| BUF | 38.0% | 2 | 32.3% | 2 | -5.7% | 7 | 0.0% | 19 |
| PHI | 36.0% | 3 | 9.4% | 12 | -25.5% | 1 | 1.0% | 13 |
| KC | 20.7% | 7 | 17.1% | 5 | -1.3% | 12 | 2.4% | 8 |
| WAS | 13.8% | 8 | 12.8% | 9 | 0.8% | 18 | 1.8% | 12 |
There’s no bonus here for the Chiefs’ “Mahomes Magic” or “knowing how to win” but there is a bonus for “we lay down and let the Broncos run over us in Week 18.”
Three of this week’s winners also had the higher DVOA and the larger Post-Game Win Expectancy. The exception, surprisingly, was the Rams-Eagles game. The Eagles only had 16.7% PGWE because in general, the team with better passing will beat the team with better rushing if they’re equal overall.
As for the Ravens losing as the No. 1 DVOA team, I’m comfortable with the idea that the No. 1 team from the regular season lost to the No. 4 team from the regular season on the road, without their best wide receiver, by two points. It happens. The Bills are a very good team! The Ravens are not the “best team to ever miss the conference championships.” That would be either the 2010 Patriots or the 1987 49ers.
Week 20 DVOA Ratings
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 1-5, and Weeks 6-13 are somewhat discounted.
- The ratings listed do not include the adjustments for sitting starters in Week 18 which are used in the ratings for our playoff odds report and listed above.
- Only weighted DVOA is listed for offense, defense, and special teams. Total DVOA is also listed, but adding 10 games to a 272-game sample won’t change things very much from the end of the season.
- Teams are treated as having a bye week in any week where they did not play. Since most teams haven’t played in two weeks, that means some of the ratings for non-playoff teams can start getting a little unreliable. Really, this is only to be used for playoff teams, the other teams are just there for ranking comparison purposes.
- DVOA, as always, takes a long-term view of an NFL team’s performance. That means that the games of the last two weeks are just two games among many, so teams may be listed below other teams that they have beaten in the playoffs.
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. I’m only running the top half of the table since none of the teams in the bottom half played this week. You can find the whole thing here.
| 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 | 40.9% | 1 | 45.7% | 1 | 1 | 13-6 | 38.4% | 1 | -8.9% | 5 | -1.6% | 24 |
| BUF | 26.6% | 3 | 28.9% | 2 | 5 | 15-4 | 26.7% | 2 | -2.2% | 9 | 0.0% | 19 |
| PHI | 22.7% | 5 | 28.8% | 3 | 2 | 16-3 | 2.9% | 14 | -24.8% | 1 | 1.0% | 13 |
| GB | 22.8% | 4 | 26.9% | 4 | 4 | 11-7 | 17.7% | 4 | -9.4% | 3 | -0.3% | 21 |
| DET | 32.0% | 2 | 25.2% | 5 | 3 | 15-3 | 21.1% | 3 | -0.7% | 15 | 3.4% | 4 |
| LAR | 11.3% | 10 | 22.9% | 6 | 6 | 11-8 | 14.9% | 6 | -4.5% | 8 | 3.4% | 5 |
| DEN | 13.6% | 7 | 17.9% | 7 | 7 | 10-8 | 6.7% | 13 | -9.0% | 4 | 2.1% | 10 |
| WAS | 12.5% | 8 | 13.8% | 8 | 8 | 13-6 | 12.8% | 9 | 0.8% | 17 | 1.8% | 12 |
| KC | 14.7% | 6 | 10.4% | 9 | 12 | 16-2 | 12.8% | 8 | 4.8% | 21 | 2.4% | 8 |
| CIN | 7.0% | 15 | 10.2% | 10 | 10 | 9-8 | 15.2% | 5 | 5.6% | 23 | 0.6% | 17 |
| ARI | 8.8% | 13 | 9.7% | 11 | 9 | 8-9 | 10.0% | 11 | 0.1% | 16 | -0.2% | 20 |
| TB | 10.4% | 11 | 9.6% | 12 | 11 | 10-8 | 14.3% | 7 | 2.7% | 19 | -2.0% | 25 |
| HOU | 9.7% | 12 | 7.3% | 13 | 13 | 11-8 | -10.7% | 24 | -17.1% | 2 | 0.9% | 15 |
| LAC | 7.9% | 14 | 6.7% | 14 | 14 | 11-7 | 9.1% | 12 | 1.7% | 18 | -0.7% | 22 |
| MIA | -9.8% | 21 | 4.6% | 15 | 15 | 8-9 | 0.5% | 15 | -1.2% | 12 | 3.0% | 6 |
| PIT | 5.8% | 17 | 2.3% | 16 | 16 | 10-8 | -4.1% | 21 | -0.9% | 14 | 5.6% | 2 |
Single-Game DVOA for Divisional Round
Here are the single-game DVOA ratings for the Divisional Round. Subscribers can download all the 2024 playoff stats from the DVOA Historical Archive.
| DVOA (with opponent adjustments) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TEAM | TOT | OFF | DEF | ST |
| HOU | -2% | 9% | -5% | -15% |
| KC | 16% | 16% | 8% | 9% |
| WAS | 37% | 33% | -6% | -1% |
| DET | -9% | 9% | 14% | -3% |
| LAR | 31% | 5% | -13% | 13% |
| PHI | 4% | -16% | -23% | -3% |
| BAL | 28% | 31% | 8% | 6% |
| BUF | 58% | 44% | -10% | 4% |
| VOA (no opponent adjustments) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TEAM | TOT | OFF | DEF | ST |
| HOU | -15% | 5% | 5% | -15% |
| KC | 15% | 3% | -3% | 9% |
| WAS | 11% | 24% | 12% | -1% |
| DET | -14% | 13% | 24% | -3% |
| LAR | 5% | -12% | -4% | 13% |
| PHI | 2% | -10% | -15% | -3% |
| BAL | 5% | 25% | 26% | 6% |
| BUF | 11% | 30% | 23% | 4% |
