by Aaron Schatz

As usual after the Conference Championship games, we're not going to bother with the full 32-team table of weighted DVOA ratings, since there are only two teams left and most teams haven't played for three weeks. Instead, let's just look at the two remaining teams, Seattle and New England.

At the end of the season, we had Seattle as the No. 1 team in the league with New England at No. 4. However, our weighted ratings had Seattle and New England as the top two teams going into the postseason. That certainly hasn't changed since both teams have advanced to the Super Bowl. The weighted DVOA formula now includes both playoff games for each team, while completely removing any consideration of the first six weeks of the season. Weighted DVOA no longer accounts for New England's 2-2 start, including the blowout loss in Kansas City, although it also no longer accounts for the blowout win of Cincinnati that followed that loss. Weighted DVOA also no longer accounts for two of the losses that were part of Seattle's 3-3 start, although the Week 7 loss to St. Louis still has 20 percent strength in the formula.

As a result, both teams are much higher now in weighted DVOA than they are in total DVOA. With their big win this week over Indianapolis, and a single-game DVOA of 91%, the Patriots take a slight lead over the Seahawks in weighted DVOA even though the specifics of the weighted DVOA formula means that Seattle's loss to the Cowboys is now gone from weighted DVOA for the first time. In addition, if we do a version of total DVOA that includes the playoffs, New England's win over Indianapolis moves them back up to the No. 3 spot that they dropped from after losing to Buffalo in Week 17.

Here's a look at both Super Bowl teams using both formulas. Note that the Patriots actually rank lower in weighted defensive DVOA than in regular defensive DVOA even though their rating is better, because defense around the league improved in the second half of the season. (The same thing is true about special teams, but that's less because of special teams improving around the league in the second half of the year, and more about a couple of teams that had some big games in November and December and thus moved ahead of the Pats in weighted special teams DVOA.)

TEAM DVOA RANK OFF

DVOA OFF.

RANK DEF

DVOA DEF.

RANK S.T.

DVOA S.T.

RANK NE (DVOA through Week 20) 26.7% 3 16.7% 5 -4.5% 9 5.5% 5 NE (WEI DVOA through Week 20) 39.8% 1 21.3% 3 -12.4% 12 6.1% 7 SEA (DVOA through Week 20) 30.7% 1 15.5% 6 -16.8% 1 -1.7% 20 SEA (WEI DVOA through Week 20) 38.8% 2 16.0% 4 -25.2% 1 -2.4% 17

This Super Bowl could not be a closer statistical matchup. Our playoff odds formula gives New England a 50.5 percent chance of winning Super Bowl XLIX. Our FO Premium spread formula projects the line as New England -0.27. You are reading that correctly. That's less than half a point.

If we were to use the "total season including playoffs" DVOA ratings rather than the weighted ratings, our picks would be Seattle in 52.2 percent of simulations with a projected line of Seattle by -0.55. That's still basically a toss-up. By comparison, last year we had Seattle winning 58.3 percent of simulations with a projected line of Seattle -2.8.

Unfortunately, I do not have DVOA ratings yet computed as of each week of the playoffs going all the way back to 1989, so I can't say if this is the closest Super Bowl matchup of all-time by weighted DVOA as measured through the playoffs. However, I can point out the surprising fact that from 1989-2012, the top two teams in weighted DVOA as of the end of the regular season never both advanced to the Super Bowl. It's now happened in both 2013 and 2014.

Here are the ratings for the Conference Championship games. New England's 45-7 stomping of Indianapolis ended up as one of the top five single games of the year by DVOA. Note that the Jon Ryan touchdown is scored in the current DVOA formula as an offensive play, not as special teams. (That's on the to-fix list for the future.)



DVOA (with opponent adjustments) TEAM TOT OFF DEF ST SEA 22% -10% -38% -6% GB 42% -4% -25% 23% NE 91% 32% -45% 14% IND -53% -32% 8% -14% VOA (no opponent adjustments) TEAM TOT OFF DEF ST SEA 0% -13% -19% -6% GB 9% -20% -7% 23% NE 81% 26% -41% 14% IND -67% -38% 16% -14%

For those curious, the top six single-game DVOA ratings of 2014:

Miami 37, San Diego 0 in Week 9 (111.4% DVOA)

Kansas City 41, New England 14 in Week 4 (103.1% DVOA)

St. Louis 52, Oakland 0 in Week 13 (97.2% DVOA)

New England 45, Indianapolis 7 in AFC Championship (91.3% DVOA)

Carolina 27, Arizona 16 in NFC Wild Card (87.5% DVOA)

Dallas 42, Indianapolis 7 in Week 16 (84.0% DVOA)

These are not adjusted for whether teams were at home or on the road. Opponent adjustments are based on the entire regular season, so yes, Carolina is getting a little bit of an unfair boost for playing the Ryan Lindley Cardinals instead of the Palmer/Stanton Cardinals. (That's why I decided to include six instead of five.) And if you are wondering about what seemed like the biggest blowout of the year at the time, Tampa Bay ended up so horribly bad for the entire season that Atlanta's ridiculous 56-14 win from Week 3 only ended up with 70.7% DVOA.

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Once again in 2014, we have teamed up with EA Sports to bring Football Outsiders-branded player content to Madden 15 Ultimate Team. Each week, we'll be picking out a handful of players who starred in that week's games. Some of them will be well-known players who stood out in DVOA and DYAR. Others will be under-the-radar players who only stood out with advanced stats. We'll announce the players each Tuesday in the DVOA commentary article, and the players will be available in Madden Ultimate Team packs the following weekend. We will also tweet out images of these players from the @fboutsiders Twitter account on most Fridays. One player each week will only be available for 24 hours from the point these players enter packs on Friday.

The Football Outsiders stars for the Divisional round are: