by Aaron Schatz

You love them when your team is high! You hate them when your team is low! Once again, the famous Football Outsiders DVOA and DAVE ratings return for 2017.

Most Football Outsiders readers are familiar with DVOA, which we use all year round. Not as many Football Outsiders readers are familiar with DAVE, which we only use for teams during the first two months of the season. DAVE is our rating that combines the preseason projection with the results of early games to give us a better prediction of how each team will rank at the end of the year. For those who don't know the story, this metric is called DAVE as a reaction to criticism that our stats are too much alphabet soup. I mean, who can argue with a guy named Dave? (Technically, it stands for DVOA Adjusted for Variation Early.) In this week's DAVE ratings, the preseason projection counts for 90 percent, and the current DVOA counts for 10 percent. The value of the preseason projection changes each week until we are only using current-year data after Week 8.

Of course, though I'm calling our main metric DVOA here, it is actually VOA because there are no opponent adjustments right now. We do not apply opponent adjustments until after Week 4, so in Weeks 1-3 DVOA and VOA are the same thing. Please don't get all nitpicky about it. Most readers know what's up, and if you don't, I just told you!

Also, special for 2017, please note that the DAVE listed for Miami and Tampa Bay is actually just the preseason projection. The Dolphins and Bucs will be "a week behind" in the ratio of current performance to preseason projection during the two months we use DAVE. Also, the projection part of DAVE has been adjusted for the biggest injuries and personnel changes after Week 1. The Dallas offensive projection no longer incorporates an Ezekiel Elliott suspension; the Kansas City defensive projection is worse because of the injury to Eric Berry; and the Arizona offensive projection is dropped for the injury to David Johnson, although the playoff odds report also tries to simulate the chance that the Cardinals will get Johnson back late in the season.

Last year's Week 1 had 11 different games decided by one score, which meant a lot of games where our ratings didn't quite sync up with the final result. This was not an issue in 2017. The winning team had a higher DVOA than the losing team in every single game except the last one, as the Los Angeles Chargers end up narrowly ranked higher than the Denver Broncos.

The fact that DAVE currently is still counting our preseason projection as 90 percent of its estimate of team quality is another element of the "don't overreact" mentality that led Football Outsiders to coin the phrase "National Jump to Conclusions Week" to describe the period after the NFL's first official weekend of games. If we only look at Week 1 performance, the best team in football right now is the Los Angeles Rams. No, seriously. So don't jump to conclusions after one week. Just ask last year's No. 1 team after Week 1, the San Francisco 49ers.

Then again, the Rams aren't just high in the DVOA ratings after one week. Because Football Outsiders' preseason projections had the Rams higher than pretty much anyone else's projections, the Rams are also really high in DAVE. When you add 10 percent "best performance of the week" to 90 percent "great defense and special teams, awful offense" instead of 90 percent "awful everything," you end up with the Rams fifth in DAVE. That means our playoff odds report now gives them a stronger chance to win the NFC West than it gives the Seattle Seahawks. This is a little extreme. I don't think anyone around here thinks the Rams are suddenly among the Super Bowl favorites.

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Part of the issue in decoding the Rams' huge Week 1 win is this: just because we don't do opponent adjustments in Weeks 1-3 doesn't mean you can't add common-sense opponent adjustments in your brain when looking at the tables. We know Scott Tolzien was horrible. The Colts defense was missing the top cornerback and isn't usually that good anyway. The Bills are No. 3 this week while the Chiefs are No. 4, but the Bills played the Jets while the Chiefs beat the Patriots. Do a little common sense in your head and you know who had the better Week 1.

Speaking of the Patriots, we still have them near the top of our playoff odds report and No. 2 in DAVE, behind the Pittsburgh Steelers. When your projection is so far ahead of the rest of the league, you can absorb a loss in the first week of the season. It also helps when the rest of your division is trash. Out of curiosity, I went back to look at which other teams had higher playoff odds after a Week 1 loss. We only have records of our playoff odds after Week 1 going back eight years, but even in that short period -- surprise! -- the Patriots do not have the highest playoff odds of any 0-1 team. Instead, that title belongs to the 2012 Green Bay Packers, who were coming off a 15-1 season but lost to San Francisco 30-22 at home. However, the Patriots do have the highest Super Bowl odds of any team in the last eight years to start the season 0-1. Interestingly, we give this year's Patriots much better odds of rebounding than we gave to the Patriots in 2014. We listed that team with playoff odds of just 42.8 percent and Super Bowl odds of just 3.8 percent after a 33-20 loss on the road to Miami. They went on to win the Super Bowl anyway.

Best Playoff Odds at 0-1, 2010-2017 x Best Super Bowl Win Odds at 0-1, 2010-2017 Year Team Odds x Year Team Odds 2012 GB 69.4% x 2017 NE 9.5% 2017 NE 68.9% x 2015 SEA 8.3% 2010 ATL 64.1% x 2012 GB 8.2% 2011 PIT 62.1% x 2010 ATL 7.5% 2015 SEA 57.6% x 2016 ARI 7.0% 2010 IND 56.9% x 2011 PIT 5.4% 2012 PIT 56.4% x 2017 SEA 4.6% 2011 NO 54.7%* x 2010 IND 4.2% 2011 ATL 54.3%* x 2011 ATL 3.8% 2013 CIN 53.9%* x 2014 GB 3.8% 2016 ARI 53.5% x 2014 NE 3.8% 2017 SEA 50.8% x 2011 NO 3.7% * Odds are high in part because entire division began the season 0-1.

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A week ago on Twitter, I promised to unveil the long-awaited 1986 DVOA ratings and commentary on the first Tuesday after the season started. That was before I remembered that we run four different articles every Tuesday, more than any other day. Yikes! The 1986 ratings are interesting and come with a really cool companion interview, so I don't want them to get lost among the other articles. They'll now run either Thursday or Friday of this week.

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Once again this season, we have teamed up with EA Sports to bring Football Outsiders-branded player content to Madden 18. This year, our content for Madden Ultimate Team on consoles comes monthly, while our content for Madden Mobile comes weekly. Come back to each Tuesday's DVOA commentary article for a list of players who stood out during the previous weekend's games. Those players will get special Madden Mobile items branded as "Powerline, powered by Football Outsiders," beginning at 11am Eastern on Friday. We will also tweet out images of these players from the @fboutsiders Twitter account on most Fridays.

The Football Outsiders stars for Week 1 are:

C Mitch Morse, KC (FO HERO) : Helped lead way for Kareem Hunt's 17-carry, 148-yard performance.

: Helped lead way for Kareem Hunt's 17-carry, 148-yard performance. ROLB Thomas Davis, CAR : Four tackles to prevent conversions on third or fourth down, including a sack.

: Four tackles to prevent conversions on third or fourth down, including a sack. SS Karl Joseph, OAK : Led Raiders with 9 combined tackles; played a major role in holding Titans slot receiver Eric Decker to 3-of-8 for 10 yards.

: Led Raiders with 9 combined tackles; played a major role in holding Titans slot receiver Eric Decker to 3-of-8 for 10 yards. LOLB Josh Martin, NYJ : Half sack, two run TFL, pass reception TFL.

: Half sack, two run TFL, pass reception TFL. LG Kelechi Osemele, OAK: Controlled Jurrell Casey, giving up no sacks.

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All stats pages are now updated with 2017 data except for OFFENSIVE LINE and DEFENSIVE LINE, which will be updated after Week 2, and FO snap counts. This year, for the first time, we are planning to update Football Outsiders Premium data after Week 1 instead of waiting for Week 2. However, that will end up delayed a bit because new tech director Dave Bernreuther lives in Miami and has lost power and Internet access due to Hurricane Irma. That's also the reason snap counts aren't updated; we'll take care of all these updates as soon as we can.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through one week of 2017, measured by our proprietary Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) system that 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 to 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.

Please note that there are no opponent adjustments in DVOA until after Week 4. (It's still listed as DVOA instead of VOA because I don't feel like going through and changing all the tables manually.) In addition, our second weekly table which includes schedule strength, variation, and Estimated Wins will appear beginning after Week 4.

DAVE is a formula which combines our preseason projection with current DVOA to get a more accurate forecast of how a team will play the rest of the season. Right now, the preseason projection makes up 90 percent of DAVE. For Miami and Tampa Bay, only preseason projection is listed.

To save people some time, please use the following format for all complaints:

<team> is clearly ranked <too high/too low> because <reason unrelated to DVOA>. <subjective ranking system> is way better than this. <unrelated team-supporting or -denigrating comment, preferably with poor spelling and/or chat-acceptable spelling>