by Aaron Schatz

Before we get to the preseason DVOA projections, have you seen our announcement from Wednesday about our two new Football Outsiders premium products? Click here to read about our new Weekly Fantasy Projections subscription and our new Premium Charting Data subscription.

Without further ado, here are our final DVOA projections for 2016, updated from the season forecasts in Football Outsiders Almanac 2016.

For those new to our website, you can find an explanation of DVOA here. For this season forecast, offense, defense, and special teams DVOA are all projected separately using a system based on looking at trends for teams over the past decade. Our system starts by considering the team's DVOA over the past three seasons and, on offense, a separate projection for the starting quarterback. Then we look at a number of other variables which suggest when a team will be better or worse than would otherwise be expected due to standard regression towards the mean. Factors include major offseason personnel changes, coaching experience, recent draft history, combined tenure on the offensive line, and certain players returning from injury (or, in the case of these preseason updates, certain players getting injured in the preseason).

The numbers we are presenting here are exactly what the projection system spit out. As we say every year: "A few of them will look strange to you. A few of them look strange to us." As always, the offensive projections come out in a wider range than defensive projections because offense performance tends to be easier to predict (and more consistent from year to year) than defensive performance. If you are looking for subjective projections, Thursday we will be running our usual staff predictions article where we all talk about where we think the numbers are wrong.

We've also done our first playoff odds report simulation based on these updated DVOA projections, and I've added the playoff odds and Super Bowl championship odds to the table below. At the start of a new season, our simulation is very conservative about the average number of wins and losses expected for each team. Obviously, the NFL is going to have teams that are 11-5 or better, and it is going to have teams that are 5-11 or worse. Once again this year, we are using a "dynamic" playoff odds simulation. Each time it plays through the season, it adds 1.5% to the DVOA of every winner and subtracts 1.5% from the DVOA of every loser before moving on to the next week's games.

Personnel changes aren't the only difference between this updated simulation and the one we did for Football Outsiders Almanac 2016. This is a smaller simulation which only uses one set of mean projected DVOA ratings, rather than using 1,000 different sets of ratings to represent that some teams have a wider range of probable performance quality than others.

This preseason simulation also accounts for the following major injuries and suspensions:

Dallas DVOA is reduced by 11.5% in Weeks 1-6 due to the injury to Tony Romo. In 25 percent of simulations, Romo returns in Week 8. In 25 percent of simulations, Romo returns in Week 10. In 25 percent of simulations, Romo returns in Week 12. And in 25 percent of simulations, Romo does not return all season.

Kansas City DVOA is reduced by 2.0% in Weeks 1-6 due to Justin Houston starting the season on PUP.

New England DVOA is reduced by 13.0% in Weeks 1-4 due to the suspension of Tom Brady.

Pittsburgh DVOA is reduced by 4.0% in Weeks 1-3 due to the suspension of Le'Veon Bell.

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The DVOA listed below for these teams incorporates these penalties (so, for example, the listed offensive DVOA for New England is one part Garappolo projection and three parts Brady projection). The impacts of other early-season injuries and suspensions have been incorporated into the full-season projected DVOA for the teams in question.

The odds of getting the No. 1 pick listed below (and listed on the playoff odds report page) do not incorporate traded picks. Remember that Cleveland owns Philadelphia's first-round pick, Philadelphia owns Minnesota's first-round pick, and Tennessee owns Los Angeles' first-round pick.

Projected division champions are colored in light yellow and projected wild card teams are colored in light purple, although the Cowboys and Giants are virtually tied and there's even more uncertainty than usual around that prediction because of we don't know if and when Tony Romo will return from his injury.

TEAM TOTAL

DVOA TOTAL

RANK MEAN

WINS OFF.

DVOA OFF.

RANK DEF.

DVOA DEF.

RANK S.T.

DVOA S.T.

RANK SCHED SCHED

RANK NO. 1 PICK

ODDS PLAYOFF

ODDS S.B. WIN

ODDS SEA 24.4% 1 10.4 11.7% 3 -10.4% 2 2.3% 5 0.5% 12 0.1% 74.3% 15.7% ARI 18.2% 2 9.8 12.0% 2 -8.0% 3 -1.7% 24 -0.1% 17 0.3% 65.4% 10.4% NE 17.7% 3 9.7 9.7% 5 -3.9% 6 4.1% 2 0.3% 14 0.3% 66.0% 11.3% PIT 15.8% 4 9.7 16.2% 1 -0.3% 15 -0.7% 19 -1.2% 23 0.3% 63.7% 9.2% KC 14.7% 5 9.6 9.2% 6 -3.7% 7 1.8% 7 -1.1% 22 0.4% 61.6% 8.2% GB 8.5% 6 9.2 9.8% 4 0.1% 17 -1.3% 22 -3.3% 31 0.7% 55.6% 5.4% BAL 7.2% 7 8.8 -3.6% 23 -4.8% 5 6.0% 1 -1.5% 25 1.0% 48.1% 4.0% CAR 6.7% 8 8.6 5.4% 9 -3.2% 8 -1.8% 26 0.5% 13 1.2% 50.3% 4.0% CIN 4.1% 9 8.5 1.5% 12 -2.2% 9 0.4% 12 -1.3% 24 1.4% 41.8% 2.7% BUF 2.6% 10 8.1 2.6% 10 2.1% 22 2.1% 6 1.4% 10 1.9% 38.1% 2.3% SD 1.6% 11 8.4 7.5% 7 6.8% 31 0.9% 9 -2.5% 27 1.7% 40.5% 2.4% DEN 1.0% 12 8.0 -10.0% 30 -11.7% 1 -0.6% 18 1.4% 9 2.1% 34.0% 2.0% LARM 1.0% 13 7.7 -5.2% 25 -6.5% 4 -0.2% 15 3.3% 4 2.7% 28.4% 1.5% DET 0.5% 14 8.3 1.2% 13 -0.5% 14 -1.2% 21 -2.8% 28 1.8% 40.0% 2.5% MIN -0.3% 15 8.1 -2.3% 20 0.3% 20 2.4% 4 -1.1% 21 2.0% 36.3% 1.9% NO -1.9% 16 7.5 6.8% 8 6.6% 30 -2.2% 31 2.0% 8 3.3% 30.9% 1.2% TEAM TOTAL

DVOA TOTAL

RANK MEAN

WINS OFF.

DVOA OFF.

RANK DEF.

DVOA DEF.

RANK S.T.

DVOA S.T.

RANK SCHED SCHED

RANK NO. 1 PICK

ODDS PLAYOFF

ODDS S.B. WIN

ODDS DAL -2.1% 17 8.0 -2.0% 19 0.2% 18 0.2% 13 -3.3% 30 2.7% 39.5% 1.5% NYJ -2.2% 18 7.4 -1.8% 17 -1.3% 13 -1.6% 23 4.2% 2 3.0% 26.7% 1.3% NYG -2.6% 19 8.0 -0.6% 14 0.2% 19 -1.8% 25 -2.1% 26 2.3% 40.2% 1.9% IND -2.6% 20 7.9 -1.9% 18 1.4% 21 0.7% 11 -1.0% 20 2.3% 38.8% 1.7% OAK -2.8% 21 7.6 -1.0% 15 -0.3% 16 -2.0% 27 0.8% 11 3.0% 27.7% 1.1% TB -4.2% 22 7.4 -3.8% 24 -1.7% 12 -2.1% 29 2.0% 7 3.9% 28.7% 1.1% HOU -5.5% 23 7.6 -9.0% 28 -2.1% 10 1.5% 8 -0.9% 19 3.0% 33.9% 1.1% ATL -6.5% 24 7.1 2.0% 11 6.3% 28 -2.2% 30 2.7% 5 4.7% 24.3% 0.7% TEN -8.5% 25 7.5 -2.9% 21 6.3% 29 0.7% 10 -3.2% 29 4.3% 30.2% 0.9% JAC -8.6% 26 7.1 -9.8% 29 -1.7% 11 -0.5% 16 -0.6% 18 4.6% 26.4% 0.8% PHI -8.6% 27 7.2 -6.8% 26 5.3% 26 3.5% 3 0.0% 16 4.6% 26.2% 0.8% WAS -8.9% 28 7.2 -3.1% 22 5.3% 25 -0.5% 17 0.1% 15 4.3% 26.2% 0.9% CHI -9.3% 29 7.4 -1.2% 16 5.4% 27 -2.7% 32 -3.5% 32 4.6% 24.5% 0.8% MIA -13.7% 30 6.3 -8.7% 27 3.9% 24 -1.1% 20 3.7% 3 8.1% 13.3% 0.3% SF -15.8% 31 6.0 -10.9% 31 2.8% 23 -2.1% 28 4.5% 1 10.5% 9.2% 0.2% CLE -19.9% 32 5.8 -11.0% 32 9.0% 32 0.1% 14 2.2% 6 13.0% 9.1% 0.1%

Which teams saw the biggest drop in mean wins since the book, and why?

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Dallas and Minnesota, because of injuries to their starting quarterbacks.

Green Bay, because of changes on the offensive line. This had impact both because Josh Sitton is an All-Pro lineman, and because the changes reduced offensive line continuity.

Arizona, also because of offensive line changes. This is actually my fault, as I still had Lyle Sendlein listed as the center when we did the book, rather than A.Q. Shipley. With Shipley as the center, the Cardinals now have only one starting offensive lineman who has been with the team more than two years (Jared Veldheer, who has been there for three).

Denver, because an offense projected with Mark Sanchez at quarterback was bad but an offense projected with "unknown seventh-round pick" at quarterback is even worse. For those who are curious, doing the projection with Paxton Lynch at quarterback wouldn't be much better since he has a poor QBASE and is younger than Trevor Siemian.

Cleveland has the biggest gain in mean wins since the book, in large part because Josh McCown has a lower projection than Robert Griffin III and I had McCown as the Cleveland starter in the spreadsheet when I did the book forecast. Otherwise, teams with improvement since the book (Washington, Detroit, New York Giants) mostly move up because of changes in their opponents.