by Aaron Schatz

The undefeated New England Patriots are back on top of the Football Outsiders DVOA ratings this week, with just a small margin putting them ahead of the Arizona Cardinals and Green Bay Packers. The change on top of this week's ratings is similar to what happened last week, but a mirror image. Both the Patriots and Cardinals fell in DVOA after close games in Week 6, but the Patriots fell a little bit more than the Cardinals. The same thing happened after Week 7, but this time the Cardinals fell a little bit more than the Patriots. The Packers just sat in the same place on a bye week, but now are within a single percentage point of both New England and Arizona.

Two weeks ago, both New England and Arizona ranked among the top 10 teams in DVOA history, but two weeks of close games have brought them back to the pack historically. New England, Arizona, and Green Bay now all fall between No. 17 and No. 21 in a ranking of teams since 1989 based on DVOA after Week 7.

New England's "fade" from historically spectacular to merely the best team in football is the main reason our estimated odds of a perfect regular season have not gone up significantly over the last couple weeks. Last week, 11.0 percent of our simulations ended with at least one team at 16-0. This week, that's up to 11.6 percent.

Actually, the undefeated team that is closest to making DVOA history right now is the Denver Broncos. On one hand, the Broncos defense is historically great. They currently rank ninth among all DVOA defenses through Week 7. On the other hand, Denver is in the strange position of having the league's worst offense to go along with the best defense. When you put the two units together, the Broncos end up with the second-lowest DVOA ever among teams with a 6-0 record. Only the 2000 Vikings had a lower rating when they stood at 6-0.

WORST TOTAL DVOA

FOR 6-0 TEAMS BEST DEFENSIVE DVOA

THROUGH WEEK 7 Year Team DVOA Final W-L x Year Team DVOA 2000 MIN 1.2% 11-5 x 1991 NO -49.0% 2015 DEN 6.2% -- x 1991 PHI -42.8% 2006 IND 9.2% 12-4 x 2002 TB -38.8% 2015 CAR 16.2% -- x 1997 SF -37.1% 2012 ATL 18.4% 13-3 x 2012 CHI -34.6% 1990 SF 21.1% 14-2 x 2011 BAL -34.4% 1992 MIA 21.3% 11-5 x 1993 PIT -33.5% 2003 MIN 22.0% 9-7 x 1996 GB -32.8% 2011 GB 22.0% 15-1 x 2015 DEN -31.9% 2000 STL 22.5% 10-6 x 2000 MIA -29.6%

A number of readers have asked in the comments and on Twitter if a team has ever finished first in defense and last in offense for an entire regular season. I gave a long history of teams of this type in last week's Off The Charts Podcast, but the short answer is no. The team that came closest is also listed above on the table for best defensive DVOA through Week 7. The 1991 Philadelphia Eagles lost Randall Cunningham to an injury in the first game of the year and then put together the greatest defense in DVOA history with a horrific offense that finished 26th in a 28-team league. At this same point in 1991, the Eagles had a horrendous -39.5% offensive DVOA to go with their -42.8% defensive DVOA, and a 3-4 record. By the end of the year, that offensive rating improved to -24.6%. The Eagles finished 10-6 and missed the playoffs on a tiebreaker.

The Broncos and Panthers both rank among the worst 6-0 teams in DVOA history, although the Panthers have moved up in the ratings the last two weeks and don't really have anything to be ashamed about. Still, there are a couple of very surprising teams ahead of Denver and Carolina.

The first is the New York Jets, who stay at No. 5 despite their loss to the Patriots. We've been driving the Jets' bandwagon since the preseason but even we didn't think the offense could be this good. Yes, I just said the New York Jets offense was "good." That's not a misprint. The Jets are currently ranked sixth in offensive DVOA. Sixth! Now, don't get too carried away by that ranking, because there's a huge gap between the top four offenses and the bottom 27 offenses. (Pittsburgh is in the middle at No. 5, but of course they are likely to end the season higher with Roethlisberger returning.) The gap in DVOA between the Packers at No. 4 and the Jets at No. 6 is larger than the gap between the Jets and the Eagles at No. 23. Still, sixth! And it's not all about the run: the Jets are sixth passing and 15th running the ball. Ryan Fitzpatrick is getting great protection, and he has great receivers, but he's also having the best season of his career.

After opponent adjustments, the Patriots ended up with 28.1% DVOA for this week's game. The Jets, because the adjustments for playing the Patriots are so strong, are even higher at 34.1%. I don't have time to go back and check every single-game DVOA rating going back to 1989, but I'm going to guess that has to be one of the highest combined totals for single-game DVOA ever. I hope that fans came out of watching that Patriots-Jets game with a proper respect for how good the Jets are this year. It's hard to win the division when you're two games behind the best team in the league, but the current playoff odds report gives the Jets a 72 percent chance to win a wild card (83 percent to make the playoffs either way).

The other surprisingly high team is probably Seattle. If I were doing subjective power rankings here, I would definitely move the Seahawks behind the Panthers after Carolina beat them in their own building. But I wouldn't move them down too much. The system is probably giving the Seahawks a little too much credit for their Week 3 win over Chicago since the Bears were stuck using their backup quarterback that day, but otherwise the Seahawks have played well. You can't blow fourth-quarter leads without getting fourth-quarter leads to begin with, and opponent adjustments help give the Seahawks positive single-game DVOA ratings in two of their four losses (Week 2 at Green Bay, and Week 6 against Carolina).

The flipside of Seattle would be two teams with winning records and surprisingly low DVOA ratings. OK, make that one team. I don't think anyone is surprised to see Atlanta at No. 17 in DVOA despite the Falcons' 6-1 record. We all know that team has played close games against a very easy schedule. It's not going to change, as the Falcons have the easiest remaining schedule as well.

No, the surprisingly low team is really Minnesota, which is just 28th in DVOA despite a 4-2 record. Here are a few reasons why the DVOA system isn't impressed by Minnesota's play so far:

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Every week, the Vikings' Week 1 loss looks worse as the 49ers play like garbage and the opponent adjustments gradually get stronger. As of now, the single-game DVOA for that loss is -84.3%. We've never seen any evidence that DVOA works better if we throw out each team's worst game or anything like that. That game counts.

The Vikings beat Kansas City in Week 6 despite gaining just 4.7 yards per play with a 33 percent success rate. We covered the kooky numbers from this win last week.

Those are just two of the bad teams Minnesota has played this year. The Vikings have played the easiest schedule in the league so far, thanks to two games against Detroit. Even the loss to Denver doesn't look any better to DVOA because, as detailed above, Denver doesn't have the rating you would expect from an undefeated 6-0 team.

The Vikings have also gotten the bounces. They've recovered 5 of 8 fumbles on offense and all 4 of the fumbles they've caused on defense.

The schedule strength issue is also part of the massive disconnect between Football Outsiders' advanced stats for Teddy Bridgewater and ESPN's Total QBR. But only a small part. We currently have Bridgewater ranked 25th in passing DVOA, but ESPN has him ninth in QBR. But the gap between Bridgewater's DVOA and VOA is very small, less than two percentage points.

I talked to some folks from ESPN to try to figure out where the difference is, and there's really no clear explanation I can give. Figuring this out will likely take going deep into the difference between the two ratings systems on individual plays. We know that Bridgewater has been outstanding on third downs this year, but that should be picked up by both stats systems. Bridgewater's passing DVOA goes from -22.3% on first and second down to 6.5% on third and fourth down. The difference is even bigger in QBR, where Bridgewater is fifth in the league with 83 QBR on third downs, because QBR includes both running and passing plays. Bridgewater has a first down on four of his six third-down scrambles.

Bridgewater does get a little value in QBR because of Vikings have drawn a lot of penalties by opposing defenses without commiting penalties themselves. However, this is one place where I disagree with ESPN methodology; our research has never found evidence that specific quarterbacks do anything to determine most defensive penalties. Defensive Pass Interference is a big exception, but Bridgewater has only one of those.

As far as other differences between DVOA and QBR, Bridgewater hasn't had an overwhelming number of "clutch situations" when looking at the average weight of his plays in terms of expected wins added, and his percentage of YAC to total yardage is around the league average. So those are two differences between the methodologies that don't explain what's going on with him.

So it's a mystery! We'll have to keep looking into the issue and figure out if Bridgewater really is having a good season or not. Vikings fans probably don't mind the question so much when it comes with a 4-2 record.

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Once again in 2015, we have teamed up with EA Sports to bring Football Outsiders-branded player content to Madden 16 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 Week 7 are:

LE Rob Ninkovich, NE (24-HOUR HERO): 4 batted passes.

4 batted passes. CB Lamarcus Joyner, STL: 5 different tackles prevented a conversion on third or fourth down.

5 different tackles prevented a conversion on third or fourth down. DT Caraun Reid, DET: 4 tackles for loss: a third-down sack, two run TFL, and a TFL on a screen pass to Mike Wallace.

4 tackles for loss: a third-down sack, two run TFL, and a TFL on a screen pass to Mike Wallace. LT Tyron Smith, DAL: Dallas running backs gained 57 yards on 8 carries running to the left and 194 yards on 36 carries overall. No sacks or hurries allowed.

Dallas running backs gained 57 yards on 8 carries running to the left and 194 yards on 36 carries overall. No sacks or hurries allowed. RB Danny Woodhead, SD: Ranked No. 3 among running backs in Week 7 with 54 DYAR, catching 11-of-12 passes for 75 yards and 2 touchdowns. Also had 5 carries for 26 yards.

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All stats pages are now updated with Week 7 information including FO Premium, snap counts and playoff odds.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through seven weeks of 2015, 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 for strength of schedule and 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. Because it is early in the season, opponent adjustments are only at 70 percent strength; they will increase 10 percent every week through Week 10. As always, positive numbers represent more points so DEFENSE is better when it is NEGATIVE.

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 9 percent of DAVE for teams with seven games played, and 19 percent of DAVE for teams with six games played.

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>

TEAM TOTAL

DVOA LAST

WEEK TOTAL

DAVE RANK W-L OFFENSE

DVOA OFF.

RANK DEFENSE

DVOA DEF.

RANK S.T.

DVOA S.T.

RANK 1 NE 39.7% 2 35.5% 1 6-0 30.6% 2 -0.7% 11 8.4% 1 2 ARI 39.2% 1 34.7% 2 5-2 23.8% 3 -17.4% 4 -2.0% 21 3 GB 39.0% 3 33.1% 3 6-0 21.8% 4 -14.4% 7 2.9% 9 4 CIN 34.1% 4 28.9% 4 6-0 32.7% 1 2.1% 13 3.5% 8 5 NYJ 28.2% 5 23.2% 5 4-2 7.1% 6 -27.6% 2 -6.5% 30 6 SEA 17.7% 9 18.2% 6 3-4 2.7% 15 -7.0% 8 8.0% 2 7 CAR 16.2% 10 12.6% 7 6-0 4.7% 9 -16.8% 6 -5.2% 28 8 PHI 12.8% 7 12.2% 8 3-4 -7.1% 23 -19.0% 3 0.9% 14 9 PIT 12.2% 6 11.2% 9 4-3 14.7% 5 2.9% 16 0.4% 16 10 BUF 6.6% 8 5.1% 12 3-4 4.2% 11 -0.9% 10 1.6% 11 11 DEN 6.2% 11 7.7% 10 6-0 -28.4% 32 -31.9% 1 2.7% 10 12 NYG 6.0% 12 5.1% 11 4-3 0.3% 17 0.0% 12 5.7% 4 13 OAK 4.6% 16 1.9% 16 3-3 3.1% 14 2.2% 14 3.6% 7 14 MIA 2.2% 22 1.9% 15 3-3 4.6% 10 2.7% 15 0.3% 17 15 KC 2.0% 18 2.4% 14 2-5 3.4% 13 5.1% 20 3.8% 6 16 STL 1.9% 17 3.1% 13 3-3 -16.5% 30 -16.9% 5 1.4% 12 TEAM TOTAL

DVOA LAST

WEEK TOTAL

DAVE RANK W-L OFFENSE

DVOA OFF.

RANK DEFENSE

DVOA DEF.

RANK S.T.

DVOA S.T.

RANK 17 ATL -1.3% 14 -1.2% 17 6-1 6.6% 7 3.7% 17 -4.3% 26 18 BAL -2.5% 13 -1.7% 18 1-6 -1.8% 18 6.2% 23 5.5% 5 19 WAS -3.2% 15 -4.7% 19 3-4 0.6% 16 5.1% 19 1.2% 13 20 NO -9.9% 25 -8.7% 20 3-4 6.5% 8 14.3% 31 -2.1% 22 21 IND -10.2% 19 -8.8% 21 3-4 -4.5% 20 5.3% 21 -0.4% 20 22 TEN -12.1% 23 -12.7% 22 1-5 -15.4% 29 -6.1% 9 -2.8% 24 23 CLE -14.5% 20 -14.1% 23 2-5 -9.3% 24 12.2% 27 7.0% 3 24 SD -16.6% 21 -14.5% 25 2-5 3.6% 12 13.4% 30 -6.8% 31 25 JAC -16.6% 27 -16.6% 27 2-5 -6.1% 21 4.6% 18 -6.0% 29 26 DAL -16.8% 24 -14.1% 24 2-4 -4.4% 19 7.2% 25 -5.1% 27 27 TB -18.5% 28 -17.3% 28 2-4 -12.4% 26 6.0% 22 -0.1% 18 28 MIN -20.4% 26 -15.9% 26 4-2 -14.7% 28 6.2% 24 0.4% 15 29 DET -23.5% 29 -21.1% 30 1-6 -10.6% 25 12.5% 28 -0.4% 19 30 CHI -23.5% 30 -19.8% 29 2-4 -6.4% 22 13.1% 29 -4.0% 25 31 HOU -31.7% 31 -29.5% 31 2-5 -14.4% 27 10.3% 26 -7.0% 32 32 SF -36.9% 32 -33.8% 32 2-5 -17.9% 31 16.6% 32 -2.4% 23

NON-ADJUSTED TOTAL DVOA does not include the adjustments for opponent strength or the adjustments for weather and altitude in special teams, and only penalizes offenses for lost fumbles rather than all fumbles.

does not include the adjustments for opponent strength or the adjustments for weather and altitude in special teams, and only penalizes offenses for lost fumbles rather than all fumbles. ESTIMATED WINS uses a statistic known as "Forest Index" that emphasizes consistency as well as DVOA in the most important specific situations: red zone defense, first quarter offense, and performance in the second half when the score is close. It then projects a number of wins adjusted to a league-average schedule and a league-average rate of recovering fumbles. Teams that have had their bye week are projected as if they had played one game per week.

uses a statistic known as "Forest Index" that emphasizes consistency as well as DVOA in the most important specific situations: red zone defense, first quarter offense, and performance in the second half when the score is close. It then projects a number of wins adjusted to a league-average schedule and a league-average rate of recovering fumbles. Teams that have had their bye week are projected as if they had played one game per week. PAST SCHEDULE lists average DVOA of opponents played this season, ranked from hardest schedule (#1, most positive) to easiest schedule (#32, most negative). It is not adjusted for which games are home or road.

lists average DVOA of opponents played this season, ranked from hardest schedule (#1, most positive) to easiest schedule (#32, most negative). It is not adjusted for which games are home or road. FUTURE SCHEDULE lists average DVOA of opponents still left to play this season, ranked from hardest schedule (#1, most positive) to easiest schedule (#32, most negative). It is not adjusted for which games are home or road.

lists average DVOA of opponents still left to play this season, ranked from hardest schedule (#1, most positive) to easiest schedule (#32, most negative). It is not adjusted for which games are home or road. VARIANCE measures the statistical variance of the team's weekly DVOA performance. Teams are ranked from most consistent (#1, lowest variance) to least consistent (#32, highest variance).