by Aaron Schatz

Things are looking very good for the Philadelphia Eagles, who sit atop our DVOA ratings after two weeks of the 2016 season. That's a lot better than we expected before the season, when we projected that the Eagles would be one of the worst teams in the league. On the other hand, while we don't have enough information on the current season to incorporate opponent adjustments into our numbers, Philadelphia's two victories have come over two other teams we projected to be among the worst teams in the league. So, how much do we take from the Eagles' strong start?

In recent history, getting out to a strong start in DVOA has generally identified a team as one of the best in the league for that season. This wasn't always the case. For example, from 1998 through 2002, only one team that was No. 1 in DVOA after two weeks went on to make the playoffs. However, since the 2003 Kansas City Chiefs, every team ranked No. 1 in DVOA after Week 2 has made the playoffs and finished at least 10-6. These teams have averaged 12.5 wins and finished with an average DVOA rank of 3.6. Only the 2012 Houston Texans didn't finish in the DVOA top six; they were 11th.

On the other hand, Philadelphia isn't your typical team to rank No. 1 at this point. The ratings have never been more condensed at this point in the season, which makes sense when you consider how many close games there have been. Before we even consider the quality of the opposition so far, Philadelphia has the lowest DVOA ever for a team ranked No. 1 after Week 2. In most years, there are five or six teams at 30% or higher after two games. This year, Philadelphia is the only one.

Philadelphia isn't the most notable team in this week's DVOA ratings, however. That title probably goes to one of the three different teams that is 2-0 despite a negative DVOA so far. The Giants currently rank 20th, the Patriots 23rd, and the Texans 25th. New England and Houston are only the fifth and sixth teams in DVOA history to start the year 2-0 despite having an unadjusted rating below -10% after Week 2. The good news for Houston is that three of the previous four teams ended up with winning records, and one of them even went on to the Super Bowl. The better news for New England is that Tom Brady will be back in two weeks.

Lowest DVOA After Week 2 by 2-0 Teams, 1989-2016 YEAR TEAM DVOA RANK

Y-1 W-L DVOA RANK FINAL

W-L FINAL

DVOA FINAL

RANK 2003 CAR 25 2-0 -30.2% 28 11-5 0.6% 16 2004 JAC 17 2-0 -21.1% 26 9-7 1.7% 13 2012 ARI 28 2-0 -16.1% 24 5-11 -16.3% 26 2016 HOU 18 2-0 -15.8% 25 -- -- -- 2016 NE 6 2-0 -15.7% 23 -- -- -- 2000 MIN 10 2-0 -10.5% 22 11-5 -6.3% 22 2007 SF 27 2-0 -8.9% 20 5-11 -33.4% 31 1998 PIT 5 2-0 -8.4% 19 7-9 -1.2% 16 2016 NYG 20 2-0 -7.9% 20 -- -- -- 2006 MIN 25 2-0 -7.0% 19 6-10 -12.9% 23

So, what's going on with these teams, and why are their ratings so low despite two wins each?

There's actually not much to explain when it comes to the New York Giants. They have survived two nailbiters, 20-19 over Dallas and 16-13 over New Orleans, and they're the closest of these teams to league average. I wrote last week about the first game. The Giants won even though Dallas was much better on special teams, which was most of the gap in DVOA. The two teams were similar on offense and defense. This week's game was essentially a DVOA tie, with New Orleans finishing at 0.2% and the Giants at 1.8%.

New England has now won two games despite the other team having the better DVOA rating. A big part of this is that the offense keeps converting in third-and-long situations. Through two games, the Patriots are 12th overall in offensive DVOA but second on third or fourth down. They've converted 57 percent of these plays despite an average of 8.7 yards to go. (The best offense on third downs? Here's a surprise: Cleveland, which hasn't converted as often as New England but is averaging more yards per play in even harder situations.) The Patriots won't be able to convert third-and-longs like this forever, but they won't have to, because when Tom Brady returns they probably won't be in third-and-long as often. The worry going forward should be about the defense, which is just 29th so far. Miami's last drive this week may not have resulted in points, but our ratings are still measuring the yards given up. New England had a -39.6% defensive DVOA before halftime of the Miami game, and 80.0% defensive DVOA after halftime.

Defense isn't a problem in Houston, ranking sixth, but both offense and special teams currently rank 30th. The Texans had a surprisingly low 5.4% DVOA in their Week 1 23-14 win over Chicago, but the really weird result is that they have -36.9% DVOA for this week's 19-12 win over Kansas City. The Texans and Chiefs were two of the three worst offenses in the league this week. The Houston defense also benefited from the fact that Kansas City fumbled three times in this game and couldn't recover any of them. And like that Week 1 Cowboys-Giants game, there was a huge gap in special teams here, but the better special teams belonged to the team that lost the game. Each team returned four punts, but the Chiefs got 63 yards on those returns and the Texans only 12. Each team tried a field goal over 50 yards, but Cairo Santos hit his while Nick Novak missed.

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Some other things that jumped out me looking at this week's ratings:

Again, no opponent adjustments yet and one of the opponents involved is New Orleans. But still, I did not expect to see Oakland ranked No. 1 in offense and No. 32 in defense.

In the preseason, I wrote many times that it was very unlikely for the Denver defense to be as good as it was last season. Most of us probably came out of those first two games thinking that it looks like the unlikely has happened, and Denver is once again the best defense in the league. The ratings disagree so far. Denver ranks only 11th in defensive DVOA after two weeks, and is a surprising 15th on offense.

Buffalo is 19th in offensive DVOA and 25th in defensive DVOA after two weeks despite playing two teams that are (theoretically) better on defense than offense -- just in case you needed any more evidence that the decision to fire Greg Roman after just two weeks was ridiculous. By the way, Buffalo's DAVE is lower this week because I've dinged their projection based on the idea that they now have a new offensive coordinator.

Fun fact that a reader pointed out on Twitter: the New York Jets have to play the top four teams in DAVE over the next four weeks. They play at Kansas City this week, then home against Seattle, and then back on the road in Pittsburgh and Arizona. Somehow the Jets ended up with six of their first nine games on the road this year.

A quick note now about DAVE, the rating that combines early-season performance with the preseason predictions. Unfortunately, I haven't had the time in the last couple offseasons to do a thorough testing to figure out the most accurate split between current season and preseason forecast for each week in order to get the most accurate, most predictive rating for the rest of the season. However, I wanted to adjust the formula based on the general opinion around the league that early-season games are telling us less about how good a team will be over the entire season because CBA-related changes in practice time are leaving teams less prepared in the early games. I also wanted to drop the importance of early games a little bit before the opponent adjustments come in. So this week, DAVE is 80 percent preseason forecast instead of 75 percent as in years past. The changes in this ratio going forward will be similarly small.

Minnesota's DAVE accounts for Adrian Peterson's injury for the whole season; we'll adjust that next week if it looks like he's going to rehab and return at midseason instead of having surgery for his torn meniscus. In the new playoff odds report, the Patriots take a bit more penalty for Weeks 3-4 based on the idea that Jacoby Brissett will need to start instead of Jimmy Garoppolo. We made the adjustments before news came out that Garoppolo may be ready to be the backup this week and start in Week 4. We also made the adjustments before any news came out about Jay Cutler's injury, so there's no adjustment for Chicago using a backup quarterback, and we left Cleveland alone based on a report that Josh McCown was "week-to-week." Since Cody Kessler will start at least one game, their odds of getting the No. 1 pick are probably slightly higher than listed.

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Once again this season, we have teamed up with EA Sports to bring Football Outsiders-branded player content to Madden 17 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, beginning at 11am Eastern on Friday. We will also tweet out images of these players from the @fboutsiders Twitter account on most Fridays. The best player of each week, the Football Outsiders Hero, will require you to collect a set of the other four Football Outsiders players that week, plus a certain number of Football Outsiders collectibles available in Madden Ultimate Team packs.

The Football Outsiders stars for Week 2 are:

For those curious, DYAR does not penalize Diggs or Sam Bradford for that time-wasting throw on fourth down to end the game, and it's not included in DVOA for Minnesota or Green Bay.

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All stats pages are now updated through Week 2 of 2016. That includes for the first time offensive lines, defensive lines, and defense vs. receivers. Snap counts and playoff odds are also fully updated. The FO Premium DVOA database is now updated through Week 2, and the Matchup View now shows 2016 stats instead of 2015 stats.

We're very excited for the first 2016 update for our new Premium Charting Data subscribers. We're going to try to update tonight with all the data through Sunday's games, leaving out Monday Night Football, and we'll definitely have things updated by tomorrow night with all charting stats through Week 2.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through two weeks of 2016, 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 80 percent of DAVE.

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>