by Aaron Schatz

Once again, it is time for postseason DVOA ratings. As always, the following rules apply:

All 32 teams are ranked, whether they made the playoffs or not.

Teams are ranked in order of weighted DVOA, not total season DVOA. Since weighted DVOA is meant to lower the strength of older games, these ratings do not include Weeks 1-4, and Weeks 5-10 are somewhat discounted.

Only weighted DVOA is listed for offense, defense, and special teams. Total DVOA is also listed, but one game doesn't change much in a 17-game sample.

Teams which did not play in the wild-card round are treated as if they had a bye week. (That includes both the 20 non-playoff teams and the four teams with byes.)

The big surprise around here is probably that the gap between Philadelphia and Atlanta in both full-season DVOA and weighted DVOA is pretty large. Based on our numbers, at least, it seems that the public is overrating the importance of Nick Foles' poor Week 16 performance against Oakland. That was, after all, just one game. To make up the difference between Philadelphia and Atlanta in DVOA, you really have to believe the difference between Foles and Carson Wentz is about as big as the difference between Brett Hundley and Aaron Rodgers.

You will find DVOA matchup pages for the four divisional games on the FO Premium page. Snap counts should be updated with information on the wild-card round by this evening. (We're having some issues with getting playoff data, which we can hopefully solve.) And if you have a team in the Football Outsiders 2017 Playoff Fantasy Challenge, you can check out your team right here, scores should already be updated.

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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 week, we've got our last bit of content for the 2017 season, our December stars for Madden Ultimate Team on consoles. These players will go into packs around 11am on Thursday. Stats below are from Weeks 13-17, and players were chosen before this past weekend's games. Note that we were limited in choosing players from playoff teams because those players were chosen for Madden's NFL Playoffs promotion.

QB Jimmy Garoppolo, SF: Led NFL with 560 passing DYAR in December. 297 yards per game, 8.2 net yards per attempt.

HB Jamaal Williams, GB: Fourth among RB with 94 rushing DYAR in December (83 carries, 332 yards, 2 TD).

WR Doug Baldwin, SEA: Fifth among WR with 133 receiving DYAR in December (17-of-28, 293 yards, 4 TD).

LT Ronnie Stanley, BAL: In December, Ravens RB led NFL with 57 percent success rate and Ravens OL allowed a league-low 2.1 percent adjusted sack rate.

C Mike Pouncey, MIA: Miami RB led NFL with 63 percent success rate on runs up the middle in December (59 carries, 282 yards, 2 TD).

RE Vinny Curry, PHI: 18 hurries and an NFL-leading 10 QB knockdowns in December.

MLB Zach Cunningham, HOU: Tied for NFL lead with 13 defeats in December: 1.5 sacks, 6 other TFL, 5 PD or tackles to prevent third-down conversions.

CB Kyle Fuller, CHI: Second in NFL with 11 PD in December; half of his tackles after receptions prevented successful play by FO baselines.

CB Xavien Howard, MIA: 4 picks in December; Miami ranked third in DVOA against No. 1 wide receivers.

SS Bradley McDougald, SEA: Led all safeties with 9 defeats in December, second among safeties with 26 run tackles, which came only 3.5 average yards from LOS.

K Robbie Gould, SF: 18-of-18 on field goals in December with 6 field goals of 45 yards or more.

P Ryan Allen, NE: Led punters with 6.5 points of estimated field position on net punts in December; only 2 of 21 punts returned for more than 2 yards.

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To save people some time, we remind everyone to put their angry troll hatred into the official zlionsfan angry troll hatred Mad Libs form:

<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>

If you are new to our website, you can read the explanation of how DVOA is figured here. As always, positive numbers represent more points so DEFENSE is better when it is NEGATIVE.

There are no adjustments here for sitting starters in Week 17, although we do adjust the ratings that we use in the playoff odds report.

Teams in yellow are still alive in the playoffs. Teams in gray lost this past weekend.

TEAM WEI.

DVOA LAST

WEEK W-L WEI OFF

DVOA OFF.

RANK WEI DEF

DVOA DEF.

RANK WEI S.T.

DVOA S.T.

RANK TOTAL

DVOA RANK 1 NE 32.2% 1 13-3 27.4% 1 3.2% 22 8.1% 2 22.6% 6 2 NO 31.7% 2 12-5 23.2% 2 -3.8% 9 4.6% 9 30.2% 1 3 MIN 29.3% 4 13-3 12.8% 5 -17.7% 3 -1.1% 19 25.1% 4 4 PIT 27.9% 5 13-3 19.7% 3 -0.6% 14 7.7% 3 27.1% 3 5 LARM 27.2% 3 11-6 12.7% 6 -7.5% 7 7.0% 4 27.3% 2 6 BAL 24.7% 6 9-7 2.6% 15 -11.2% 5 10.8% 1 18.5% 7 7 PHI 22.9% 7 13-3 6.7% 11 -18.1% 1 -1.9% 21 23.5% 5 8 LACH 19.0% 8 9-7 14.4% 4 -9.2% 6 -4.6% 27 7.9% 11 9 CAR 13.8% 9 11-6 3.6% 13 -5.0% 8 5.2% 6 13.3% 9 10 JAC 13.1% 10 11-6 -3.9% 19 -15.9% 4 1.0% 17 13.5% 8 11 DAL 9.8% 11 9-7 4.0% 12 -0.3% 15 5.5% 5 5.4% 13 12 ATL 6.0% 14 11-6 8.3% 9 1.3% 18 -1.0% 18 3.5% 14 13 SF 3.7% 12 6-10 7.5% 10 5.5% 25 1.7% 14 -8.3% 20 14 SEA 2.2% 13 9-7 2.1% 16 -3.0% 11 -2.9% 23 3.2% 15 15 DET 0.8% 15 9-7 8.8% 8 11.4% 30 3.5% 11 5.6% 12 16 KC 0.3% 16 10-7 10.3% 7 14.9% 31 4.8% 7 10.0% 10 TEAM WEI.

DVOA LAST

WEEK W-L WEI OFF

DVOA OFF.

RANK WEI DEF

DVOA DEF.

RANK WEI S.T.

DVOA S.T.

RANK TOTAL

DVOA RANK 17 OAK -5.0% 18 6-10 1.0% 17 3.0% 21 -3.0% 24 -6.6% 19 18 TEN -5.0% 19 10-7 -5.3% 21 1.3% 17 1.5% 15 -5.5% 18 19 ARI -5.4% 17 8-8 -20.8% 31 -18.0% 2 -2.6% 22 -11.2% 22 20 WAS -9.1% 20 7-9 -9.7% 23 -2.4% 12 -1.9% 20 -0.5% 16 21 CHI -9.9% 22 5-11 -10.5% 24 0.7% 16 1.3% 16 -15.9% 25 22 IND -10.6% 23 4-12 -10.8% 25 4.4% 24 4.6% 8 -22.4% 31 23 GB -10.6% 21 7-9 -4.8% 20 7.6% 26 1.8% 13 -3.3% 17 24 TB -13.7% 25 5-11 3.0% 14 9.6% 29 -7.1% 32 -11.9% 23 25 CIN -13.9% 24 7-9 -1.0% 18 8.8% 28 -4.1% 26 -12.5% 24 26 CLE -14.2% 29 0-16 -11.7% 26 -0.7% 13 -3.3% 25 -27.2% 32 27 NYJ -14.8% 26 5-11 -7.9% 22 1.4% 20 -5.5% 29 -17.3% 26 28 BUF -15.3% 28 9-8 -14.5% 29 4.0% 23 3.3% 12 -9.0% 21 29 MIA -16.3% 27 6-10 -12.2% 28 8.7% 27 4.5% 10 -19.8% 27 30 NYG -19.9% 30 3-13 -12.0% 27 1.4% 19 -6.5% 31 -22.2% 30 31 DEN -28.4% 31 5-11 -26.2% 32 -3.1% 10 -5.4% 28 -20.9% 29 32 HOU -41.2% 32 4-12 -18.8% 30 16.3% 32 -6.1% 30 -20.3% 28





Here are the one-game DVOA ratings for the first round of the playoffs. You'll notice that both of the Saturday upsets ended up with the losing team slightly ahead of the winning team in VOA (before opponent adjustments), while both of the Sunday games ended up further apart in VOA than the final score would otherwise suggest. We'll have more on the Falcons-Rams upset in a Tuesday Any Given Sunday column by Rivers McCown.