by Aaron Schatz

A big, dominating win over Buffalo propels the New York Jets past Green Bay and into the number one spot in this week's Football Outsiders DVOA ratings. Obviously, this will be a bit controversial. It's hard to find anyone out there who doesn't rank undefeated Green Bay as the top team in the league right now, and even harder to find anyone willing to consider the Jets as being in that class.

Normally, the various advanced ratings systems on the Internets are mostly in agreement about which teams are overrated and underrated. Not this year. DVOA is going out on a limb with its Jets love. The Jets are tenth in the league in point differential. Pro-football-reference's Simple Ratings System has the Jets ranked 11th. Jeff Sagarin has the Jets ranked eighth. Advanced NFL Stats doesn't have its power ratings up as I write this but last week they had the Jets a mediocre 14th.

The Jets' No. 1 ranking is powered by their performance on defense and special teams, and I don't think I'll get any argument from people that the Jets are very good in those two areas of the game. The surprise is their offense, which ranks 17th in DVOA this week. That's much higher than their simple rank in yards per play, which is 24th (5.0 yards per play). In fact, the Jets have allowed more yards per play on defense (5.1, eighth) than on offense!

The standard explanations for why FO has teams ranked higher than conventional wisdom don't seem to apply here. The Jets haven't recovered a suspiciously low percentage of fumbles (45 percent). Their losses have not been particularly close. They haven't played a particularly hard schedule (they rank 15th) although the difference between DVOA and VOA does seem to show that their rating has been raised a bit based on the specific strengths of their opponents. (The opponent adjustments aren't the same on every play -- they depend on the down as well as whether the offense is passing or running.)

It's silly to compare the Jets to the Packers, who have the exact opposite strengths. Every stat is going to say that the Packers offense blows the Jets offense out of the water. Instead, let's compare them to a similar team, the Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens are 22nd in offensive DVOA, five spots behind the Jets, even though they have averaged 0.1 more yards per play with one fewer turnover and played a slightly tougher schedule of defenses. Here are a few of the differences that cause the Jets to be ranked higher:

The Jets are much better on third downs. Baltimore ranks 15/24/15 on the three downs, while the Jets rank 28/13/7. One of the main reasons is that the Jets have avoided turnovers on third down, with only two. That means that even when they're going three-and-out, at least they're able to get a punt off to reverse field position instead of just giving the ball to the other team.

The Jets haven't had many super-long plays. As some readers know, the DVOA formula begins to discount additional yards gained once a play reaches 40 yards, because at a certain point a play's length becomes more about where the line of scrimmage was as opposed to a 60-yard touchdown pass really showing that much more offensive quality than a 40-yard touchdown pass. The Jets have had only two plays of 40+ yards, tied for the lowest total in the league. That depresses their yardage totals and averages. By comparison, Baltimore has seven such plays. Green Bay and Detroit lead the league with ten apiece.

However, the Jets simply don't lose yardage very often. They've lost yardage on just 6.9 percent of offensive plays, which ranks sixth-best in the NFL. Baltimore loses yards on 8.0 percent of plays (14th). New England is first (5.8 percent) while Chicago is last (12.1 percent).

In addition, the Jets have a lot of plays that we might consider "partial successes" -- plays that get yardage, but not much yardage. 22.2 percent of Jets plays have gotten 3-5 yards, the highest rate in the league. So even when the Jets aren't moving the ball in big chunks, they're at least getting a little bit of yardage. 41 percent of their 3-5 yard gains qualify as "successful" plays under our guidelines, which ranks 13th in the league. To compare this with Baltimore, the Ravens get 3-5 yards on 17.0 percent of plays (17th in the NFL) and their success rate on these plays is 35 percent (22nd).

The Jets offense has been surprisingly consistent. It doesn't look like it if you look at our offensive table, because they rank 29th in VARIANCE. But that's simply because of one game. The Jets were awful in Week 4, the game against Baltimore, with -69.3% DVOA. But the Jets offense has been positive in every other game, somewhere between 4.1% and 30.8%.

Hopefully, that does a good job of explaining why the Jets' offensive DVOA is so much higher than you might expect otherwise. Unfortunately, any other explanations for the Jets' super-high ranking seem to be hidden in all the layers of equations and baselines that I created originally to figure out the best teams over an extended 2002-2007 span. (Those are the years the baselines are currently based on.) The comparison of each play to the baseline seems to make sense play-by-play; it is only when you add them all together that it seems a bit high.

Believe it or not, this is only the second time in the 20-year history of DVOA that the New York Jets are number one. I went back through our spreadsheet of "DVOA as it developed each week" and the only other week the Jets would have been number one was Week 4 of 1993, when they were 2-1 with 40.2% DVOA. Here's an interesting table of every team that has ever ranked at No. 1 in DVOA during the regular season, going all the way back to 1992:

Weeks at No. 1 in DVOA, 1992-2011 Regular Season Team Weeks at No. 1 Team Weeks at No. 1 PHI 41 NYG 11 NE 34 BAL 9 DAL 26 BUF 9 SF 25 NO 9 GB 22 TEN 9 PIT 22 SEA 7 DEN 19 CHI 4 TB 17 MIA 4 KC 16 JAC 2 STL 15 NYJ 2 IND 13 OAK 2 SD 13 CIN 1

Some more interesting tidbits about this chart:

San Francisco was No. 1 24 times between 1992 and 1997, and then only one time after that (Week 1 of 2003).

Although New England won the Super Bowl in 2001 and 2003, the Patriots never ranked No. 1 in DVOA during the regular season during those years. They were No. 1 twice early in 1997 and then not again until 2004.

Dallas has not been No. 1 since Week 1 of 1997.

The single week that Cincinnati was on top of the DVOA rankings was Week 3 of 2005.

The eight teams that have never been No. 1 in DVOA, along with their all-time high rankings: Arizona (6), Atlanta (2), Carolina (3), Cleveland (4), Detroit (2), Houston (3), Minnesota (2), and Washington (2).

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This is the first week that the strength of a certain week drops below 95 percent in the WEIGHTED DVOA formula, and thus the first week you'll start to see some differences between regular DVOA and WEIGHTED DVOA. The main difference is that WEIGHTED DVOA has Pittsburgh a bit higher and Baltimore a bit lower, appropriate since Pittsburgh has been playing much better since Baltimore spanked them in Week 1. (Baltimore is still slightly higher than Pittsburgh, though, even in WEIGHTED DVOA.)

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One last note: This week's Quick Reads goes into depth on the incredible season Aaron Rodgers is having, but we shouldn't ignore the really great season that LeSean McCoy is having as well. McCoy currently has 250 rushing DYAR, nearly 100 ahead of second-place Adrian Peterson. He's on pace for 500 rushing DYAR, which would be the third-highest rushing total in DYAR history behind Priest Holmes in 2002 and Terrell Davis in 1998. Surprisingly, considering what a great receiving back he is, McCoy is not on pace to come close to Marshall Faulk's 2000 record of 840 combined rushing/receiving DYAR, as he has "only" 59 receiving DYAR.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through nine weeks of 2011, 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. WEIGHTED DVOA represents an attempt to figure out how a team is playing right now, as opposed to over the season as a whole, by making recent games more important than earlier games.

Opponent adjustments are currently at 90 percent strength and will steadily grow stronger until Week 10. As always, positive numbers represent more points so DEFENSE is better when it is NEGATIVE.

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 WEIGHTED

DVOA RANK W-L OFFENSE

DVOA OFF.

RANK DEFENSE

DVOA DEF.

RANK S.T.

DVOA S.T.

RANK 1 NYJ 34.1% 3 35.1% 1 5-3 6.3% 17 -19.8% 2 8.1% 3 2 GB 28.6% 1 28.2% 2 8-0 39.3% 1 10.7% 22 0.0% 16 3 HOU 25.6% 5 26.2% 3 6-3 20.3% 5 -3.7% 7 1.7% 9 4 SF 22.9% 4 22.5% 4 7-1 3.3% 21 -8.9% 4 10.7% 1 5 BAL 21.2% 6 18.8% 6 6-2 -0.4% 22 -26.4% 1 -4.7% 30 6 NYG 19.2% 7 21.6% 5 6-2 16.9% 8 -2.4% 9 -0.1% 17 7 ATL 18.3% 10 18.6% 7 5-3 7.6% 13 -8.2% 5 2.6% 6 8 DET 16.6% 9 16.7% 8 6-2 8.7% 12 -11.3% 3 -3.4% 28 9 NE 16.4% 8 15.6% 10 5-3 30.5% 2 13.8% 26 -0.3% 18 10 BUF 14.1% 2 12.6% 12 5-3 22.0% 4 7.2% 16 -0.7% 20 11 PIT 13.8% 12 16.1% 9 6-3 16.1% 9 2.6% 13 0.3% 13 12 NO 13.1% 11 12.9% 11 6-3 25.7% 3 11.5% 23 -1.0% 22 13 CHI 11.3% 15 11.1% 13 5-3 -0.7% 23 -3.1% 8 8.8% 2 14 PHI 9.3% 13 9.6% 14 3-5 18.3% 7 8.5% 18 -0.5% 19 15 CIN 8.3% 14 8.8% 15 6-2 5.6% 19 -0.2% 10 2.5% 7 16 DAL 8.0% 16 7.8% 16 4-4 9.5% 11 0.4% 12 -1.1% 23 TEAM TOTAL

DVOA LAST

WEEK WEIGHTED

DVOA RANK W-L OFFENSE

DVOA OFF.

RANK DEFENSE

DVOA DEF.

RANK S.T.

DVOA S.T.

RANK 17 TEN 2.9% 17 2.3% 17 4-4 12.0% 10 9.6% 21 0.5% 12 18 MIN -2.0% 20 -2.2% 18 2-6 7.0% 15 9.0% 20 0.1% 15 19 TB -4.9% 19 -5.5% 19 4-4 5.2% 20 14.0% 27 3.9% 5 20 SD -7.1% 21 -7.5% 20 4-4 6.5% 16 12.2% 24 -1.5% 25 21 OAK -8.9% 18 -9.9% 23 4-4 7.2% 14 14.4% 28 -1.7% 26 22 CAR -9.1% 23 -7.6% 21 2-6 20.1% 6 21.0% 31 -8.2% 32 23 MIA -9.2% 27 -8.0% 22 1-7 5.6% 18 15.7% 29 0.8% 11 24 WAS -13.7% 25 -15.8% 25 3-5 -13.0% 28 -0.1% 11 -0.8% 21 25 DEN -13.8% 28 -13.2% 24 3-5 -7.8% 24 8.2% 17 2.2% 8 26 CLE -19.1% 24 -19.0% 26 3-5 -15.2% 30 4.2% 14 0.2% 14 27 SEA -19.7% 26 -19.8% 28 2-6 -10.8% 26 5.0% 15 -3.9% 29 28 KC -21.4% 22 -19.5% 27 4-4 -14.2% 29 8.7% 19 1.5% 10 29 JAC -22.2% 29 -22.7% 29 2-6 -28.3% 32 -7.3% 6 -1.2% 24 30 ARI -23.7% 30 -24.0% 30 2-6 -11.3% 27 19.3% 30 6.9% 4 31 STL -35.8% 31 -35.4% 31 1-7 -19.6% 31 13.4% 25 -2.8% 27 32 IND -41.4% 32 -41.3% 32 0-9 -9.6% 25 24.0% 32 -7.8% 31

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).