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 1-5, and Weeks 6-11 are somewhat discounted. "Last week" here refers to last week's rank in weighted DVOA, not total season DVOA.

Teams are treated as having a bye week in any week where they did not play. Since most teams haven't played in two weeks, that means some of the ratings for non-playoff teams can start getting a little unreliable. Really, this is only to be used for playoff teams, the other teams are just there for ranking comparison purposes.

DVOA, as always, takes a long-term view of an NFL team's performance. That means that the games of the last two weeks are just two games among many, so teams may be listed below other teams that they have beaten in the playoffs.

The table below also includes a listing for total season DVOA which adds the eight postseason games in with all 256 regular-season games. You'll notice that all four remaining teams are significantly higher in weighted DVOA than they are in total season DVOA, even if we include the playoffs in both ratings. Although the media has made a lot of Aaron Rodgers' comments about running the table when the Packers were 4-6, all four of these teams have been red hot over the last two months. They have won a combined 30 straight games, and none of the final four teams has lost since Atlanta fell to Kansas City back on December 4.

As Danny Kelly from the Ringer first noticed and pointed out on Twitter, this is the first time in DVOA history that no top-ten defense from the regular season is represented among the final four teams, although Pittsburgh is the No. 8 defense if we look at full-season DVOA including the playoffs. In addition, both New England and Pittsburgh are top-ten defenses according to weighted DVOA. Except for a small upset in Green Bay beating Dallas, the best teams from the regular season are the last four teams left this year. All four teams ranked seventh or higher in total DVOA this year, and all four teams ranked eighth or higher in offensive DVOA. If not for the Steelers sitting starters against Cleveland in Week 17, the final four would all rank among the top six offenses.

I don't really have much very interesting to say about the DVOA ratings for this weekend's games. The blowouts scored like blowouts. Green Bay and Dallas were essentially tied, although the Cowboys were slightly ahead without opponent adjustments and the Packers were slightly ahead with opponent adjustments. As you might expect, Pittsburgh had a much higher DVOA than Kansas City despite the close score, because the Steelers moved the ball so well even though they couldn't get it into the end zone for touchdowns.

You will find DVOA matchup pages for the conference championships on the FO Premium page. Snap counts are updated with full postseason numbers. And if you have a team in the Football Outsiders 2016 Playoff Fantasy Challenge, you can check out your team right here.

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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 week 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 the divisional round are:

C Alex Mack, ATL (FOOTBALL OUTSIDERS HERO): No sacks allowed; helped block for 102 rushing yards against No. 2 run defense by DVOA.

No sacks allowed; helped block for 102 rushing yards against No. 2 run defense by DVOA. LE Michael Bennett, SEA: sack, PD, run tackles for minus-4 and 0 yards.

sack, PD, run tackles for minus-4 and 0 yards. DT Jonathan Babineaux, ATL: sack, run tackles for minus-4 and 0 yards.

sack, run tackles for minus-4 and 0 yards. WR Chris Hogan, NE: No. 1 WR of divisional round with 68 DYAR (4-for-4, 95 yards, plus 30-yard gain on DPI).

No. 1 WR of divisional round with 68 DYAR (4-for-4, 95 yards, plus 30-yard gain on DPI). TE Jesse James, PIT: No. 1 TE of divisional round with 34 DYAR (5-for-6, 83 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.

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 38.0% 1 15-2 22.5% 3 -9.5% 7 6.1% 5 27.6% 1 2 PIT 27.2% 2 13-5 12.6% 8 -14.6% 4 -0.1% 20 18.3% 4 3 ATL 25.0% 4 12-5 29.4% 1 4.0% 21 -0.3% 22 21.3% 2 4 DAL 22.2% 3 13-4 18.6% 5 0.6% 18 4.1% 7 20.7% 3 5 GB 22.0% 6 12-6 28.0% 2 7.0% 25 1.0% 13 16.4% 6 6 KC 19.7% 5 12-5 5.9% 11 -3.0% 13 10.8% 1 13.5% 7 7 BAL 14.9% 8 8-8 1.8% 14 -5.0% 11 8.1% 3 5.9% 10 8 TEN 12.9% 9 9-7 14.7% 7 6.8% 23 5.0% 6 3.9% 13 9 WAS 11.9% 10 8-7-1 21.9% 4 8.4% 27 -1.6% 24 9.2% 8 10 PHI 10.5% 7 7-9 -3.8% 19 -6.4% 9 7.8% 4 17.1% 5 11 NYG 8.2% 12 11-6 -9.8% 25 -17.3% 2 0.8% 15 4.9% 12 12 TB 7.3% 11 9-7 -1.0% 16 -8.8% 8 -0.5% 23 -1.6% 21 13 ARI 5.5% 16 7-8-1 -1.2% 17 -12.0% 5 -5.3% 28 1.7% 16 14 CIN 5.2% 13 6-9-1 4.3% 12 -1.2% 15 -0.2% 21 3.0% 15 15 IND 4.8% 14 8-8 7.3% 10 5.1% 22 2.6% 9 -5.1% 24 16 OAK 2.0% 17 12-5 3.3% 13 1.9% 20 0.7% 16 5.3% 11 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 SEA 1.8% 15 11-6-1 -5.0% 21 -5.0% 12 1.9% 12 8.3% 9 18 NO 0.0% 18 7-9 14.9% 6 12.8% 30 -2.1% 25 -0.4% 17 19 CAR -2.7% 19 6-10 -12.9% 27 -10.0% 6 0.2% 17 -4.8% 23 20 MIA -5.0% 21 10-7 -0.5% 15 6.9% 24 2.3% 11 -1.9% 22 21 DEN -6.1% 20 9-7 -21.5% 29 -20.0% 1 -4.5% 27 3.8% 14 22 BUF -7.7% 23 7-9 10.0% 9 12.2% 28 -5.5% 29 -0.7% 18 23 SD -9.1% 22 5-11 -9.1% 24 -5.7% 10 -5.8% 30 -1.0% 19 24 JAC -9.3% 25 3-13 -8.4% 23 -2.1% 14 -3.0% 26 -10.7% 26 25 CHI -9.5% 24 3-13 -1.9% 18 7.6% 26 0.0% 19 -7.9% 25 26 HOU -10.9% 27 10-8 -22.0% 30 -17.0% 3 -5.9% 31 -18.0% 28 27 MIN -12.8% 26 8-8 -12.0% 26 1.6% 19 0.8% 14 -1.1% 20 28 SF -16.3% 29 2-14 -5.6% 22 13.0% 31 2.3% 10 -19.7% 29 29 DET -18.3% 28 9-8 -3.8% 20 17.5% 32 3.1% 8 -17.6% 27 30 CLE -27.4% 30 1-15 -15.3% 28 12.3% 29 0.1% 18 -30.9% 31 31 NYJ -33.5% 31 5-11 -27.2% 31 -0.4% 16 -6.7% 32 -32.4% 32 32 LARM -44.2% 32 4-12 -53.0% 32 0.1% 17 8.9% 2 -29.0% 30

Here are the one-game DVOA ratings for the divisional round of the playoffs.