by Aaron Schatz

(Ed. Note: Four days after running these ratings, we discovered a manual error that left a few plays shortened by penalty uncorrected. There were three in the KC-HOU game and one in the GB-WAS game. These fixes changed the DVOA ratings for wild-card weekend so that Kansas City no longer had the best single game of the year, and the Chiefs' punt returns weren't quite as impressive. We've corrected the numbers below but have not changed the text except for notes. -- 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.

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.)

Since we've been writing a lot again these last couple weeks about the question of weighted DVOA vs. total DVOA, and which is more accurate for predicting the postseason, this year I'm including total DVOA in the postseason DVOA ratings table. The total DVOA listed below adds the four wild-card games in with all 256 regular-season games. As I noted last year, adding one game into a sample of 17 doesn't usually change things very much. It does this year because of the extreme dominance that Kansas City showed in its victory over Houston.

Kansas City ended up with 123.4% DVOA in the 30-0 win. That ends up as the biggest single-game DVOA of the year, surpassing the 115.7% DVOA Seattle had in its Week 17 stomping of Arizona.

(After corrections, Kansas City was actually at 110.3% DVOA. No need to delete our table, but we've removed the Chiefs.)

However, this game is far from having the highest DVOA of any playoff game we've ever measured. It turns out there are a lot of postseason games with really high single-game ratings, because that's what happens when a playoff-caliber team loses a blowout. Kansas City's win is the tenth different playoff game with DVOA over 120%. Here's the rundown:

Playoff Games with DVOA of 120% or More, 1989-2015 Year Team Week Opp DVOA Score 1993 SF Divisional NYG 145.0% 44-3 1989 SF NFC Champ LARM 135.2% 30-3 2005 CAR Wild Card NYG 131.6% 23-0 2002 NYJ Wild Card IND 129.6% 41-0 2000 BAL Super Bowl NYG 127.5% 34-7 1989 SF Super Bowl DEN 126.6% 55-10 2013 SEA Super Bowl DEN 126.2% 43-8 1999 JAC Divisional MIA 123.3% 62-7 1992 DAL Super Bowl BUF 122.2% 52-17

Quick note: for a few of these years, playoffs are still only done with an older version of DVOA, so ratings may change in the future when we get a chance to go through and update all past playoff data. And, of course, we don't have 1985 yet, when the Bears won their three playoff games by a combined score of 91-10. It will be interesting to see how well those games do compared to the three games where the 1989 49ers beat their opponents by a combined 126-26.

Just how bad was this game for Houston quarterback Brian Hoyer? You'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out in Quick Reads.

Perhaps the most remarkable part of Kansas City's win was not what the Chiefs did to Hoyer but how much they dominated on special teams in every possible way. The all-around special teams performance earned a special teams DVOA of 43.9%, the best special teams game of 2015 and one of the best we've ever measured, even after adjusting for the game taking place indoors. (Apologies, I don't have time to go through all 26 years to track down the current list of the best special teams games.) The Chiefs only fielded one kickoff, but of course Knile Davis returned it for a touchdown. Frankie Hammond averaged 19.5 yards on four punt returns, which is phenomenal. Dustin Colquitt punted four times with no returns; two of the punts landed inside the 10 and another was inside the 20. Cairo Santos had touchbacks on every one of his kickoffs and converted all three field goals, including two of 49 yards.

(The corrected special teams DVOA is 36.1%, still the No. 2 special teams game of the year behind Seattle in Week 3 against Chicago. We had mistakenly missed that two of Hammond's punt returns were shortened by penalties.)

This game massively juices Kansas City's rating in both regular DVOA and weighted DVOA. As a result, our playoff odds simulation now has Kansas City actually listed as the AFC favorite, representing the conference in Super Bowl 50 for 31.6 percent of simulations. Do note, however, that the playoff odds simulation doesn't understand specific matchups in these next four games. It is also not as complex as the one used for FO Premium picks, so picks may differ. In addition, we did not adjust Kansas City's rating for the Jeremy Maclin injury. We did, however, leave in the slight boost to New England's rating based on Julian Edelman's return. As for Pittsburgh's injuries, in past weeks we had adjusted Pittsburgh's rating to account for the four weeks they played without Ben Roethlisberger; this week, we didn't do that in order to try to account for Roethlisberger's injury.

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With the best weighted DVOA ratings belonging to wild-card teams, the playoff odds are pretty scrambled right now. We actually end up with Seattle as the current Super Bowl favorites even though they aren't even favored to win this week's game according to the formula we use in the playoff odds. Five different teams win the Super Bowl in at least 12 percent of simulations.

You will find DVOA matchup pages for the four divisional games on the FO Premium page. Snap counts are now updated with information on the wild-card round. 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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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.

Table is updated with the fixed numbers for KC-HOU and a slight change in GB-WAS.

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 SEA 49.9% 1 11-6 24.8% 1 -23.9% 2 1.2% 18 37.1% 1 2 KC 44.6% 2 12-5 13.3% 4 -26.1% 1 5.2% 4 30.4% 2 3 CAR 29.9% 3 15-1 12.1% 6 -17.5% 5 0.2% 19 25.9% 5 4 PIT 28.4% 4 11-6 13.5% 3 -12.3% 6 2.6% 14 22.3% 7 5 CIN 22.4% 5 12-5 6.9% 13 -12.1% 7 3.4% 8 28.1% 3 6 DEN 20.0% 6 12-4 -1.3% 17 -22.0% 3 -0.7% 20 17.7% 8 7 ARI 16.8% 7 13-3 12.9% 5 -11.0% 8 -7.0% 32 27.4% 4 8 MIN 15.8% 10 11-6 3.2% 14 -7.9% 10 4.7% 5 6.7% 11 9 NE 14.7% 9 12-4 8.2% 11 -4.3% 15 2.2% 15 22.6% 6 10 NYJ 11.7% 8 10-6 2.2% 15 -10.4% 9 -0.9% 23 12.4% 10 11 DET 11.5% 11 7-9 8.7% 9 -0.2% 16 2.6% 13 1.1% 13 12 WAS 5.9% 12 9-8 7.0% 12 6.6% 22 5.5% 3 -2.0% 15 13 CHI 1.0% 14 6-10 11.0% 7 13.1% 29 3.1% 11 -5.7% 18 14 GB 0.7% 19 11-6 -6.1% 20 -5.0% 14 1.8% 16 13.2% 9 15 BUF 0.6% 15 8-8 10.2% 8 12.3% 28 2.7% 12 2.7% 12 16 OAK 0.2% 16 7-9 -5.3% 19 -6.3% 12 -0.8% 21 0.0% 14 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 BAL -2.7% 17 5-11 -8.4% 22 3.8% 18 9.5% 1 -3.0% 17 18 TB -2.7% 18 6-10 8.4% 10 5.4% 20 -5.8% 31 -9.3% 20 19 HOU -3.7% 13 9-8 -16.0% 28 -17.8% 4 -5.5% 30 9.9% 21 20 STL -5.8% 20 7-9 -15.2% 26 -6.2% 13 3.2% 10 -2.2% 16 21 NYG -7.6% 21 6-10 1.1% 16 15.5% 31 6.8% 2 -6.5% 19 22 IND -13.0% 22 8-8 -22.0% 32 -7.4% 11 1.6% 17 -12.9% 23 23 DAL -15.8% 25 4-12 -18.2% 31 2.1% 17 4.6% 6 -18.3% 27 24 SD -15.9% 24 4-12 -4.0% 18 8.3% 25 -3.6% 28 -14.8% 24 25 JAC -17.0% 26 5-11 -8.9% 23 11.4% 27 3.3% 9 -16.0% 25 26 NO -17.0% 28 7-9 13.5% 2 27.9% 32 -2.6% 25 -18.7% 28 27 MIA -18.1% 23 6-10 -6.4% 21 8.1% 24 -3.6% 29 -19.0% 29 28 SF -19.2% 29 5-11 -11.9% 25 4.7% 19 -2.5% 24 -27.4% 32 29 PHI -21.5% 27 7-9 -10.6% 24 15.0% 30 4.1% 7 -11.2% 22 30 ATL -22.9% 30 8-8 -16.0% 29 6.0% 21 -0.8% 22 -16.1% 26 31 CLE -26.3% 31 3-13 -15.6% 27 7.8% 23 -3.0% 26 -23.0% 30 32 TEN -31.4% 32 3-13 -16.9% 30 11.1% 26 -3.4% 27 -26.5% 31

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



DVOA (with opponent adjustments) TEAM TOT OFF DEF ST KC 110% 4% -70% 36% HOU -92% -77% -8% -23% PIT 40% -14% -48% 7% CIN 31% -23% -39% 15% SEA 20% -12% -37% -5% MIN 24% -12% -42% -5% GB 59% 28% -19% 13% WAS -28% -8% 25% 4% VOA (no opponent adjustments) TEAM TOT OFF DEF ST KC 108% -3% -76% 36% HOU -109% -84% 2% -23% PIT 15% -19% -27% 7% CIN 10% -30% -25% 15% SEA 16% -15% -36% -5% MIN -16% -30% -19% -5% GB 58% 33% -12% 13% WAS -34% -16% 23% 4%

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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 the wild-card round are: