by Aaron Schatz

The Philadelphia Eagles are once again number one in the Football Outsiders DVOA ratings this week, and their dominant victory over Washington gives them a healthy cushion in our ratings. The Giants, last week's top team, fall back to sixth after the Dallas upset. Big Blue is still part of a five-team group that ranks behind Philadelphia but has a slight amount of separation from the rest of the league; the rest of that group includes Tennessee, Pittsburgh, New England, and Green Bay.

You may be surprised to learn, however, that Philly's dominant victory wasn't quite as dominant as you might think. With a single-game DVOA rating of 64.1%, it doesn't even score as the Eagles' best game of the year. (That would be their Week 3 win over Jacksonville, 28-3, with 67.0% DVOA.) Philadelphia's defense scores a 5.6% DVOA for the game -- in other words, below average, because they let the Redskins score four touchdowns when Vick wasn't tearing up the field. Vick's explosion was part of an absurd weekend of offensive power. You've probably seen statistics elsewhere about whatever records were set for points or 300-yard passing games. In DVOA terms, I can tell you that the best offensive DVOA rating for a single game this year belongs to Houston, 94.4% in the 35-31 Week 6 shootout with Kansas City. The next five best offensive games of the year were all this week: New England, Denver, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Tampa Bay, in that order.

To return to the subject of Michael Vick, I know there has been a bit of controversy around here, with some readers feeling that FO writers have been too negative about his spectacular comeback season. In reality, what we have is a number of FO writers with different perspectives. Bill Barnwell has been our leading skeptic, especially since Vick's early success came against poor pass defenses. Doug Farrar has jumped all in on the Vick excitement with both feet. My attitude has probably been somewhere in the middle, until last night. Last night was straight out ridiculous.

From a scouting perspective, there isn't much I can say about the change in Vick's play that wasn't said already by Ron Jaworski on last night's broadcast. Doug Farrar also discusses things in detail here. Vick is far more accurate than he has been in the past, and he's going through progressions and then only running when everyone is covered, rather than tucking-and-running at the first sign of pressure. The one thing I'll add is that Vick also has fixed his footwork. He no longer has the problem he had in Atlanta where he sometimes took a diagonal dropback, essentially creating more pressure for himself by not planting far enough behind the line when he went to find his receivers. And yes, he has better receivers now than he did in Atlanta, although you have to remember that Brian Finneran has always been underrated and Vick also had a young Roddy White to work with near the end.

(Note: Doug Farrar reminded me of this Cover-3 from a month ago, where he talks to Greg Cosell about Vick's improvements.)

FO Premium subscribers can check out the Michael Vick player page and look at just how bad his passing performance was during the Atlanta years; since some of you don't subscribe (and thus can only see back three years), I'll summarize it here. In six years in Atlanta, Vick only had one season with a positive DVOA: 2002, when he ranked 17th among quarterbacks with 7.2%. In four of the six seasons, Vick had a passing DVOA below replacement level. His highest completion rate was 56.4 percent.

Now fast forward to 2010. Vick is second in the league in DVOA at 39.2%, behind only Tom Brady. His completion rate is 63.2 percent. Just for kicks, he also has his best rushing DVOA since his rookie year, although it's not a huge difference. (Unlike Vince Young, Vick's scrambling skills have always led to great success according to our numbers.) But wait, there's more... Look at the quarterback stats page again. Look at Vick's non-adjusted VOA rating. That's right: Vick has a higher DVOA than VOA, which means that by our accounting, he is playing an above-average schedule of pass defenses. Green Bay, the first team he had success against, is the top-rated pass defense in the league by our numbers. Detroit has actually improved its pass defense significantly over last season and ranks 13th in DVOA. Indianapolis ranks fifth. Jacksonville, of course, still sucks.

The big media story of Vick's comeback, of course, is the two years he spent out of the league (and, part of the time, in jail). From a football perspective, though, this isn't a comeback because Vick has not "come back" to where he was before he left Atlanta. He's far, far surpassed that. I honestly can't think of a football equivalent of this kind of late-career renaissance. This goes way past what Jim Plunkett did with the Raiders. All I can think of are baseball equivalents, like Mike Scott after age 30, or Cecil Fielder and Colby Lewis returning from exile in Japan. Would this season have looked any more in line with the rest of his career if it had taken place in 2007 instead of coming after two blank years and last year's handful of fruitless "Wildcat" plays? Overall, this has to be an incredibly damning statement about the coaching staff of the 2004-2006 Atlanta Falcons, doesn't it? I mean, Dan Reeves got quality out of Vick in 2002, but for this guy with this talent to be that bad from 2004 through 2006, under Jim Mora and Greg Knapp, well, it boggles the mind.

Speaking of Vick's old team, readers may be surprised to see that two of the league's three 7-2 teams are not ranked among the league's best teams by the DVOA ratings. I figured I should take a look at why we rank these teams lower than conventional wisdom.

For the Jets, things are simple: This team has been absurdly lucky this season. On offense, the Jets have recovered 8 of 12 fumbles. On defense, the Jets have recovered 10 of 13 fumbles. The Jets went to overtime against the Lions because an injury to the kicker forced Ndamukong Suh to try an extra point. They beat the Broncos by four in a game where the Broncos blew two field goals. This week, Cleveland played the Jets to a stalemate for 74 minutes and 30 seconds, and no matter how awesome that last Sanchez-to-Holmes connection, that's a lot of average performance added into DVOA. In the Jets' defense, I should note that they also had a very close, tough loss, Week 1 against Baltimore, to go with all these close wins. They actually end up as the most consistent team of the year so far according to DVOA, with one outstanding game (beating the Patriots in Week 2) and a lot of games right around average. You can see that below, as we bring in our first DVOA week-to-week graphs of the season.

The Falcons are a bit of a different story, at least when it comes to luck. You might notice that their DVOA is higher than their VOA. They've played a slightly harder than usual schedule, and they've actually had terrible fumble luck, recovering three of eight fumbles on defense and zero of four fumbles on offense. The Falcons are mostly just stuck playing a lot of close games. Five of their seven wins came by a touchdown or less. The one place they've had luck is with opposing field-goal kickers. Opposing kickers have been worth an estimated -13.7 points compared to average. That's the biggest advantage in the league: a 50 percent rate, 8-of-16, including four misses on field goals of 40 yards or less. The resulting graph ends up looking a lot like the one for the Jets, only not quite as flat.

The flip side of the Falcons/Jets would be the Tennessee Titans, second in DVOA despite a 5-4 record. That one can be summarized succinctly: fourth-hardest schedule. Note that the Titans actually dropped in DVOA after losing to Miami, even though their ranking goes up one place.

One more team I want to get to this week is Kansas City. The Chiefs have completely divebombed since I wrote two weeks ago that we needed to start taking them seriously as Super Bowl contenders. Perhaps they didn't really want to be taken seriously as Super Bowl contenders. Well, your wish is now granted, guys. In two weeks, the Chiefs have dropped from first overall in DVOA to 15th. Their actual DVOA rating has dropped 23 percentage points. According to our playoff odds report, their chances of making the playoffs have dropped roughly in half, from 94.2 percent two weeks ago to 48.0 percent now. Their chances of winning the Super Bowl have plummeted from 13.1 percent to 1.0 percent.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Chiefs' freefall is what happened with opponent adjustments. When you look at the tables below, you will see that Kansas City's DVOA is lower than its VOA, which would seem to indicate that the Chiefs are dropping not only because they face-planted against the Broncos, but also because the opponent adjustments have now reached full strength. However, that's not really the case. Two weeks ago, when they were at number one, the Chiefs' DVOA was actually higher than their VOA. Then the Chiefs lost a close game to a mediocre team (Oakland) and were hammered by a terrible team (Denver). That leaves us where we are now. San Diego is now clearly the best team in the division according to DVOA, although the Chiefs are listed with a better chance to win the AFC West because they have a one-game lead and the tiebreaker over San Diego, plus a slightly easier upcoming schedule.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through ten weeks of 2010, 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. 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 PHI 34.4% 2 35.7% 1 6-3 33.3% 2 -2.8% 8 -1.6% 25 2 TEN 26.6% 3 28.0% 2 5-4 7.1% 14 -14.8% 1 4.8% 4 3 PIT 24.8% 4 23.5% 4 6-3 10.1% 12 -13.1% 3 1.6% 12 4 NE 23.6% 8 23.6% 3 7-2 37.4% 1 16.5% 28 2.7% 10 5 GB 22.9% 6 21.1% 6 6-3 16.2% 7 -10.9% 5 -4.3% 30 6 NYG 21.4% 1 23.4% 5 6-3 13.9% 10 -13.7% 2 -6.2% 31 7 SD 17.2% 7 17.7% 8 4-5 21.4% 4 -11.3% 4 -15.5% 32 8 BAL 16.5% 11 18.4% 7 6-3 13.5% 11 -0.5% 13 2.4% 11 9 IND 16.0% 9 16.4% 9 6-3 18.2% 5 -1.9% 11 -4.0% 29 10 ATL 13.0% 10 11.1% 11 7-2 16.5% 6 3.4% 18 0.0% 18 11 MIA 12.7% 15 13.6% 10 5-4 14.2% 9 1.3% 15 -0.3% 20 12 NYJ 11.9% 12 9.6% 12 7-2 6.4% 16 -2.8% 9 2.8% 9 13 NO 7.8% 13 8.2% 14 6-3 4.0% 19 -4.9% 7 -1.0% 21 14 CLE 7.3% 14 8.9% 13 3-6 6.1% 17 3.2% 17 4.3% 5 15 KC 6.4% 5 4.5% 15 5-4 7.9% 13 0.0% 14 -1.5% 23 16 HOU -1.0% 16 -2.0% 17 4-5 30.0% 3 31.0% 32 0.0% 17 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 SF -1.5% 17 1.2% 16 3-6 -3.2% 23 -1.7% 12 0.1% 16 18 CIN -3.8% 18 -4.0% 19 2-7 0.4% 21 1.4% 16 -2.8% 27 19 OAK -6.1% 20 -2.7% 18 5-4 -8.7% 27 -2.4% 10 0.2% 14 20 TB -7.9% 23 -9.3% 22 6-3 4.8% 18 12.6% 26 -0.2% 19 21 DET -8.9% 19 -8.8% 20 2-7 -8.6% 26 3.8% 19 3.4% 7 22 JAC -9.3% 24 -9.0% 21 5-4 6.6% 15 21.4% 29 5.5% 3 23 DEN -11.8% 28 -11.3% 23 3-6 14.2% 8 22.3% 30 -3.8% 28 24 CHI -12.4% 26 -13.6% 25 6-3 -26.0% 30 -7.2% 6 6.4% 2 25 WAS -13.9% 22 -13.4% 24 4-5 -5.5% 24 9.6% 23 1.2% 13 26 MIN -14.6% 21 -14.0% 26 3-6 -8.1% 25 4.9% 21 -1.6% 24 27 DAL -17.2% 27 -18.2% 28 2-7 0.8% 20 16.3% 27 -1.7% 26 28 STL -18.5% 25 -17.3% 27 4-5 -13.0% 28 4.1% 20 -1.3% 22 29 SEA -22.1% 29 -25.1% 30 5-4 -17.3% 29 11.8% 25 7.0% 1 30 BUF -23.9% 30 -23.0% 29 1-8 -2.9% 22 23.8% 31 2.8% 8 31 ARI -38.9% 31 -38.0% 31 3-6 -32.5% 31 10.0% 24 3.6% 6 32 CAR -46.1% 32 -46.0% 32 1-8 -41.4% 32 5.0% 22 0.2% 15

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).