by Aaron Schatz

The Denver Broncos remain No. 1 in the Football Outsiders DVOA ratings this week, and their overall DVOA rating actually gets a nice boost from last week after a nice win over Miami. But in another very important fashion, the Broncos finally fell from the top spot this week. They are no longer our projected No. 1 favorite to win Super Bowl XLIX. That spot now belongs to the New England Patriots.

The Patriots' dominating win over Detroit has moved them up to the No. 2 spot in overall DVOA, trailing only the Broncos. They rank even better in weighted DVOA, because this week their Monday night debacle in Kansas City begins to count less in the weighted DVOA formula. The last three Patriots wins are their three best games of the year by single-game DVOA, and a week-to-week graph of their performance this season shows a very steady and obvious slope of improvement with one big, glaring outlier in Week 4.

Early in the season, the Patriots looked like they had a strong defense, but that was exaggerated by the fact that we had not started using opponent adjustments yet. But over the last few weeks, the Patriots finally have had an actual strong defense. (If we split the season into three four-week periods, the Patriots defense would rank 10th in Weeks 1-4, 28th in Weeks 5-8, and then third in Weeks 9-12 behind only San Francisco and Arizona.) This week, the Patriots move into the top ten for defensive DVOA, making them one of two teams that currently ranks in the top ten for all three phases of the game. (The other is Baltimore.)

As I detail in today's ESPN Insider playoff odds report, the Broncos had been our Super Bowl favorite pretty much straight through since the first preseason projections that I did after the NFL Draft in May. The only exception was a two-week period in late September when we had the Cincinnati Bengals as our favorites, in between the Denver loss to Seattle and the Cincinnati loss to New England. But with the improvement in the Patriots' weighted DVOA, New England now wins the No. 1 seed in 46.4 percent of our simulations and the Super Bowl in 18.7 percent of our simulations. Denver is second at 17.0 percent, Green Bay third at 14.5 percent. No other team is above 7.5 percent. Incidentally, the Super Bowl XXXI rematch of New England and Green Bay that takes place this Sunday afternoon is also our most likely "special" Super Bowl, showing up in 9.0 percent of simulations.

(Also, the ESPN article has an error where I mistakenly referred to Baltimore as the only team in the top ten for all three phases of the game. I wrote that before the Bills-Jets game changed opponent adjustments and moved the Patriots defense into the top ten as well.)

Another interesting note about the Broncos: Denver had ranked first or second in both offense and defense for six of the past seven weeks, but the Broncos drop to fourth in defensive DVOA this week. However, they move back into the No. 1 spot ahead of Green Bay on offense. New England's move into position as our Super Bowl favorite is truly more about the Patriots rising than the Broncos falling. Although tears have been shed and garments rended for the struggles of the Broncos in recent weeks, DVOA suggests we're only really talking here about two bad games, neither of which was really that terrible.

One extra reason we know that New England and Denver have been good this year as that they have had to play strong division rivals... and each other's strong division rivals. Buffalo's "Practice? Who Needs Practice?" stomptacular over the New York Jets gives the AFC East three different teams in this week's DVOA top ten. The whole division isn't great, of course; the Jets are now No. 28 with what I believe is the first below-average defense in Rex Ryan history, ranked No. 19. The AFC West is not quite as strong as the AFC East because of the recent decline of the Chargers, but that division still has the Broncos at No. 1, the Chiefs at No. 7, the Chargers at No. 16, and the "underrated because they aren't the worst team in the NFL" Raiders now at No. 26, moving up four spots after their first win of the season. The AFC North may be the more balanced division, and everyone may end up with a winning record because they all get to play the NFC South, but Baltimore at No. 4 is the only AFC North team in our top dozen.

And oh, the sad, sad NFC South. While the Saints are at least respectable if you consider them only by DVOA (No. 18), we're still stuck in a situation where the NFC South champion now has a losing record in 63.0 percent of simulations and goes 6-9-1 or worse in 15.9 percent of simulations.

Two quick notes on the playoff odds report. First, we realized that we were not listing the Carolina/Cincinnati tie in either team's Projected Mean Wins number. So beginning this week, each team has 0.5 added to its Projected Mean Wins to represent the tie. Second, we've been debating around here whether we should be giving the Arizona Cardinals home-field advantage for the Super Bowl. We finally decided that we would give them "half advantage," which is similar to what Ken Pomeroy does when he does college basketball projections and a team is hosting during March Madness. We weren't able to get that programmed into our simulator in time for this week but beginning next week the Cardinals will get a small boost for playing the Super Bowl in their home stadium.

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Once again in 2014, we have teamed up with EA Sports to bring Football Outsiders-branded player content to Madden 15 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 Week 12 are:

WR Odell Beckham, NYG (24-HOUR HERO): Led all WR in Week 12 with 76 receiving DYAR (10-for-11, 146 yards, 2 TD).

Led all WR in Week 12 with 76 receiving DYAR (10-for-11, 146 yards, 2 TD). RE Chris Clemons, JAC: 3 sacks and a forced fumble in just the first quarter alone.

3 sacks and a forced fumble in just the first quarter alone. K Steven Hauschka, SEA: 4-for-5 on field goals; all six kickoffs into the end zone including four touchbacks.

4-for-5 on field goals; all six kickoffs into the end zone including four touchbacks. MLB Rolando McClain, DAL: Led NFL defenders with 10 stops in Week 12 including 8 run tackles for a combined 0 yards and the tackle to prevent Giants conversion on fourth-and-2 and end the game.

Led NFL defenders with 10 stops in Week 12 including 8 run tackles for a combined 0 yards and the tackle to prevent Giants conversion on fourth-and-2 and end the game. RT Louis Vasquez, DEN: Allowed no sacks or QB hits vs. Cameron Wake; Broncos had 77 rushing yards on seven runs to the right side.

The elite Odell Beckham has a 94 overall rating and a 100 spectacular catch rating.

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All stats pages are now updated with Week 12 information -- or will be in the next few minutes -- including FO Premium, snap counts, and playoff odds. You can also read the new weekly playoff odds report on ESPN Insider to get more commentary on the current playoff odds.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through 12 weeks of 2014, 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 for strength of schedule and 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 DEN 35.6% 1 35.0% 1 8-3 26.1% 1 -14.3% 4 -4.9% 29 2 NE 25.7% 5 29.7% 2 9-2 17.1% 4 -1.7% 10 6.9% 3 3 GB 24.5% 2 25.4% 3 8-3 24.6% 2 -0.1% 12 -0.2% 15 4 BAL 22.4% 3 23.2% 4 7-4 10.1% 10 -4.3% 9 8.0% 2 5 MIA 19.1% 4 21.3% 5 6-5 12.3% 7 -10.6% 6 -3.8% 24 6 SEA 18.5% 7 16.0% 6 7-4 12.0% 8 -8.2% 7 -1.8% 20 7 KC 14.2% 6 14.2% 7 7-4 10.3% 9 2.0% 18 5.8% 4 8 PHI 12.4% 8 13.3% 8 8-3 -2.2% 16 -5.3% 8 9.4% 1 9 BUF 9.3% 12 9.6% 9 6-5 -11.1% 26 -14.9% 3 5.4% 6 10 DAL 8.5% 13 8.9% 10 8-3 14.5% 5 6.1% 25 0.1% 13 11 SF 7.6% 11 8.2% 11 7-4 -3.9% 18 -16.6% 2 -5.0% 30 12 IND 6.9% 14 6.8% 13 7-4 3.1% 13 2.0% 17 5.8% 5 13 PIT 6.8% 10 7.4% 12 7-4 17.8% 3 9.7% 29 -1.3% 19 14 DET 4.6% 9 3.7% 14 7-4 -10.0% 24 -20.5% 1 -5.9% 32 15 CIN 3.5% 17 0.8% 17 7-3-1 -0.4% 15 1.3% 16 5.2% 7 16 SD 1.3% 18 0.2% 18 7-4 9.6% 11 7.9% 27 -0.4% 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 ARI 1.2% 15 1.0% 16 9-2 -9.6% 23 -12.6% 5 -1.8% 21 18 NO 0.9% 16 2.0% 15 4-7 14.1% 6 14.1% 31 0.8% 12 19 CLE -3.7% 19 -4.5% 19 7-4 -3.3% 17 0.3% 13 -0.1% 14 20 ATL -6.5% 20 -9.0% 20 4-7 6.7% 12 16.5% 32 3.3% 8 21 HOU -9.7% 21 -9.2% 21 5-6 -4.8% 19 0.6% 15 -4.3% 27 22 CHI -9.8% 23 -12.7% 22 5-6 0.0% 14 4.2% 23 -5.6% 31 23 MIN -13.8% 26 -13.2% 24 4-7 -13.7% 28 2.6% 20 2.5% 9 24 STL -15.1% 24 -13.1% 23 4-7 -12.3% 27 4.1% 22 1.4% 10 25 NYG -15.8% 25 -18.1% 26 3-8 -6.7% 20 8.2% 28 -0.9% 18 26 OAK -17.9% 30 -17.1% 25 1-10 -18.2% 30 0.6% 14 0.9% 11 27 WAS -18.0% 28 -19.6% 27 3-8 -8.4% 21 5.2% 24 -4.4% 28 28 NYJ -19.3% 22 -19.9% 28 2-9 -16.6% 29 2.5% 19 -0.2% 16 29 CAR -19.7% 29 -20.3% 29 3-7-1 -10.1% 25 7.3% 26 -2.2% 22 30 TEN -21.8% 27 -21.2% 30 2-9 -8.9% 22 9.9% 30 -3.1% 23 31 JAC -30.4% 31 -27.7% 31 1-10 -27.1% 32 -0.8% 11 -4.1% 26 32 TB -31.3% 32 -28.5% 32 2-9 -23.7% 31 3.6% 21 -3.9% 25

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).