by Aaron Schatz

Green Bay remains on top of the Football Outsiders ratings after three weeks, despite last night's close 20-17 loss to Chicago. The Packers' first two victories were big enough to keep a below-average game from knocking them out of the top slot. Before applying opponent adjustments -- those won't start until next week -- last night's game was the rare contest where both teams ended up with a rating below 0%. All of those False Start penalties result in a penalty for one team, but they don't boost the rating of the defense involved. The same goes for the two missed field goals (yes, that includes the one that was blocked, since blocking field goals isn't generally a predictive event).

That "double-negative" game is a big reason why Chicago is a surprising 14th this week despite starting 3-0. The Bears may have three wins, but all three have been very close. They certainly haven't been as dominating as a 2-1 team like Atlanta or Philadelphia. The flip-side equivalent to Chicago would be the Cleveland Browns, who rank 19th despite three losses. Those losses were all close, and Cleveland's single-game ratings are, in order -1.9%, -3.5%, and -24.6%. Another team that has been more impressive than its record is the Dallas Cowboys, who rank in the top ten even though they didn't win until this past week.

All of these ratings, of course, are still somewhat shaky because it is too early to include opponent adjustments. The 3-0 Kansas City Chiefs are a good example of this problem. When we predicted before the season that Kansas City would win the AFC West, it was more a prediction of San Diego's decline. We expected the Chiefs to sneak into the playoffs at 9-7. We did not expect them to start the season 3-0, including a triumphant 31-3 thrashing of San Francisco this week. According to our playoff odds report, the Chiefs now have the best chance to make the postseason of any team in the league: 93.9 percent of all simulations.

Now, it looks like Kansas City has built its good early record against bad teams, as its three opponents are a combined 1-8. But one of those opponents is San Diego, a team most observers expect to improve -- and the Chargers' two losses have been very close. Another of those opponents is Cleveland, which, as noted in the paragraph before this one, has played its opponents close so far. So has Kansas City played three bad teams? Or two average teams and one bad team? Or will the Chargers win eventually qualify as a win over a good team? It's just too early to tell.

San Diego's position in the rankings is even more questionable given how the Chargers managed to lose this week. The Chargers were almost entirely beaten by one man: Leon Washington. Seattle's performance this week qualifies as the best special teams game of the DVOA Era, and after looking at historical numbers, it's reasonable to state that Washington had the best kickoff return game in NFL history.

Back in Pro Football Prospectus 2006, we ran an essay in the New York Giants chapter discussing the best and worst special teams games in DVOA history. At the time, the best special teams game belonged to the 2002 New Orleans Saints, who were 16.3 estimated points worth of field position above average in a Week 6 win over Washington. (Click here for an explanation of how we turn field position on kicks and punts into an estimated point total.)

Right after we wrote that book, three of the best return men in history showed up in the NFL: Joshua Cribbs, Devin Hester, and Leon Washington. Cribbs has probably been the best of the three overall, but he's the one who has never had that one specific record-breaking superlative day. Hester was the main engine behind Chicago breaking the record in Week 12 of 2007, with 16.6 points worth of estimated field position. You may remember that as the "Why on earth is Todd Sauerbrun still kicking to Hester?" game, where Hester had two return touchdowns in the third quarter.

This week, the Seahawks broke that record by a very, very tiny margin. That Bears game was actually worth 16.59 points. This week, Seattle's special teams were worth 16.61 points. When we do our periodic upgrades to the statistical methods, adjusting the various baselines to make them more accurate, that Chicago game could move back in front. But for now, this Seattle game is the best special teams performance of the last two decades -- and again, it is almost entirely because of Washington. Olindo Mare hit two short field goals -- positive value, but almost meaningless. His kickoffs were very good, with two touchbacks and three other kicks returned to around the 20. On one of those, the Seahawks stripped the ball from Darren Sproles, which is definitely important. Golden Tate had a nice 31-yard punt return, but Jon Ryan's punts were pretty average.

Leon Washington, though... Washington averaged 63.3 yards on four kickoff returns. Besides the two touchdowns, he also brought a short 55-yard kickoff back 33 yards. (The average return on a 55-yard kickoff is only 18 yards.) Vince Verhei went back and looked at NFL history before the last two decades, and found that Washington had the highest single-game average of any return man with at least four kickoffs in a game. It's not even close -- Devin Hester previously held the record at 56.3 yards, and there are only two other players with games in the 50s. If we drop the minimum to three returns, then Washington ranks third with the highest average in 50 years; in 1960, Lenny Lyles of the 49ers had a game where he averaged 67.3 yards on three returns, while Ken Hall of the Oilers had one averaging 65.3 yards on three returns.

Here's a updated look at the best special teams games of the DVOA Era, going back to 1993:

MOST SPECIAL TEAMS VALUE IN A SINGLE GAME, 1993-2010 Year Team Week Opponent Value 2010 SEA 3 SD 16.6 pts 2007 CHI 12 DEN 16.6 pts 2009 CHI 4 DET 16.4 pts 2002 NO 6 WAS 16.3 pts 2000 BAL 17 NYJ 16.0 pts 2002 CAR 14 CIN 15.5 pts 2000 TB 13 BUF 15.4 pts 1997 SD 10 CIN 15.3 pts 2003 OAK 17 SD 14.9 pts 1994 CLE1 1 CIN 14.8 pts 2005 NYG 1 ARI 14.8 pts

The good news for Chargers fans -- and bad news for Seahawks fans -- is that this kind of special teams performance is very unlikely to continue for the rest of the year. The Chargers may end up with the worst special teams in the league this year, but it won't be this bad.

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All stat pages are now updated. The FO Premium database of DVOA splits will be updated later tonight. Also, please note that the KUBIAK midseason update will be available for download on Thursday afternoon of this week.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through three 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 VOA are adjusted to consider all fumbles, kept or lost, as equal value. SPECIAL TEAMS VOA is adjusted for type of stadium (warm, cold, dome, Denver) and week of season.

There are no opponent adjustments in VOA until the fourth week of the season, which is why it is VOA right now rather than DVOA. As always, positive numbers represent more points so DEFENSE is better when it is NEGATIVE.

DAVE is a formula which combines our preseason projection with current VOA to get a more accurate forecast of how a team will play the rest of the season. Right now, the preseason projection makes up 55 percent of DAVE.

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>