by Aaron Schatz

A close loss to another really good team certainly isn't enough to knock Seattle out of the top spot in the Football Outsiders DVOA ratings, and Seattle's lead over No. 2 Denver isn't much smaller than it was a week ago. Below that we see Carolina and New Orleans move closer together, although the Panthers are still No. 3; Kansas City, New England, and Cincinnati also move closer together as the three real threats to the Broncos in the AFC, as the Patriots drop a bit while the Chiefs and Bengals move up.

The biggest story this week is a unit, not a whole team, and it's a bad story, not a good one. Washington's abysmal special teams day against Kansas City was worth an estimated minus-15.9 points below average, based entirely on horrible coverage on returns. They allowed 177 yards on seven Dexter McCluster punt returns, including a touchdown, and 123 yards on two Quintin Demps kickoff returns, including a touchdown.

As a result, Washington has now passed the 2010 San Diego Chargers and ranks as the worst special teams ever tracked by Football Outsiders through 13 games, going back to 1989.

WORST SPECIAL TEAMS DVOA

THROUGH 13 GAMES Year Team DVOA 2013 WAS -14.3% 2010 SD -12.8% 2000 BUF -12.0% 1995 PHI -11.7% 2008 MIN -10.8% 1998 OAK -10.5% 1997 SEA -10.3% 2002 CIN -10.2% 2009 GB -10.1% 1997 STL -10.0% 1996 NYJ -9.7% 2007 IND -9.5%

This doesn't necessarily mean that Washington is "on pace" to be the worst special teams in DVOA history, because that 2000 Bills team finished the season with a flourish. Their special teams were worth more than minus-25 points worse than average in Weeks 16 and 17 of that year, and as a result the Bills finished with a worst-ever -15.4% special teams DVOA. That's the worst special teams DVOA ever, and it isn't even close. You'll notice from the table above that there were ten different teams below -10% through 13 games, but only three have ever finished an entire season below -10%: 2010 San Diego at -10.2% and 1997 Seattle at -11.1%. Washington would have to have three pretty good games to escape being the fourth team to pass the -10% special teams barrier, but it would take another awful game like this week to bust Buffalo's record.

I thought it would be interesting to look back and just what on earth was so bad about these worst special teams ever, compared to the current Washington team. Note that for all numbers listed below, kickoff stats remove onside kick attempts as well as end-half squibs.

2000 Buffalo (-15.4% DVOA): The Bills apparently decided they had no faith whatsoever in their kickoff coverage, and sometime around Week 7 they ordered Steve Christie to kick short constantly to avoid long returns. So Christie's average kickoff went only 56.6 gross yards, and only 54.5 gross yards from Week 7 onwards. The league average for that season was 63.7 yards. The short kicks didn't help, as returns against Buffalo were worth an estimated 20.5 points worth of field position. Even after Week 7, that was 1.15 points per game, worse than any other team in the league. (Amazingly, the Bills didn't have the worst kickoff unit we've ever measured; the 1992 Bucs and 2009 Steelers were even worse because they couldn't tackle anyone.)

But wait, there's more! The Bills were at the bottom of the league on kick return value as well, worth minus-12.7 points with a league-low 18.8 yards per kick return. And they were at the bottom of the league in punt return value, worth minus-12.4 points with a league-low 5.6 yards per punt return. Chris Mohr was one of the worst punters in the league, specializing in shanking kicks out of bounds that didn't go more than 30 yards or get inside the 20 (he had eight of those). Plus Christie had four field goals blocked, and the long-snapper blew an extra point with a bad snap.

2013 Washington (-14.3% DVOA so far): Washington's biggest problem is punting. We now have them as minus-32.5 points below average on net punting value, which would be the third worst figure ever. Sav Rocca below average, but not horrific. It's worse that Washington has allowed three punt return touchdowns, plus additional returns of 40 and 60 yards. On kickoffs, Kai Forbath is tied for the lowest figure in the league with an average kickoff of 63.0 gross yards. (In other words, the worst average kickoff guy in the league now is about where the league average was in 2000; kicking keeps getting better every season.) Washington is near the bottom of the league in the other three areas of special teams we track, although they aren't at the absolute bottom of the league in any of them.

1997 Seattle (-11.1% DVOA): Todd Peterson wasn't so bad on field goals, but everything else was 29th or 30th in a 30-team league. The Seahawks used three different punters, and allowed two punt return touchdowns to Baltimore's Jermaine Lewis in Week 15. Kyle Richardson, the middle punter, had two blocked punts and one aborted in just two games. The Seahawks averaged 6.9 yards on punt returns (29th) with four fumbles. They averaged 20.8 yards on kick returns (26th) with three fumbles.

2010 San Diego (-10.2% DVOA): This is a recent year, so you may remember the Chargers blowing a game against the Raiders entirely based on blocked punts. For the year, the Chargers were worth minus-34.3 points worse than average on net punting, the worst figure ever. They were also dead last in value on kickoffs, allowing three touchdowns. All the negative value comes from just punts and kickoffs; they were average in the other areas of special teams we measure (field goals, punt returns, kick returns).

2002 Cincinnati (-9.4% DVOA): This team is very similar to the 2010 Chargers. They used a fourth-round pick on punter Travis Dorsch, then only used him for one game all year, which happened to be one of the worst special teams games any team has ever had in NFL history. For the season, the Bengals allowed a league-high 14.5 yards per punt return, which worked out to minus-34.3 points worth of field position by FO methods. Neil Rackers had a poor year on kickoffs, with a league-low 58.4 gross yards per kickoff. The Bengals also got lousy punt returns from T.J. Houshmandzadeh and Peter Warrick, who between them had four fumbles and only four returns of double digits with five returns that lost yardage. That cancelled out some pretty good kickoff returns from Houshmandzadeh, Brandon Bennett, and Rudi Johnson, where the Bengals actually were sixth in the NFL.

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As long as we're talking about Worst DVOA Ever, I've taken off the tables for Worst Total DVOA Ever and Worst Offensive DVOA Ever because the Jaguars continue to improve each week and are close to climbing off those lists. But we can still look at the Worst Defensive DVOA Ever, although San Diego's defensive DVOA has dropped the past two weeks. I've had some people ask me if San Diego has the biggest gap between offensive and defensive DVOA ever, and the answer is no. That title belongs to a couple of Kansas City teams from the Dick Vermeil era. However, if the season ended right now, the Chargers would be near the top, along with a couple of recent Patriots teams and last year's New Orleans Saints.

(Because of the way DVOA is set up, of course, we're not really measuring "gap" between offensive and defensive DVOA, but rather the highest combination of the two without reversing the sign on defense to reflect that a lower-rated defense is actually a better defense that prevents more scoring.)

WORST DEFENSIVE DVOA

THROUGH 13 GAMES Year Team DVOA 2001 ARI 23.7% 1996 ATL 23.3% 1999 CLE 22.6% 2013 SD 21.9% 2008 DET 21.7% 2003 ARI 21.6% 2000 ARI 21.5% 2001 MIN 21.3% 2005 HOU 21.2% 2008 STL 21.2% 2004 MIN 20.9% 1992 ATL 20.5% BIGGEST COMBINED OFFENSIVE

AND DEFENSIVE DVOA, 1989-2013 YEAR TEAM OFF RK DEF RK "GAP" 2002 KC 35.4% 1 14.0% 29 49.4% 2004 KC 31.6% 2 16.0% 30 47.6% 2011 NE 31.9% 3 13.2% 30 45.2% 2000 MIN 18.5% 5 26.0% 31 44.4% 2010 NE 42.2% 1 2.3% 21 44.4% 2013 SD 22.2% 2 21.9% 32 44.1% 2011 NO 33.0% 2 10.2% 28 43.2% 2003 KC 33.4% 1 9.4% 25 42.8% 2011 GB 33.8% 1 8.6% 25 42.4% 2000 STL 26.7% 1 14.9% 27 41.7% 1996 BAL 22.8% 1 17.5% 29 40.4% 2008 DEN 19.2% 1 20.7% 31 39.9%

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Finally, one more Worst DVOA Ever. I mentioned this on Twitter on Sunday, but I can't believe I didn't check it out before then given how bad the Baltimore running backs have been this year. The Ravens currently are in the lead for the worst run offense in DVOA history. They were actually second-to-last, and then things go worse in Week 14 despite a win. The fact that a team with an offense so astonishingly one-dimensional might make the playoffs is a pretty strong indictment for the idea that running the ball is even necessary in today's NFL. Here's a look at the worst run offense DVOA ratings since 1989:

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Year Team RUN OFF TOT OFF Main RB 2013 BAL -31.1% -21.6% R.Rice, B.Pierce 1991 IND -30.2% -32.8% E.Dickerson, K.Clark 2005 ARI -29.1% -9.5% M.Shipp, J.J.Arrington 2013 JAC -27.7% -33.9% M.Jones-Drew 2002 HOU -27.4% -43.3% J.Wells, J.Allen 1995 ARI -25.1% -22.9% G.Hearst, L.Centers 1991 PHI -23.0% -24.6% J.Joseph, H.Sherman, K.Byars 1998 NO -22.9% -23.3% L.Smith, R.Zellars, T.Davis 2006 DET -22.9% -13.4% K.Jones 2000 ATL -22.8% -29.6% Corpse of J.Anderson 2000 SD -22.5% -26.2% J.Fazande, T.Fletcher 2000 CAR -22.2% -17.6% T.Biakabatuka, B.Hoover

I'll leave the discussion of who we blame for this -- i.e. is this all the blocking, or did Rice get cooked even earlier than usual for a running back -- for another time. (Jacksonville's a bit easier to figure -- you know the line is awful and Jones-Drew is on the downside of his career.)

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During the 2013 season, we'll be partnering with EA Sports to bring special Football Outsiders-branded items to Madden 25 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 standard stats. Others will be under-the-radar players who only stood out with advanced stats, including DYAR, Defeats, and our game charting coverage stats for cornerbacks. 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, beginning Friday night.

The Football Outsiders stars for Week 14 are:

Jordan Cameron, TE, CLE (Limited Edition): 70 DYAR, best single game by tight end in 2013 (9-for-9, 121 yards, TD).

70 DYAR, best single game by tight end in 2013 (9-for-9, 121 yards, TD). Evan Mathis, LG, PHI: Helped lead LeSean McCoy to PHI-record 217 rushing yards.

Helped lead LeSean McCoy to PHI-record 217 rushing yards. Paul Posluszny, MLB, JAC: Led all NFL defenders with 13 combined tackles this week.

Led all NFL defenders with 13 combined tackles this week. Da'Rick Rogers, WR, IND: 53 DYAR, second among wide receivers (6-for-9, 107 yards, 2 TD against one of NFL's better pass defenses).

53 DYAR, second among wide receivers (6-for-9, 107 yards, 2 TD against one of NFL's better pass defenses). Jeremy Ross, WR, DET (Special Punt Returner Edition): Scored both kickoff and punt return touchdowns, and not even against Washington!

Some other players we considered (not including players we did in previous weeks or those included in Madden's Team of the Week) were John Abraham, Keenan Allen (we've come close to including him numerous times this year, it will happen eventually), Charles Clay, Dexter McCluster, and Josh McCown.

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All 2013 stat pages are now updated or will be updated in the next few minutes, including snap counts, playoff odds, and the FO Premium database. For more on what these DVOA changes have meant to the playoff odds, check out Danny Tuccitto's playoff odds commentary on ESPN Insider.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through 14 weeks of 2013, 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.)

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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.

A reminder: The adjustments for weather are currently a general adjustment based on whether it is a cold-weather city or not, and whether a stadium is a dome or not. We do not have specific adjustments for specific weather conditions such as the snow on Sunday in Week 14. If you feel that stats should be adjusted for these conditions, use your common sense and best judgment. (Although Baltimore, Minnesota, and Philadelphia did a pretty good job of demonstrating that you can score plenty of points in the snow!)

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 SEA 39.1% 1 38.7% 1 11-2 13.1% 6 -20.2% 1 5.8% 5 2 DEN 32.8% 2 28.8% 2 11-2 32.3% 1 -0.8% 16 -0.4% 18 3 CAR 25.5% 3 28.3% 3 9-4 9.2% 9 -15.2% 3 1.1% 12 4 NO 23.3% 4 25.5% 4 10-3 17.8% 4 -6.7% 11 -1.3% 23 5 KC 18.3% 8 17.5% 8 10-3 1.7% 16 -6.8% 9 9.7% 1 6 NE 17.7% 5 20.9% 5 10-3 13.1% 7 1.9% 18 6.5% 3 7 CIN 17.0% 7 19.0% 7 9-4 -0.6% 17 -12.2% 4 5.5% 6 8 SF 15.9% 6 20.7% 6 9-4 4.4% 14 -8.6% 7 2.9% 10 9 CHI 11.9% 10 9.0% 11 7-6 15.6% 5 4.3% 19 0.6% 14 10 ARI 10.8% 11 13.8% 9 8-5 -4.8% 20 -19.1% 2 -3.6% 25 11 PHI 10.5% 9 12.4% 10 8-5 19.9% 3 5.6% 22 -3.8% 26 12 DET 3.5% 13 4.3% 12 7-6 1.7% 15 -1.3% 14 0.4% 16 13 TB 1.0% 19 1.4% 15 4-9 -9.8% 24 -11.4% 6 -0.6% 19 14 SD 0.8% 18 2.6% 14 6-7 22.2% 2 21.9% 32 0.5% 15 15 DAL 0.6% 14 -0.7% 17 7-6 9.6% 8 13.1% 30 4.1% 8 16 PIT 0.5% 16 2.9% 13 5-8 5.9% 12 5.3% 20 -0.1% 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 IND 0.0% 15 -4.1% 19 8-5 7.7% 11 7.1% 25 -0.6% 20 18 STL -1.2% 12 0.9% 16 5-8 -8.3% 23 -1.0% 15 6.1% 4 19 MIA -1.4% 17 -0.8% 18 7-6 -0.8% 18 -1.8% 13 -2.4% 24 20 GB -6.6% 21 -11.9% 23 6-6-1 7.9% 10 13.4% 31 -1.1% 21 21 BAL -6.6% 23 -4.2% 20 7-6 -21.6% 30 -8.5% 8 6.5% 2 22 BUF -6.9% 20 -12.3% 24 4-9 -13.3% 25 -11.8% 5 -5.4% 28 23 TEN -8.4% 22 -7.1% 21 5-8 -4.0% 19 0.1% 17 -4.4% 27 24 ATL -9.4% 24 -12.9% 25 3-10 4.7% 13 13.0% 29 -1.1% 22 25 MIN -13.9% 26 -13.3% 26 3-9-1 -8.2% 22 8.7% 27 3.0% 9 26 NYJ -14.2% 27 -15.9% 27 6-7 -24.9% 31 -5.8% 12 4.9% 7 27 NYG -15.1% 25 -10.7% 22 5-8 -15.3% 28 -6.8% 10 -6.6% 31 28 CLE -20.0% 29 -19.3% 28 4-9 -14.4% 27 6.3% 23 0.7% 13 29 HOU -25.5% 30 -28.2% 30 2-11 -13.7% 26 5.5% 21 -6.3% 29 30 WAS -27.6% 28 -25.4% 29 3-10 -4.9% 21 8.4% 26 -14.3% 32 31 OAK -30.3% 31 -30.8% 31 4-9 -17.2% 29 6.8% 24 -6.3% 30 32 JAC -43.2% 32 -35.6% 32 4-9 -33.9% 32 11.8% 28 2.4% 11

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).