by Aaron Schatz

You love them when your team is high! You hate them when your team is low! Once again, the famous Football Outsiders DVOA and DAVE ratings return for 2013.

Some of you may be familiar with DVOA, but you have never met our good friend DAVE. Well, DAVE is our rating that combines the preseason projection with the results of early games to give us a better prediction of how each team will rank at the end of the year. For those who don't know the story, this metric is called DAVE as a reaction to criticism that our stats are too much alphabet soup. I mean, who can argue with a guy named Dave? (Technically, it stands for DVOA Adjusted for Variation Early.) In this week's DAVE ratings, the preseason projection counts for 90 percent, and the current VOA counts for 10 percent.

Football Outsiders always preaches caution after Week 1, referring to the next few days as National Jump to Conclusions Week. Right now, the top team in the league by VOA is Kansas City. Not many of us expect them to win the Super Bowl. I don't think anyone is expecting Baltimore to be one of the league's two worst teams either. In fact, the VOA ratings after Week 1 look pretty topsy-turvy compared to preseason expectations, with a lot of surprise winners in the season's first week. The results certainly surprised us, as our premium picks went 3-12-1 against the spread. (Trust me, we're as embarassed about that as you think we are.)

One game this week stands out for having the team with the lower VOA rating lose the game, and it certainly isn't the one I would have expected. Buffalo lost to New England despite a much higher rating, 26.1% compared to -7.2% for the Patriots. The Bills only had three really good drives, but those drives were so good that they outweighed the rest of the game. The Patriots, meanwhile, really struggled in the middle of the game, with -52.3% offensive DVOA in the second and third quarter.

This week also featured one game with both teams below 0% and three different games with both teams above 0%. We often see games like this once the opponent adjustments have kicked in; when two good teams play a close game, they're both going to come out as above average. But we don't often see it with non-adjusted VOA. Last year, we had two games like this, and that seemed like a lot. There are three this year because it was a very good week for special teams overall, and good special teams often boost one team's rating without hurting the rating of the other team.

The game where both teams were negative was Cowboys-Giants, and I think everyone who agonizingly sat through that one understands why both teams come out as below average.

The DAVE ratings given below are slightly adjusted based on the events of Week 1. Pittsburgh's offensive projection has dropped a bit to reflect the injury to Maurkice Pouncey. Washington's offensive projection has dropped a bit because it is clear Robert Griffin III is not 100 percent healthy. The ratings for the other 30 teams all went up slightly in order to keep the league average at 0%.

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Last week, we announced our new partnership 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 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.

The Football Outsiders stars for Week 1 are:

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All stats pages are now updated with 2013 data except for SNAP COUNTS, which should be updated by late tonight, and OFFENSIVE LINE and DEFENSIVE LINE, which will be updated after Week 2. The FO Premium splits database will also be updated for the first time after Week 2, next Tuesday. You will find new playoff odds updated here.

Without much to say about just one week of games, we'll be running a DVOA double today. Come back this evening for the unveiling of historical DVOA from the 1990 season.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through one week 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.)

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 listed as 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 90 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>