by Aaron Schatz

Week 15 has a history of being a strange week with a lot of unexpected upsets and near-upsets. Scroll down a bit to our "Best Total DVOA Ever" table and you will notice it looks quite a bit different from the one we ran last week, because a lot of great recent teams stumbled in Week 15:

The 2011 Packers, 2009 Saints, 2005 Colts, and 1998 Broncos all went into Week 15 at 13-0, and all four teams lost. The 2011 Packers and 1998 Broncos lost to teams with losing records.

The 2009 Colts made it one more week, to 14-0, but they only beat the 7-7 Jaguars in Week 15 by four points, 35-31.

The 2010 Patriots nearly lost at home to the Packers, even though Matt Flynn started in place of the injured Aaron Rodgers.

The 2004 Steelers barely escaped with a 33-30 win over the 5-9 Giants.

The 2004 Patriots, just below Pittsburgh in DVOA, lost to the 3-11 Dolphins on Monday Night Football.

The 2002 Bucs slipped by the 3-11 Lions, 23-20.

In the middle of their early 90's mini-dynasty, the Dallas Cowboys lost in Week 15 of 1992, 1994, and 1995.

The 1996 Broncos went into Week 15 second in DVOA at 12-1, but lost their second game of the season. OK, sure, they lost to the team that was first in DVOA, Green Bay, but they lost that game 41-6.

Anyway, you get the point. It's likely coincidence, but Week 15 seems to be when the mighty fall and the weird stuff happens. Well, Week 15 was weird this year too, but for a different reason. This year, Week 15 saw a number of blowouts, many of them unexpected... yet the top eight teams in total DVOA remain exactly the same, in exactly the same order from one to eight. The only difference is in the ratings themselves: the top four teams are now packed closer together, while the New York Giants drop seven percentage points and go from a virtual tie for sixth/seventh to a virtual tie for seventh/eighth.

Around 10:00pm on Sunday night, it certainly looked like the Seahawks were going to pass the Patriots for the top spot, but then Tom Brady and the Patriots decided they were having none of that and came roaring back to turn a 49ers stomp-fest into a narrow 49ers win powered primarily by the fact that San Francisco recovered seven of eight fumbles. A lot of those fumbles were aborted snaps, which are more likely to be recovered by the offense than other fumbles, but still, that's damn good luck. By the end, you had two of the top 20 teams in DVOA history fighting to something close to a draw, so with opponent adjustments, both teams ended up with a good week. San Francisco gets 33.6% DVOA for the game, while New England gets 24.4% DVOA. I don't have time right now to go back and check, but I would not be surprised if this is the highest combined total DVOA for one game we've ever seen, despite the fact that the Colin Kaepernick aborted snaps are counted against the 49ers but don't help the Patriots' rating at all.

One way to see the importance of the fumbles is to look at the ratings with and without all fumbles counting for equal value. In VOA (without opponent adjustments), the Patriots offense outplayed the 49ers offense, 9.9% to -5.5%. However, if we count lost fumbles with full turnover value and fumbles recovered by the offense as if they didn't happen at all, the Patriots offense only outplayed the 49ers offense 3.6% to 1.4%. To show you how the tide of the game turned, here's a look at the Patriots' offensive and defensive DVOA ratings on Sunday night by quarter:

Patriots DVOA vs. 49ers, by Quarter QTR OFF DVOA DEF DVOA 1 -82.6% -20.3% 2 -0.5% 48.8% 3 28.3% -24.1% 4 81.9% -49.2%

The power of the 49ers is a big reason why the Patriots are still number one. The Patriots' VOA rating dropped nearly five percentage points, but their DVOA rating dropped only two. The other reason the Patriots stay at number one is that Seattle gets a surprisingly low rating for its dismantling of the Toronto Sub-Argonauts, just 38.1% DVOA, which is over one hundred percentage points lower than Seattle's rating for Week 14. Seattle has about zero in both defense and special teams, leaving the offense as the one unit that really dominated. Seattle had the best offensive DVOA in the league for Week 15, but it isn't as good for what it was in Weeks 13 and 14 because the Seahawks went from playing the No. 1 defense (Chicago) and the No. 3 defense (Arizona) to blowing out the No. 27 defense (Buffalo). The Seahawks converted 5 of 11 third downs, plus the only time they went for it on fourth down, but they end up going from 55.6% VOA on third/fourth down to 2.5% DVOA because Buffalo's defense has been so god-awful on third downs this year.

The Seahawks and 49ers also trail the Patriots and Denver Broncos when it comes to their odds to win the Super Bowl, simply because there is so much more competition in the NFC this season. Losing to San Francisco made it very likely (over 70 percent) that the Patriots will be the third seed, which means they need to win an extra game and then travel to Denver in order to go to the AFC Championship. That change drops the Patriots' chances of winning it all from about 24 percent to just 19 percent. Denver is now our Super Bowl favorite at 20.1 percent. The other two members of this year's "big four" are San Francisco at 14.7 percent and Seattle at 11.4 percent.

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Right behind Seattle is Houston with 11.1 percent chance to win the Super Bowl, but that's almost all based on the likelihood of having the top seed and home-field throughout the AFC playoffs. The Texans have been fading in recent weeks to the point where they aren't even the number three team in the AFC anymore in terms of weighted DVOA. Obviously, fading is a relative term here, since we're talking about the Texans winning games by closer margins over bad teams rather than losing straight out, but still, they've fallen behind the surprisingly hot Cincinnati Bengals. I've generally derided the Bengals as being the same team they've been now for four straight years -- slightly above average on offense, slightly below average on defense -- and their 8-6 record comes in part thanks to the easiest schedule in the league by average DVOA of opponent. However, there's no doubt they've been much better team in recent weeks, going 5-2 since their bye week with those losses coming by eight points to Denver and one point to Dallas:

2012 Cincinnati Bengals, Weeks 1-7 vs. Weeks 9-15 Weeks OFF DVOA Rank DEF DVOA Rank ST DVOA Rank TOT DVOA W-L Weeks 1-7 -3.8% 19 18.4% 28 4.2% 6 -18.1% 3-4 Weeks 9-15 6.7% 11 -17.7% 2 5.3% 7 29.7% 5-2

That defensive improvement is phenomenal. The Bengals have improved against both the run and the pass, and on all three downs. Surprisingly, this defensive improvement has taken place even though Cincinnati's league-leading Adjusted Sack Rate has actually dropped, from 9.2 percent before the bye week to 7.9 percent since. The one personnel change that took place during the bye week was the return of veteran strong safety Chris Crocker, who missed the first seven games but has started every game since.

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BEST DVOA EVER (OR AT LEAST SINCE 1991) WATCH

BEST TOTAL DVOA

THROUGH WEEK 15 x BEST OFFENSIVE DVOA

THROUGH WEEK 15 x BEST DEFENSIVE DVOA

THROUGH WEEK 15 x BEST ST DVOA

THROUGH WEEK 15 Year Team DVOA x Year Team DVOA x Year Team DVOA x Year Team DVOA 1991 WAS 57.3% x 2007 NE 44.3% x 1991 PHI -41.3% x 2002 NO 11.4% 2007 NE 56.3% x 2010 NE 43.9% x 2002 TB -36.0% x 2012 BAL 10.5% 1995 SF 40.4% x 2002 KC 38.7% x 2008 BAL -29.1% x 1994 CLE1 10.2% 2010 NE 40.1% x 2004 IND 36.9% x 2008 PIT -27.9% x 2001 PHI 10.2% 2012 NE 39.8% x 2003 KC 36.2% x 1995 SF -27.3% x 2007 CHI 10.1% 2004 PIT 39.7% x 1998 DEN 36.2% x 2004 BUF -26.4% x 2011 CHI 9.8% 1999 STL 38.9% x 2012 NE 34.9% x 2012 CHI -26.4% x 1996 CAR 9.6% 2005 IND 38.5% x 1992 SF 34.4% x 2000 BAL -25.2% x 2009 CLE 9.5% 2012 SEA 38.5% x 2004 KC 33.6% x 2005 CHI -24.4% x 2000 MIA 9.4% 1996 GB 38.1% x 1993 SF 33.6% x 1997 SF -24.1% x 2006 CHI 9.4% 2004 PHI 37.4% x 2011 NE 32.3% x 2004 BAL -23.7% x 1997 DAL 9.3% 2012 DEN 37.2% x 1995 DAL 31.8% x 1998 MIA -23.1% x 2004 BUF 9.2%

Yes, parity be damned, that is in fact now three different 2012 teams in the all-time top dozen, as the current Broncos narrowly move ahead of the 1998 version that, as noted above, lost its first game in Week 15. San Francisco also ranks in the top 20. Given the teams that have gone on Super Bowl runs in recent years, it's hard to say something like "it's really hard to imagine a team that isn't in 2012's big four winning the Super Bowl," but, you know, it's still sort of hard to imagine a team that isn't in 2012's big four winning the Super Bowl. Unless it's the Giants. I've given up on trying to understand the Giants.

Also, as I've noted in other weeks, the quality of this year's top teams is not matched by an equal lack of quality at the bottom. As bad as they have been this season, the Kansas City Chiefs are still just 14th among the worst DVOA teams through Week 15, and the Jacksonville Jaguars aren't even in the bottom 30. This year's worst defense (as of this week, Indianapolis) wouldn't even rank in the bottom 40.

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It took us a bit longer than usual, but as we do every year, we've put Football Outsiders Almanac on sale for those of you who want to see what you missed before the season. Witness the glory of us being almost completely wrong about Seattle and San Francisco! (I say "almost" completely wrong because we still had these two teams competing for the division title... at 7-9 or 8-8.) The PDF Version of FOA 2012 is now just $6.00 in the FO Store.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through 15 weeks of 2012, 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>

All stats pages should now be updated (or, at least, will be in the next few minutes) including snap counts. FO Premium database and Loser League standings should be updated tonight.

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 NE 39.8% 1 45.6% 1 10-4 34.9% 1 0.7% 16 5.6% 5 2 SEA 38.5% 2 44.8% 2 9-5 17.6% 4 -15.1% 6 5.8% 4 3 DEN 37.2% 3 39.5% 3 11-3 20.4% 2 -15.6% 4 1.3% 10 4 SF 34.8% 4 35.1% 4 10-3-1 18.5% 3 -17.1% 2 -0.8% 19 5 GB 23.1% 5 17.3% 5 10-4 17.3% 5 -6.6% 8 -0.9% 20 6 CHI 18.9% 6 17.0% 6 8-6 -14.1% 26 -26.4% 1 6.6% 2 7 NYG 13.3% 7 10.5% 8 8-6 10.6% 9 -0.5% 13 2.3% 9 8 HOU 13.3% 8 8.4% 10 12-2 4.8% 13 -15.5% 5 -7.0% 32 9 ATL 11.7% 11 7.3% 12 12-2 6.8% 11 -4.5% 10 0.4% 14 10 BAL 9.2% 9 3.3% 13 9-5 1.9% 15 3.2% 20 10.5% 1 11 WAS 7.1% 10 10.2% 9 8-6 12.7% 6 2.2% 18 -3.4% 26 12 CIN 4.4% 12 14.6% 7 8-6 1.6% 16 0.6% 15 3.4% 8 13 CAR 3.4% 16 8.1% 11 5-9 8.3% 10 -1.3% 11 -6.1% 31 14 DET -0.5% 13 -1.0% 16 4-10 10.8% 8 6.4% 24 -5.0% 30 15 NO -1.3% 22 1.5% 14 6-8 11.5% 7 12.8% 29 -0.1% 17 16 DAL -1.9% 17 -4.0% 17 8-6 5.3% 12 5.9% 23 -1.3% 21 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 PIT -3.0% 15 0.0% 15 7-7 -2.7% 17 0.0% 14 -0.2% 18 18 MIA -4.7% 20 -6.4% 20 6-8 -6.7% 21 -0.9% 12 1.2% 11 19 STL -5.1% 19 -5.2% 18 6-7-1 -7.2% 22 -6.2% 9 -4.1% 27 20 MIN -5.3% 18 -10.0% 23 8-6 -3.1% 18 7.0% 26 4.8% 6 21 TB -6.1% 14 -7.0% 21 6-8 3.3% 14 4.5% 21 -4.9% 29 22 BUF -10.0% 21 -7.8% 22 5-9 -3.2% 20 10.3% 27 3.5% 7 23 SD -11.8% 23 -10.3% 24 5-9 -10.4% 24 2.2% 17 0.8% 12 24 NYJ -12.1% 24 -15.4% 25 6-8 -19.1% 30 -6.7% 7 0.3% 15 25 CLE -12.4% 25 -5.5% 19 5-9 -16.1% 27 2.3% 19 6.0% 3 26 ARI -14.7% 27 -21.6% 27 5-9 -31.2% 32 -16.0% 3 0.4% 13 27 PHI -20.7% 26 -23.6% 29 4-10 -12.3% 25 5.8% 22 -2.6% 25 28 IND -21.0% 28 -18.8% 26 9-5 -3.1% 19 15.8% 32 -2.1% 23 29 TEN -25.9% 29 -23.0% 28 5-9 -17.4% 28 6.4% 25 -2.1% 24 30 OAK -28.2% 30 -28.1% 30 4-10 -8.9% 23 14.5% 30 -4.8% 28 31 JAC -33.6% 31 -31.5% 31 2-12 -18.8% 29 14.7% 31 -0.1% 16 32 KC -40.1% 32 -38.7% 32 2-12 -25.7% 31 12.5% 28 -1.9% 22

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).