by Aaron Schatz

The Kansas City Chiefs have taken the league by storm through three weeks, and now sit atop the Football Outsiders DVOA ratings. The Chiefs are No. 1 on offense and also rank among the top dozen teams for both defense and special teams.

The Chiefs on top is not a surprise, but the placement of the other 3-0 team probably is. The Atlanta Falcons are only ninth in DVOA through three games, although their 3-0 start gives them the best Super Bowl odds in the NFC. The problem is that while they have three wins, the DVOA system didn't find any of them to be particularly dominant. Atlanta's highest rating so far is for Week 1's win over Chicago, scoring 38.0% DVOA even though the Bears did end that game within five yards of a game-winning touchdown. However, the Falcons come out at 21.8% for the win over Green Bay and then 3.8% for the win over Detroit that was decided by a single yard. By comparison, Kansas City's lowest-rated game is 37.9% in Week 2, basically the same rating as Atlanta's highest game. The Chiefs' other games scored 68.3% (over the Patriots) and 43.9% (over the Chargers). That's a big difference.

Another surprising team in DVOA so far is Pittsburgh, which ranks second despite Sunday's overtime loss to Chicago. Pittsburgh climbs a spot from last week, although the Steelers' overall DVOA actually goes down. However, it doesn't go down as much as you probably expected, because the Steelers still come out of their Week 3 loss with a higher rating than Chicago had. The reason for this is pretty simple: the two teams were virtually identical in efficiency (Steelers 4.8 yards per play, Bears at 4.9) but the Steelers had two fumbles (both recovered by Chicago) and no Ben Roethlisberger interceptions while the Bears had five fumbles (only one recovered by Pittsburgh) and one Mike Glennon interception. We can add onto that the fact that Chicago's field goal block to end the first half was the kind of play that doesn't show up in DVOA because it's essentially non-predictive. The Bears advanced the ball all the way to the 1-yard line, but it's very unlikely that they will advance the ball to the 1-yard line in that way again this year. And very unlikely that Pittsburgh will allow another team to do so, which is why that play doesn't hurt the Steelers in DVOA any more than any other missed field goal from the same distance.

Pittsburgh had our No. 2 preseason projection behind New England, with a sizeable gap between those two teams and the rest of the league. Combine that with Pittsburgh ranking No. 2 in DVOA after three weeks, and the Steelers have a healthy lead over the rest of the league in DAVE, our rating which combines preseason projection with performance so far. That lead also makes Pittsburgh our current Super Bowl favorites even though the Steelers are a game behind the Chiefs in the AFC standings.

Atlanta, Kansas City, and Pittsburgh are three of the four teams that have a positive DVOA rating in all three games this season. The fourth is a bit of a surprise: Tennessee. Wait, didn't the Titans lose to Oakland in Week 1? Yes, but the Titans now have a higher DVOA than the Raiders for their Week 1 loss because the NFL's play-by-play changes added two forced fumbles in the third quarter, both recovered by Oakland. The Titans are No. 5 overall in DVOA.

The Steelers may have the same record as that other team with the great preseason projection, the Patriots, but they've been far superior so far according to DVOA. New England's single-game DVOA ratings for both their Week 2 and Week 3 wins are close to zero; when you combine that with -48.8% DVOA for Week 1, the Patriots are still stuck down at No. 23 in our ratings. That preseason forecast means that the Patriots are still near the top of the league in DAVE and thus also our Super Bowl odds, but the Patriots need to address their defense soon if they want to be the dominant team we all thought we were getting this season. The Patriots offense is No. 5 but the defense is dead last... by a lot. The Patriots defense is currently at 35.4% DVOA. (Remember, positive defense is actually worse.) The No. 31 Saints are at 20.1% on defense. The gap between the Patriots and the rest of the league is larger than the gap between the Saints and No. 21 Cleveland. Playing the Saints and Chiefs offenses means the Patriots will look better once the opponent adjustments kick in, but the Texans offense isn't exactly a juggernaut most of the time.

Returning our attention to the top of the league: In between the Chiefs/Steelers and the Titans are the top two NFC teams in DVOA so far. The Detroit Lions, at No. 4, don't take much of a hit from that close loss to Atlanta. And the shocking Los Angeles Rams are No. 3 in DVOA after that exciting (?!), high-scoring (?!?!) Thursday night win over San Francisco that was more dominant than the final score of 41-39 would suggest. The Rams gained 7.0 yards per play to 5.7 for San Francisco, and ended up with 36.9% DVOA, moving them up from tenth to third. The Rams are so far No. 8 in the league on both offense and defense. Even stranger is how that offensive rating breaks down: No. 1 passing the ball and No. 26 running the ball. The technical term for this, and I say this as the man who has been driving the Los Angeles Rams bandwagon since April, is "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs." Because our preseason forecast had the Rams as an average team instead of the horrible team everyone else thought they would be, the Rams' hot start has made them No. 4 in DAVE and now has them as one of our Super Bowl favorites.

Of course, the response on this is going to be "Well, you don't have the opponent adjustments in yet." And I agree, having the Rams as one of the top five Super Bowl favorites right now seems completely nuts. So what would happen if we put opponent adjustments in? As a little experiment, I went and did that. I ran two additional versions of DVOA for this week. One had opponent adjustments at 30 percent strength, which is theoretically what we might use on the same scale that has us introduce them next week at 40 percent strength. The other version had opponent adjustments at 100 percent strength, but only based on these three weeks of the season.

As you might expect, using a stronger adjustment will move the Rams down: they drop to No. 6 with the mild adjustments and No. 8 with the strong adjustments. But it doesn't necessarily change other teams the way you would expect. For example, despite playing Green Bay, Atlanta actually drops in DVOA once we put in early-season schedule adjustments. New England does move up a bit, but still doesn't climb over zero. No, instead the big climbers if we included early-season opponent adjustments would be Washington and Philadelphia. Washington goes from No. 6 to No. 4 with mild adjustments and No. 2 (behind only Kansas City) with strong adjustments. Philadelphia goes from No. 14 to No. 11 all the way to No. 5. You can see here where we run into problems with doing adjustments at full strength in the early season: essentially, Washington and Philadelphia boost each other upwards significantly because they play each other as well as each one playing another team that gets a big boost from these early-season adjustments (Oakland goes from 18 to 17 to 11, while the New York Giants go from 29 to 27 to 25.)

Note, by the way, that the 100 percent adjustment is not automatically just 3.3x whatever the 30 percent adjustment is, because of the way we use multiple runs of adjusting defenses based on offenses based on defenses, etc.

Team W-L VOA (No

Adjustments) Rank Adjustments

30% Strength Rank Adjustments

100% Strength Rank KC 3-0 53.4% 1 51.8% 1 58.5% 1 PIT 2-1 39.0% 2 36.7% 2 37.7% 3 LARM 2-1 30.9% 3 26.4% 6 16.9% 8 DET 2-1 30.8% 4 27.0% 5 19.0% 7 TEN 2-1 29.9% 5 30.9% 3 36.5% 4 WAS 2-1 27.6% 6 30.2% 4 39.8% 2 BUF 2-1 24.7% 7 21.8% 8 13.9% 12 JAC 2-1 21.5% 8 23.3% 7 25.6% 6 ATL 3-0 18.6% 9 17.1% 9 12.1% 13 BAL 2-1 11.5% 10 9.0% 14 8.4% 15 NO 1-2 11.0% 11 10.8% 12 15.7% 10 MIN 2-1 8.9% 12 13.5% 10 16.2% 9 DEN 2-1 8.2% 13 9.5% 13 10.0% 14 PHI 2-1 6.9% 14 11.7% 11 28.5% 5 DAL 2-1 5.9% 15 3.1% 15 -0.2% 17 GB 2-1 2.8% 16 2.2% 16 -2.2% 19 Team W-L VOA (No

Adjustments) Rank Adjustments

30% Strength Rank Adjustments

100% Strength Rank CAR 2-1 2.3% 17 1.1% 18 -0.3% 18 OAK 2-1 -1.8% 18 1.8% 17 13.9% 11 SEA 1-2 -3.3% 19 -5.3% 19 -9.2% 23 TB 1-1 -4.7% 20 -8.4% 22 -8.5% 22 LACH 0-3 -7.8% 21 -8.2% 20 -7.3% 21 HOU 1-2 -10.5% 22 -8.4% 21 1.3% 16 NE 2-1 -12.6% 23 -8.7% 23 -2.3% 20 CIN 0-3 -24.9% 24 -23.3% 24 -23.8% 24 ARI 1-2 -25.8% 25 -27.4% 25 -39.8% 30 NYJ 1-2 -27.6% 26 -28.8% 26 -33.9% 26 MIA 1-1 -32.3% 27 -35.3% 30 -38.6% 28 CHI 1-2 -33.2% 28 -31.6% 28 -34.0% 27 NYG 0-3 -35.4% 29 -31.4% 27 -24.8% 25 SF 0-3 -36.8% 30 -35.2% 29 -39.2% 29 CLE 0-3 -38.2% 31 -37.2% 31 -42.7% 31 IND 1-2 -44.4% 32 -47.3% 32 -57.0% 32

Finally, some notes about the defensive ratings through three weeks. Last week, you might remember, Baltimore had set a new DVOA record for the best defensive rating through the first two weeks of the season. You may not be shocked to learn that the Ravens no longer appear on that all-time best defense list after giving up 44 points to the Jacksonville Jaguars. However, the Ravens are still No. 1 in defensive DVOA, even after that game! This remarkable rating reflects a) just how amazing the Ravens defense was in the first two weeks of the season and b) just how hideous the Baltimore offense was to hand the Jacksonville offense such outstanding field position all day. Baltimore's defensive DVOA for the Jacksonville loss was 35.3%, and their offensive DVOA was -67.9%.

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Though Baltimore is still on top of our defensive ratings, Buffalo and Washington are right behind. Buffalo has given up an average of 12.3 points per game, while Washington goes from No. 12 to No. 3 after completely shutting down the Raiders. (That's discussed in this week's Any Given Sunday column.)

The defensive splits below the top teams are also fascinating. The Denver Broncos have had one of the best pass defenses in NFL history for the past two seasons, but their run defense fell to No. 21 in DVOA last year. That was supposed to be a weakness, but the strength of the pass defense was supposed to override it, right? Now, given the way the Broncos shut down the Cowboys, perhaps you would think that the Broncos are back near the top of the league in both pass and run defense. That would be wrong. The Broncos so far this year have the No. 1 run defense DVOA but are only No. 16 against the pass.

But that's not as weird as the split we are seeing from the Jacksonville Jaguars. Did you notice that despite what the Jaguars did to Joe Flacco, the Ravens averaged 5.4 yards per carry on Sunday? Yes, some of that was in garbage time, but the Titans had 5.0 yards per carry against them the week before. Through three games, the Jacksonville Jaguars are No. 1 in the NFL against the pass... and No. 32 against the run.

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Once again this season, we have teamed up with EA Sports to bring Football Outsiders-branded player content to Madden 18. This year, our content for Madden Ultimate Team on consoles comes monthly, while our content for Madden Mobile comes weekly. Come back to each Tuesday's DVOA commentary article for a list of players who stood out during the previous weekend's games. Those players will get special Madden Mobile items branded as "Powerline, powered by Football Outsiders," beginning at 11am Eastern on Friday. We will also tweet out images of these players from the @fboutsiders Twitter account on most Fridays.

The Football Outsiders stars for Week 3 are:

DE Demarcus Lawrence, DAL: 3 sacks, 6 QB hits.

3 sacks, 6 QB hits. MLB Demario Davis, NYJ: 3 TFL, 2 tackles to prevent conversions on third-and-long. Thirteen combined tackles with an average gain of just 2.7 yards.

3 TFL, 2 tackles to prevent conversions on third-and-long. Thirteen combined tackles with an average gain of just 2.7 yards. K Kai'mi Fairbairn, HOU: 4-of-4 on field goals, 6 touchbacks on 8 kickoffs. (Even on the kickoffs that were returned, Patriots started at the 19 and 25.)

4-of-4 on field goals, 6 touchbacks on 8 kickoffs. (Even on the kickoffs that were returned, Patriots started at the 19 and 25.) LG Andy Levitre, ATL: Helped lead Falcons RB to 152 yards on 27 carries with 52 percent success rate. No sacks allowed.

Helped lead Falcons RB to 152 yards on 27 carries with 52 percent success rate. No sacks allowed. LT Taylor Lewan, TEN: Helped lead Titans RB to 169 yards on 27 carries, including 108 yards on 10 carries to the left side. Titans also allowed no sacks or QB hits to Seattle defense

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All stats pages should now be updated through Week 3, including snap counts and playoff odds. The FO Premium DVOA database is also updated through Week 3, and tonight or tomorrow the Matchup View will be changed to reflect 2017 early-season splits instead of 2016 full-season splits.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through three weeks of 2017, 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. As always, positive numbers represent more points so DEFENSE is better when it is NEGATIVE.

Please note that there are no opponent adjustments in DVOA until after Week 4. (It's still listed as DVOA instead of VOA because I don't feel like going through and changing all the tables manually.) In addition, our second weekly table which includes schedule strength, variation, and Estimated Wins will appear beginning after Week 4.

DAVE is a formula which combines our preseason projection with current DVOA to get a more accurate forecast of how a team will play the rest of the season. Right now, the preseason projection makes up 65 percent of DAVE for most teams (80 percent for Miami and Tampa Bay).

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>