by Aaron Schatz

A huge 27-3 victory over the previously undefeated Chargers helps put Atlanta in the NFL driver's seat according to this week's Football Outsiders DVOA ratings. The Falcons are number one overall, and with a big lead over the rest of their division, they are also our definitive Super Bowl favorites according to the Football Outsiders playoff odds. They won the Super Bowl in 24.5 percent of this week's simulations; no other NFC team won the Super Bowl in more than 7.0 percent of simulations.

For the most part, the early DVOA ratings agree with conventional wisdom. The differences for the most part come from the current lack of opponent adjustments (which is why these are technically VOA ratings, not DVOA ratings). That changes next week, when we begin to install the opponent adjustments. Once that happens, a team like Buffalo (currently eighth) will drop a bit, and a team like Green Bay (currently seventh) will move up a bit. Still, the top ten makes good sense. The undefeated teams are first (Atlanta) and third (Houston) with Baltimore in between. There are two 1-2 teams in the top ten, but they happen our two Super Bowl favorites from before the season, Green Bay and New England, and their losses have been very close (and, particularly in the case of Green Bay, not actually losses).

(Small aside: Reversing the results of REFPOCALYPSE would mean a small change in the ratings for Green Bay and Seattle. Going from a 24-yard touchdown to an incomplete pass would change the Packers defense and Seahawks offense by about 3.5% worth of DVOA. That seems like a lot for one play, but a touchdown on fourth-and-10 is a pretty big play. If DVOA was strictly based on a win-probability model, the difference would be even larger. The difference would also be larger if not for the fact that a Hail Mary interception does not get the usual interception penalty in the DVOA system. As far as the rankings go, this change would move Green Bay to fifth in overall DVOA, but Seattle would remain 12th..)

Another interesting number belongs to Houston: 32. That's is where Houston ranks in special teams, and it's the reason they don't rank number one right now. Shayne Graham only has seven touchbacks in 18 kickoffs, which would have been great in 2010 but isn't very good with the kickoff at the 35. Trindon Holliday has been caught behind the 20 on three of his five kick returns, and Miami's Marcus Thigpen returned a punt for a touchdown on them.

The one big difference between our ratings and conventional wisdom would be Arizona, ranked 17th, but the Cardinals did move up big this week with their victory over Philadelphia. Their offense is still ranked only 28th, although it's interesting to look at the individual stats. Your eyes do not deceive you: Kevin Kolb is currently second in the league in VOA. That can't last, can it? The important thing to understand is that, despite their improved defense, the Cardinals are riding a somewhat ridiculous run of close victories. Our old pal Bill Barnwell does a good job of looking at the bottom of this piece.

One last team to talk about, and that's Pittsburgh. We all know that New Orleans is having heaps of problems, but I'm not sure people realize just how much Pittsburgh has been struggling. The Steelers are 28th in total VOA through three games, which puts them nine spots below the Saints. They can't really use strength of schedule as an excuse; they just lost to an Oakland team that looked horrendous in the first two weeks. It makes sense that the Steelers are having defensive problems with Troy Polamalu injured; historically, there's always been a big difference between the Steelers defense with Polamalu and without him, as Vince Verhei details in this ESPN Insider piece. Still, even without Polamalu, I don't think anyone would expect Pittsburgh to rank 29th on defense. The offense also has problems, and ranks just 17th. The good news there is that Pittsburgh's offense has been a lot better the last two weeks. The Steelers had -31.5% offensive DVOA against Denver in Week 1, but they've got 15.3% offensive DVOA in their last two games.

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All stats pages should now be updated. The "Defense vs. Types of Receivers" numbers are now updated for the first time in 2012. The FO Premium splits database should be updated by later tonight with current 2012 data, and we also finally have "Weekly as of Week X of any Season" numbers updated for the newer version of DVOA, so that should be updated soon too.

Make sure to also check out our brand new SNAP COUNTS page! The NFL is finally making snap counts publicly available, and we're counting them up for you and posting them free. This week, we guys at Juice Analytics have worked on improving the search functionality to make it easier to find specific players. Enter a (last) name in the search box, and it will offer you a list of players to choose from. If you still have trouble finding specific players, try filtering by position or team. We apologize that the page still has "stacked" tables with separate graphics for Week 1, Week 2, and Week 3, but we're working on one big table that will incorporate every week. In addition, we should have a table that gives season totals up by the end of the week. We know some people have had some problems with the new snap-count graphics; please feel free to share your criticisms and suggestions with us at Contact Us.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through three 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 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 55 percent of DAVE. Note that the projection portion of DAVE for the New York Jets has been adjusted to reflect the loss of Darrelle Revis.

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>