by Aaron Schatz

Last week, the Football Outsiders DVOA ratings had a top three of New England, Arizona, and Green Bay, all separated by less than one percentage point. This week, things look a bit different. The Patriots' dominating Thursday night victory over Miami puts a little bit of space between them and the rest of the league. The Cardinals fell slightly in DVOA, but are still No. 2. But the Packers plummet thanks to their huge loss to the Denver Broncos, and the Broncos rise significantly. Green Bay is still in the top four, but their DVOA rating tumbles from 39.0% to 25.0%.

Meanwhile, Denver's rise from 6.2% DVOA (11th) to 21.0% DVOA (sixth) means the top of our ratings now look a lot more like the top of the NFL standings. All four of the remaining undefeated teams rank in the top seven. This week's Any Given Sunday column goes further into detail on the great all-around game the Broncos had this week, the best single-game DVOA put up by any NFL team in the last season and a half. The real shocking thing here, of course, was the performance from the Denver offense this week. The Broncos had a single-game offensive DVOA below -10% in every single game of the year until they suddenly put up 51.7% DVOA against Green Bay on Sunday night. Denver has finally climbed out of the bottom spot in offensive DVOA and ranks 30th this week.

The defense's fabulous performance was also a surprise given that Aaron Rodgers may be the best quarterback in the NFL, but it fit in with the stellar performances the Denver defense has had all year. The Any Given Sunday column also has an updated list of the best defenses ever tracked by DVOA through Week 8, so I won't run the whole list again here. Denver currently ranks fourth, trailing only the 1991 Saints, 2002 Bucs, and 1991 Eagles. Cecil Lammey of FootballGuys.com and ESPN Denver tweeted this during the Green Bay game:

there is no offense in the #NFL that is better than this #Broncos defense - truly amazing to watch them vs Rodgers tonight — Cecil Lammey (@CecilLammey) November 2, 2015

My response on Twitter was that the Patriots and Bengals disagree and we'll get to see them settle things on the field later this year. But right now, the DVOA ratings agree with Mr. Lammey. According to DVOA, the Broncos have been 36 percent more efficient than an average defense. By comparison, the No. 1 New England offense has been 29.5 percent more efficient than an average offense. For all the conventional wisdom about defense winning championships, it's quite rare for the league's best defense to be better than the best offense over the course of an entire season. As we often write, the best offenses are usually better than the best defenses, and the worst offenses are usually worse than the worst defenses. If ratings continue as they are right now, this will be only the fourth season in the DVOA era where the best defense is stronger than the best offense:

Best No. 1 Defenses in Relation to No. 1 Offenses by DVOA, 1989-2015 Year No. 1

Offense DVOA No. 1

Defense DVOA Defense

Advantage 1991 WAS 27.2% PHI -42.4% +15.1% 2008 DEN 19.2% PIT -29.0% +9.8% 2015 NE 29.5% DEN -36.0% +6.5% 1990 BUF 20.9% PIT -21.6% +0.7% 2009 NE 26.4% NYJ -25.5% -0.8% 1994 SF 18.9% PIT -17.8% -1.2% 1997 JAC 22.7% SF -21.2% -1.5% 1999 WAS 22.4% BAL -20.8% -1.5% 2000 STL 26.7% TEN -25.0% -1.7% 2004 IND 31.8% BUF -28.5% -3.2%

There's 1991 again, always at the extreme when it comes to the best defenses in DVOA history. It was a very strange year; if you're curious about it, here's the commentary I wrote when we first unveiled the 1991 ratings. And in case you are asking, since this comes up a lot with our lists of the best defenses ever: Yes, we don't even have the Ravens as the No. 1 defense of 2000, let alone all time. The Ravens were only seventh in pass defense that year even though their run defense was the best ever. They had the easiest schedule of opposing offenses in the league.

Denver and Carolina still rank among the four lowest DVOA teams to ever start the season 7-0, but after seven wins this really isn't such a bad thing. Pretty much every team that has started the season 7-0 was a very good team. The two 7-0 teams that had a lower DVOA than this year's Broncos and Panthers were the 2000 Vikings at -1.1% and the 2006 Colts at 13.3%. I discussed the 2000 Vikings last week; the 2006 Colts, of course, had a horrible defense for most of the year until they got a healthy Bob Sanders back at the end of the season and went on to win the Super Bowl.

With four teams still undefeated, our combined odds for at least one team finishing the regular season 16-0 are up to 14.2 percent. All four teams see a significant jump in their odds this week -- the Broncos because we now have them rated much higher, the other three teams because of changes in the strength of their future opponents. Despite the Broncos' big win this week, they are still the least likely of the four teams to continue on to a full 16-0 record at 1.3 percent, in part because they still have to host the other two undefeated AFC teams.

(Quick aside: we've manually adjusted some of the ratings we're using in the playoff odds simulation in order to try to better account for injuries to the most important players. The changes are explained on the playoff odds report page. However, we did this week's simulation before the announcement that Tony Romo will likely be ready for Week 11, so roughly half of our simulations still use a backup quarterback for the Cowboys in Weeks 11-12. We'll update that before next week.)

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The four undefeated teams are not our top four teams. It's hard to argue with ratings that have Arizona and Green Bay still sitting among the best teams in the league, but the other team that's still ahead of Denver and Carolina is probably one many readers will disagree with: the New York Jets. Didn't they just get crushed by the Oakland Raiders? Well, yes and no. Yes, they lost, but no, they didn't get crushed. The final score was 34-20, and the game was closer than it seemed at first. The Jets offense really wasn't bad, despite the injury to Ryan Fitzpatrick, and ended up with 12.7% DVOA on the day. The problem was the defense. The disappointing Week 8 performance by the Jets defense was almost as much of an outlier as the fabulous Week 8 performance by the Denver offense. The Jets' single-game defensive DVOA ratings had fallen between -15% and -40% for their first six straight games. The Jets' defensive DVOA against Oakland was 36.1%.

And it would have been worse except... HOLY MACKERAL, THE OAKLAND RAIDERS ARE GOOD NOW! Sorry, that sentence required all caps. Oakland jumped from No. 13 to No. 8 in total DVOA this week, passing such playoff contenders as Seattle and Pittsburgh. The Raiders now rank fifth in offensive DVOA, and specifically they are fifth in pass offense. This is the highest the Raiders have been in DVOA in any single week since their 2002 AFC Championship team. In fact, there are only three other weeks between 2003 and 2014 when the Raiders even ranked in the top dozen in DVOA: Weeks 3, 5, and 6 of 2011. That was the year the Raiders started 4-2 behind the best stretch of Jason Campbell's career; then he broke his collarbone, and while the Raiders traded for Carson Palmer, their offense declined and they finished 8-8.

The Raiders' chances of winning the division are very low because they are now three games behind Denver and have already lost to the Broncos. But their chances of a wild card spot are very good. Right now, Oakland makes the playoffs in 55 percent of our simulations, and in 48 percent of those simulations they get a wild card.

With three divisions essentially decided, the AFC playoff race is about two things: the wild card and the AFC South. We'll get to the AFC South in a moment. The wild card race has five teams in it. The strongest teams are the Jets, Raiders, and Steelers. However, there is still a chance for the 3-4 Bills, who still are in the top half of the DVOA ratings, and the resurgent 3-5 Chiefs, who move up to No. 11 in DVOA this week after a huge win over Detroit. Somehow, the Chiefs have put up their three best games (with three single-game DVOA ratings over 40%) in the three games since Jamaal Charles was injured. The defense has improved dramatically in the last three weeks. The offense was average in that first game, against Minnesota, but has been outstanding the last two weeks. Check out how the Chiefs have improved in every phase of the game. (Note that rushing here includes quarterback runs, so the improvement in run offense is partly Alex Smith runs against Detroit.)

Kansas City Chiefs, Weeks 1-5 vs. Weeks 6-8 Weeks Offense Rk Pass Rk Run Rk Defense Rk Pass Rk Run Rk Spec Tms Rk Weeks 1-5 0.1% 15 1.8% 25 6.6% 5 14.9% 29 32.0% 29 -9.4% 18 2.4% 10 Weeks 6-8 22.6% 2 28.5% 9 20.8% 2 -25.6% 4 -30.0% 3 -19.7% 7 9.8% 4

Finally, we can't let the week end without an update on the insanity (and inanity) that is the AFC South, where every team is currently 3-5 or worse. This week, the AFC South passed the threshold where over half of our playoff odds simulations now end up with the division champion having a losing record. That happens in 50.6 percent of this week's simulations. But it could be worse than last year's 7-8-1 Panthers, folks.* In 15.6 percent of our simulations, the AFC South is won by a team with a 6-10 record. That would be the worst division champion in NFL history. But oh no, that's not as bad as it gets. In 249 of our 25,000 simulations, the AFC South champion goes 5-11. It's very unlikely, but it is not impossible.

But oh no, folks. Even THAT is not as bad as it gets. We're talking about very, very improbable events now, but in five of our 25,000 simulations, a 6-10 AFC South champion wins the Super Bowl. Four times it is Indianapolis and once it is Jacksonville. We didn't have any simulations this week where a 5-11 team won the Super Bowl, but if we simulated more than 25,000 times we would assuredly come out with that result too.

Go ahead, try to imagine the hot takes.

(*Note that it can't be equal to last year's 7-8-1 Panthers, at least in our simulations, because we don't simulate ties. We only count them once they actually happen.)

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Once again in 2015, we have teamed up with EA Sports to bring Football Outsiders-branded player content to Madden 16 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. We will also tweet out images of these players from the @fboutsiders Twitter account on most Fridays. One player each week will only be available for 24 hours from the point these players enter packs on Friday.

The Football Outsiders stars for Week 8 are:

CB Chris Harris, DEN (24-HOUR HERO): Limited Randall Cobb to 5 catches for 10 yards. (Cobb also had a 17-yard reception against a zone coverage where he was not Harris' responsibility.)

Limited Randall Cobb to 5 catches for 10 yards. (Cobb also had a 17-yard reception against a zone coverage where he was not Harris' responsibility.) QB Derek Carr, OAK: No. 2 in QB DYAR this week with 333 passing yards and 4 TD against the No. 7 pass defense by DVOA.

No. 2 in QB DYAR this week with 333 passing yards and 4 TD against the No. 7 pass defense by DVOA. RT T.J. Clemmings, MIN: No sacks allowed; Minnesota had 71 yards on 10 carries to the right.

No sacks allowed; Minnesota had 71 yards on 10 carries to the right. WR Marques Colston, NO: No. 4 WR of the week with 42 DYAR (8-of-9, 114 yards, TD).

No. 4 WR of the week with 42 DYAR (8-of-9, 114 yards, TD). SS Ron Parker, KC: 2 sacks, 2 passes dedensed.

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All stats pages are now updated with Week 8 information (or will be in the next few minutes) including FO Premium, snap counts and playoff odds.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through eight weeks of 2015, 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 for strength of schedule and 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. Because it is early in the season, opponent adjustments are only at 80 percent strength; they will increase 10 percent every week through Week 10. As always, positive numbers represent more points so DEFENSE is better when it is NEGATIVE.

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. This week, we say goodbye to DAVE, our method which combines 2015 performance with our preseason projections. All numbers now represent 2015 only.

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 NE 40.5% 1 40.4% 1 7-0 29.5% 1 -2.2% 10 8.8% 1 2 ARI 36.7% 2 36.3% 2 6-2 20.4% 3 -17.6% 6 -1.3% 20 3 CIN 30.4% 4 30.1% 3 7-0 24.2% 2 -1.8% 12 4.4% 7 4 GB 25.0% 3 24.5% 4 6-1 16.5% 4 -6.0% 8 2.5% 9 5 NYJ 22.8% 5 22.9% 5 4-3 9.4% 8 -18.6% 5 -5.3% 28 6 DEN 21.0% 11 21.3% 6 7-0 -17.3% 30 -36.0% 1 2.3% 11 7 CAR 18.2% 7 18.4% 7 7-0 2.2% 14 -20.6% 2 -4.6% 27 8 OAK 14.9% 13 15.4% 8 4-3 13.9% 5 1.3% 15 2.3% 10 9 SEA 13.9% 6 14.1% 9 4-4 0.4% 15 -7.0% 7 6.6% 3 10 PIT 13.9% 9 13.8% 10 4-4 12.9% 6 -2.0% 11 -1.0% 19 11 KC 13.0% 15 13.7% 11 3-5 8.5% 9 0.8% 14 5.2% 6 12 PHI 12.9% 8 13.2% 12 3-4 -7.6% 21 -19.9% 3 0.5% 14 13 STL 4.8% 16 4.7% 13 4-3 -14.5% 28 -19.0% 4 0.3% 16 14 BUF 4.5% 10 4.2% 14 3-4 3.6% 12 0.4% 13 1.3% 12 15 NYG 2.2% 12 2.1% 15 4-4 3.0% 13 7.2% 25 6.4% 4 16 BAL -1.8% 18 -2.0% 16 2-6 0.0% 16 8.6% 26 6.8% 2 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 ATL -5.0% 17 -5.4% 17 6-2 3.8% 11 5.0% 19 -3.8% 25 18 WAS -5.6% 19 -5.7% 18 3-4 -0.2% 17 6.3% 22 0.9% 13 19 NO -8.1% 20 -8.0% 19 4-4 11.8% 7 16.9% 32 -2.9% 24 20 MIA -9.0% 14 -8.3% 20 3-4 -2.9% 18 5.3% 20 -0.9% 18 21 IND -10.9% 21 -10.7% 21 3-5 -8.6% 23 2.7% 16 0.3% 15 22 CLE -13.0% 23 -12.9% 22 2-6 -10.0% 25 8.6% 27 5.7% 5 23 SD -13.3% 24 -13.1% 23 2-6 6.3% 10 13.7% 29 -5.8% 29 24 JAC -15.2% 25 -15.3% 24 2-5 -4.1% 19 4.8% 18 -6.3% 31 25 DAL -15.6% 26 -15.9% 26 2-5 -8.1% 22 3.2% 17 -4.3% 26 26 TB -16.3% 27 -15.7% 25 3-4 -9.5% 24 6.3% 23 -0.5% 17 27 MIN -17.3% 28 -17.4% 27 5-2 -14.4% 27 6.9% 24 4.0% 8 28 TEN -17.5% 22 -17.9% 28 1-6 -21.1% 32 -6.0% 9 -2.3% 23 29 CHI -23.0% 30 -22.7% 29 2-5 -4.1% 20 12.1% 28 -6.8% 32 30 HOU -23.7% 31 -23.4% 30 3-5 -12.0% 26 5.6% 21 -6.2% 30 31 DET -31.4% 29 -31.8% 31 1-7 -14.9% 29 14.8% 30 -1.7% 21 32 SF -39.0% 32 -38.7% 32 2-6 -20.3% 31 16.6% 31 -2.0% 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).