by Aaron Schatz

The top five in DVOA remain the same after Week 11. New England is still at No. 1. Arizona, Cincinnati, and Carolina are now all in a tight pack, separated by half a percentage point, and then there's a gap and Seattle at No. 5. But while there isn't change at the top of the DVOA ratings, there are starting to be some differences between DVOA and weighted DVOA. The two remaining undefeated teams are trending in different directions, part of the reason why there's a big change in our Super Bowl odds this week.

The Patriots are No. 1 in both regular and weighted DVOA, but there's no question that their best games came earlier in the season. The Patriots have put up a single-game DVOA between 40% and 60% in six of their ten wins, but four of those wins were the first four wins of the season in Weeks 1-5. The Patriots have actually fallen below a single-game rating of 30% three times, all in the past five weeks: Week 6 against the Colts, Week 7 against the Jets, and Week 9 against the Giants.

The Patriots' offense has been decimated by injuries over the last couple weeks, but we didn't really see a drop this week after adjusting for the strengths of the Bills defense. The drop was actually back when the Patriots had a Week 4 bye. New England's top three offensive DVOA games were the first three games of the year. The Patriots had 43.2% offensive DVOA in those three weeks, but they are just 10th in the league for Weeks 4-11 with 9.8% DVOA. However, they've also been consistent: every game betwen Week 5 and Week 11 has an offensive DVOA between 7% and 21% except for the Giants game where they had to adapt to the loss of Julian Edelman mid-game. With the decline of all those weeks, the Patriots actually drop (barely) into second place in offensive DVOA for the entire season, though they are separated from Cincinnati by less than a tenth of a percentage point.

Carolina, meanwhile, has been on fire since a couple of early mediocre performances. The Panthers had 90.3% DVOA for this weekend's 44-16 win over Washington, making it their best game of the year. Overall, Carolina's worst games were all early, the opposite of the Patriots. The Panthers had DVOA over 20% only once in the first four weeks, in a Week 2 win over Houston. They have DVOA over 20% every week since their Week 5 bye.

And so, the Panthers are now nearly neck-and-neck with the Patriots in weighted DVOA. That's important because the Panthers also have an easier road to a No. 1 seed, an easier road to a 16-0 record, and an easier road to the Super Bowl. I cover this even more in today's playoff odds report at ESPN Insider, but there are a couple of elements that play in Carolina's favor. First, an easier schedule over the final six games, in particular because they play the imploding Atlanta Falcons twice. Second, the AFC has more good teams that could pull off a playoff upset. Cincinnati is roughly equivalent to Arizona, the dangerous team that will likely be seeded No. 2. Denver is roughly equivalent to Green Bay, the inconsistent No. 3 seed. (Denver and Green Bay are 27th and 28th in variance this season.) Red-hot Kansas City -- now all the way up to No. 6 in DVOA! -- is roughly equivalent to Seattle, the dangerous wild-card team.

But in weighted DVOA, each of these pairs has the AFC team slightly ahead of the NFC team. Arizona, for example, has cooled after a ridiculous start. The Cardinals had DVOA over 50% in four of their first five games, and haven't had a single game with DVOA over 20% since. Then there are the other contenders. Pittsburgh is seventh in weighted DVOA even though we know weighted DVOA underrates the current squad because of Ben Roethlisberger's injuries. Seven of the top 11 teams in weighted DVOA are currently AFC teams. The only place where the NFC is more difficult than the AFC is that the NFC East champion seeded fourth will likely have a higher DVOA than the AFC South champion that will be seeded fourth.

And so, Carolina passes New England this week in pretty much every way that involves probability. The Panthers are now officially our Super Bowl favorite, winning 25.7 percent of simulations compared to 23.2 percent for the Patriots. Again, it's not that the Panthers are better as of right now, but they two teams are pretty even. With an easier path, the Panthers are more likely to win the No. 1 seed and more likely to make the Super Bowl. We even now have the Panthers as the more likely team to go 16-0. Carolina does this in 13.6 percent of simulations, and New England 10.5 percent. One or both goes 16-0 in 22.7 percent of simulations. And both teams now go 16-0 in 351 of our 25,000 simulations. As for 19-0, don't forget that the playoffs mean three games against better opponents. Even in the simulations where the Patriots and Panthers both finish 16-0, each team only wins the Super Bowl roughly 26 percent of the time.

As for the other two teams in this year's big four: yes, once again Arizona won a big game despite a lower DVOA rating than its opponent.

DVOA (Opponent adjustments included) DVOA OFF DEF ST TOT ARI 16.0% -7.1% -3.2% 19.9% CIN 35.9% -12.8% 6.4% 55.1% VOA (No opponent adjustments) VOA OFF DEF ST TOT ARI 12.0% 11.9% -3.2% -3.1% CIN 16.1% 4.9% 6.4% 17.6%

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There are two reasons why Arizona ends up with the lower DVOA here despite actually being more efficient with 6.6 yards per play compared to just 5.3 for the Bengals. First, this game had a lot of fumbles. We ignore the fumble on the final lateral-filled kickoff return of desperation, and that leaves four other fumbles. Arizona recovered three of those fumbles. The only one Cincinnati recovered was an aborted snap, which is a play where we only penalize the offense but don't give any positive value to the defense.

The second reason why Cincinnati has the higher DVOA has to do with the way we handle opponent adjustments. Compare the two tables, and you'll see that both teams get a significant boost in defensive DVOA. But Cincinnati gets a much larger boost to offensive DVOA than Arizona. That's not because the Cardinals have a much better defense than the Bengals. Instead, it has to do with the pass/run ratios on different downs. On third down, the Bengals have the best run defense in the league, but rank just 20th against the pass. So what did Arizona do on third downs? Almost exclusively passes. The Cardinals threw 10 passes on third down, including a DPI. Those plays actually get adjusted slightly downward by opponent adjustments. They ran the ball only twice and were stuffed for no gain both times. Those plays get a bonus from opponent adjustments -- but again, there are only two of them.

There isn't time to write more about the rest of the league because of the short week for Thanksgiving and my late night at Gillette Stadium last night. I do want to bring attention to the fact that Tampa Bay zoomed up from 24th to 15th in total DVOA after that huge win over Philadelphia, and the Eagles' defense dropped from second in the league to sixth. And Minnesota improves to 16th despite the loss to Green Bay, because DVOA sees it as a close game. I'll make sure to write about more of these other teams in next week's commentary.

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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 11 are:

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All stats pages are now updated with Week 11 information (or will be in the next few minutes) including FO Premium, snap counts and playoff odds. You can also check out further commentary on our playoff odds report at ESPN Insider.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through 11 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. 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.

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 33.7% 1 32.0% 1 10-0 20.8% 2 -4.3% 10 8.7% 1 2 ARI 29.6% 2 26.2% 4 8-2 16.3% 3 -13.9% 4 -0.5% 17 3 CIN 29.5% 3 30.0% 3 8-2 20.8% 1 -5.4% 9 3.3% 10 4 CAR 29.1% 4 31.1% 2 10-0 9.6% 8 -23.5% 2 -4.0% 28 5 SEA 22.7% 5 24.1% 6 5-5 9.5% 9 -7.8% 8 5.4% 3 6 KC 20.8% 9 24.4% 5 5-5 8.8% 10 -7.8% 7 4.2% 7 7 PIT 15.2% 6 14.8% 7 6-4 15.5% 4 -1.3% 14 -1.7% 20 8 GB 14.3% 8 9.8% 9 7-3 13.1% 5 -1.4% 13 -0.3% 15 9 DEN 12.6% 11 12.3% 8 8-2 -16.0% 30 -24.2% 1 4.4% 6 10 BUF 9.7% 10 8.1% 11 5-5 9.7% 6 1.4% 18 1.5% 11 11 NYJ 9.2% 7 8.2% 10 5-5 -1.3% 16 -12.7% 5 -2.3% 22 12 NYG 1.8% 13 1.9% 12 5-5 0.0% 15 4.0% 20 5.8% 2 13 PHI -1.4% 12 -1.3% 14 4-6 -10.6% 26 -10.3% 6 -1.2% 19 14 OAK -2.1% 14 -1.9% 15 4-6 7.2% 11 8.5% 27 -0.7% 18 15 TB -3.7% 24 -0.2% 13 5-5 -2.3% 18 -1.3% 15 -2.7% 23 16 MIN -4.7% 19 -2.9% 16 7-3 -5.1% 22 3.2% 19 3.6% 9 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 BAL -5.0% 16 -5.0% 17 3-7 -3.2% 19 7.0% 26 5.2% 4 18 ATL -5.6% 18 -6.7% 22 6-4 -1.7% 17 1.0% 17 -2.8% 25 19 STL -5.9% 17 -6.7% 21 4-6 -22.1% 32 -15.8% 3 0.5% 13 20 WAS -6.0% 15 -5.8% 20 4-6 -3.9% 20 6.2% 24 4.0% 8 21 IND -6.7% 21 -5.8% 19 5-5 -7.2% 24 -0.8% 16 -0.3% 14 22 MIA -7.7% 20 -5.2% 18 4-6 0.9% 14 6.3% 25 -2.3% 21 23 HOU -9.9% 27 -9.0% 23 5-5 -6.8% 23 -2.8% 12 -5.8% 31 24 JAC -12.2% 23 -12.3% 25 4-6 -4.7% 21 4.2% 21 -3.3% 27 25 TEN -12.3% 28 -13.6% 26 2-8 -12.2% 27 -4.1% 11 -4.1% 29 26 DAL -13.3% 22 -14.2% 27 3-7 -8.5% 25 4.3% 22 -0.5% 16 27 CHI -13.8% 25 -10.1% 24 4-6 3.5% 12 11.2% 28 -6.1% 32 28 DET -16.7% 31 -16.1% 28 3-7 -12.7% 28 5.4% 23 1.3% 12 29 NO -18.4% 29 -19.1% 29 4-6 9.7% 7 25.2% 32 -2.9% 26 30 SD -19.4% 26 -19.4% 30 2-8 1.9% 13 16.0% 30 -5.3% 30 31 CLE -21.6% 30 -21.3% 31 2-8 -12.9% 29 13.1% 29 4.5% 5 32 SF -39.6% 32 -39.3% 32 3-7 -17.4% 31 19.3% 31 -2.8% 24

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).