by Aaron Schatz

You love them when your team is high! You hate them when your team is low! Once again, the famous Football Outsiders DVOA and DAVE ratings return for 2015.

Some of you may be familiar with DVOA, but you have never met our good friend DAVE. Well, DAVE is our rating that combines the preseason projection with the results of early games to give us a better prediction of how each team will rank at the end of the year. For those who don't know the story, this metric is called DAVE as a reaction to criticism that our stats are too much alphabet soup. I mean, who can argue with a guy named Dave? (Technically, it stands for DVOA Adjusted for Variation Early.) In this week's DAVE ratings, the preseason projection counts for 90 percent, and the current DVOA counts for 10 percent.

(Note: I'm calling it DVOA here, but it is actually VOA because there are no opponent adjustments right now. For Weeks 1-3, DVOA and VOA are the same thing. Let's not get all nitpicky, ok?)

The fact that DAVE currently is still counting our preseason projection as 90 percent of its estimate of team quality is another element of the "don't overreact" mentality that leads us to call the first few days after Week 1 "National Jump to Conclusions Week." If we only look at Week 1 performance, the best team in football right now is the Tenenssee Titans. It's really exciting for Tennessee fans... much like last year, when the Titans ranked fourth in DVOA after Week 1 because they had just clobbered the Kansas City Chiefs.

The surprise Week 1 perfomance is a big part of the Week 1 DVOA ratings every year, but not everything this year is "same old, same old." In fact, this year's Week 1 ratings are unique in the history of Week 1 DVOA ratings going back to 1989. For the first time ever after Week 1, all the 1-0 teams are higher than all the 0-1 teams. That doesn't sound strange, because it makes sense for winning teams to rate better than losing teams after one game. But it doesn't always work out that way. Most weeks will have a game or two where the losing team ends up with a higher DVOA than the winning team, sometimes even before opponent adjustments are considered. Sometimes there are weird bounces of the ball, or important plays that aren't included in DVOA such as blocked field goals or unexpectedly big interception returns. But these "wrong team wins" games aren't the only reason we would have an 0-1 team listed below a 1-0 team. Maybe you have one close game where both teams are strong on special teams and there are no aborted snaps or false starts. Then you have another close game where both teams miss field goals, turn the ball over, and commit a lot of penalties. Often, the 0-1 loser of that first game will end up with a higher rating than the 1-0 winner of the second game. Not this year.

Instead, we have a perfect symmetry of 1-0 and 0-1 teams. The symmetry goes right down to the center, where Dallas is No. 16 and the team it beat, the New York Giants, is No. 17.

As always, we have to remember that these first couple weeks of DVOA ratings are actually VOA ratings and don't include opponent adjustments. We don't include those adjustments because we don't know how good teams truly are, but of course our preseason projections give us a good idea of good we think teams are. Tennessee may be No. 1 and Buffalo No. 2, but common sense tells us that Buffalo's win over Indianapolis will probably end up looking more impressive than Tennessee's win over Tampa Bay once the opponent adjustments are incorporated into our ratings.

If Tennessee is No. 1 and Buffalo No. 2 in DVOA, why are they still just No. 25 and No. 17 in DAVE? The DAVE ratings for these teams are still fairly low because their preseason projections were low. Those preseason projections were low in part -- especially for Buffalo -- because our forecasts are naturally conservative in predicting success for quarterbacks with no NFL track record. We now have one game of track record for Marcus Mariota and Tyrod Taylor, but that's not really enough of a sample to state with any certainty that those preseason forecasts were wrong. After all, remember that game at the end of last year where Geno Smith had a perfect passer rating against Miami? Any quarterback good enough to play in the NFL can do anything in just one game.

That being said... remember common sense and opponent adjustments. Both the New York Jets and the Buffalo Bills had strong Week 1 games that moved their playoff odds up. The Jets now rank No. 9 in DAVE, much higher than the Bills at No. 17. If our preseason forecast had more faith in Tyrod Taylor, the two teams would likely be closer together. Once we have more data, we'll know more about what Taylor truly can do, and more about how these teams really stand in the AFC East. But even now, with common sense, we know that the Bills had a more impressive win than the Jets had, because the Bills beat Indianapolis -- overrated, according to the preseason DVOA projections, but still an above-average team with a strong offense -- while the Jets beat Cleveland, projected to be one of the league's worst teams this year.

As we noted last year, there's a difference between jumping to conclusions about how good a team is, and jumping to conclusions about what a single win or loss means for that team's playoff chances. The biggest example of this comes from Seattle's loss to St. Louis. Our playoff odds report has dropped the Seahawks out of the top position in terms of playoff odds and Super Bowl odds. But losing to a division rival is worse than just any old loss. Our simulations now have the Rams with slightly better odds than the Seahawks for winning the NFC West or making the postseason altogether, although the Seahawks are still ahead when it comes to Super Bowl odds. It doesn't help Seattle that Arizona and San Francisco won this week too.

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An even bigger shock? According to our playoff odds report, Indianapolis has shockingly dropped out of pole position in the AFC South. It helps that our projections for the Colts were not as strong as others around the Internet, but still, this is a huge surprise. We now have the 1-0 Titans winning the AFC South in 41 percent of simulations, while the 0-1 Colts win the division just 36 percent of the time. Week 1's results also gave Green Bay a hefty boost over Minnesota and Detroit and Cincinnati a nice boost over Baltimore and Pittsburgh.

Strangest of all might be the playoff odds for the New England Patriots. The Patriots are the new Super Bowl favorites and comfortably beat Pittsburgh in Week 1, yet their overall playoff odds actually go down (!!!) by 0.7 percent because the rest of their division also started the season 1-0, with dominant wins for the Jets and Bills.

As usual, I have adjusted the projection part of the DAVE ratings for major injuries that took place in Week 1. There could potentially be a lot of retroactive forecast changes made each week because of the improved method for incorporating specific personnel shifts in the new team projection formulas. We're going to try to not overthink things and get too carried away. For this week, the only changes made were to Baltimore (Terrell Suggs), Dallas (Dez Bryant), and Washington (DeSean Jackson), and of course the changes to Dallas and Washington are smaller because Bryant and Jackson aren't expected to miss the entire year.

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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 1 are:

WR Julio Jones, ATL (24 HOURS ONLY) : Led all wide receivers with 94 DYAR in Week 1 (9-for-11, 141 yards, 2 TD).

: Led all wide receivers with 94 DYAR in Week 1 (9-for-11, 141 yards, 2 TD). RG David DeCastro, PIT : Helped DeAngelo Williams gain 82 yards on 13 carries listed as up the middle or behind the guards.

: Helped DeAngelo Williams gain 82 yards on 13 carries listed as up the middle or behind the guards. CB Stephon Gilmore, BUF : 4 passes defensed and 6 tackles.

: 4 passes defensed and 6 tackles. K Brandon McManus, DEN : 4-for-4 on field goals, including kicks of 56 and 57 yards. Worth 3.5 points more than expectation for an average kicker on similar attempts, even after adjusting for altitude.

: 4-for-4 on field goals, including kicks of 56 and 57 yards. Worth 3.5 points more than expectation for an average kicker on similar attempts, even after adjusting for altitude. TE Austin Seferian-Jenkins, TB: Second among tight ends with 37 DYAR in Week 1 (5-for-7, 110 yards, 2 TD).

I know a lot of Madden 16 players were asking us on Twitter to do Carlos Hyde as one of this week's FO stars... Don't worry, 49ers fans, you'll get your new Carlos Hyde soon.

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All stats pages are now updated with 2015 data except for OFFENSIVE LINE and DEFENSIVE LINE, which will be updated after Week 2. (The "defense vs. types of receivers" and "pass defense by direction" stats on the TEAM DEFENSE page will also be updated starting after Week 2.) This year for the first time, we're updating the FO Premium splits database as of Week 1 instead of waiting until Week 2. That should be taken care of by Wednesday morning. However, the Premium Matchups view will still show 2014 stats for 2015 matchups until we have more data that's worth looking at.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through one week 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 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 90 percent of DAVE.

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>