by Aaron Schatz

We have a new No. 1 team in DVOA this week, and it's probably not the team that you expect. Yes, the Pittsburgh Steelers are 5-2, tied with four other teams for the second-best record in the NFL right now. But for much of the season, the conventional wisdom has been that the Steelers are sputtering and overrated. After the Steelers lost to Chicago in Week 3, it was like the sky had fallen on Steelers Twitter. Ben Roethlisberger's pathetic Schaub-a-thon against Jacksonville two weeks later just made them feel worse.

And yet, here we are after seven weeks of the NFL season and at least one advanced metric (ours) has the Steelers on top of the league. And not just by a small amount; the Steelers opened up a healthy lead this week over the No. 2 Rams and No. 3 Chiefs. (Yes, you read that correctly, but we'll get to the Rams in a minute.)

I've written about the Steelers a lot this year, but let's do it again. As a reminder, the Chicago Bears loss was filled with a lot of weird random plays including Chicago recovering six of the game's seven fumbles. Ben Roethlisberger was just as bad in the Jaguars loss as you think he was, but the Jaguars also happen to be the No. 1 pass defense in the league this season. However, those are the only two losses for Pittsburgh, and the Steelers have three sizeable wins this year, over Minnesota, Baltimore, and now Cincinnati.

Part of the reason the Steelers are 3-1 in their last four games is that they've rediscovered Le'Veon Bell. In Weeks 1-3, Bell averaged 7.7 first-half carries per game. In Weeks 4-7, Bell has averaged 14 first-half carries per game. However, the whole Pittsburgh offense is generally better than most fans think because conventional stats have been depressed by their difficult schedule. Based on average DVOA of opponent, only Cincinnati and Baltimore have played a tougher set of defenses so far this year.

Meanwhile, the Steelers defense has been outstanding. It's actually a little overrated by conventional stats, because Pittsburgh's defensive schedule ranks just 27th. But even after adjustments, the Steelers defense now ranked No. 2 behind only Jacksonville. The Steelers are much more balanced than the Jaguars: No. 2 against the pass and No. 12 against the run.

Even with everything we know about DVOA and Pittsburgh, it's still a bit shocking to see them leap so much higher this week. Let me break down the stats from the game against Cincinnati to explain why:

DVOA OFF DEF ST TOT CIN -44.0% 18.6% 11.8% -50.8% PIT 38.5% -44.9% 5.3% 88.7%

Yes, 88.7%, which makes it one of the best single games of the season. A 29-14 win is substantial, but it's not usually this substantial. However, that 14 points understates just how hopeless the Bengals offense was for most of the game. Cincinnati gained 37, 53, and 70 yards on its first three drives, with touchdowns on the second and third drives... then didn't have another drive all day with over 20 yards. The rest of Cincinnati's drives ended three-and-out, three-and-out, interception, interception, three-and-out, three-and-out, and four-and-out. Meanwhile, Pittsburgh kept moving the ball down the field. Yes, they had problems at the end of drives, with five field goals, but it took a lot of successful plays to get to those field goals. Three of them came inside the 10-yard line. Overall, the Bengals gained 3.5 yards per play with two interceptions (and a fumble they recovered themselves) while the Steelers gained 6.2 yards per play with no turnovers at all.

As I said before, the Los Angeles Rams are our surprise No. 2 team after they clobbered the Cardinals 33-0. The Rams are one of only two teams that come out above-average in all three phases of the game. The 6-1 Philadelphia Eagles are the other, putting them at No. 4 overall in DVOA.

The Rams are part of a big trend this year. With all the parity of 2017 comes a big opportunity for teams to end very long playoff droughts. There are some very surprising teams listed near the top of the DVOA ratings: not only the Rams at No. 2, but Jacksonville at No. 8, and Buffalo at No. 11. Since each of these teams is also 4-2 or better, we're giving each one a strong chance to end its long playoff drought. Right now the Rams make the playoffs in 84 percent of our simulations, the Jaguars in 79 percent of our simulations, and the Bills in 64 percent of our simulations. In 54 percent of our simulations, both the Rams and Bills make the playoffs, which would end the longest playoff droughts in both the NFC and AFC. All three of these teams make the playoffs in a shocking 42 percent of simulations.

We've been through this before with the Bills, the hot start wtih a strong chance to make the playoffs, only to see it all go wrong. At least this time our system isn't picking them to win the division over the Patriots. We still have New England as our division favorite, but you are probably shocked to find them ranked below Buffalo in DVOA. Didn't they just have a dominant win over the Atlanta Falcons?

Yes, but the Patriots' performance on Sunday ends up the opposite of the Steelers' performance. DVOA didn't like it anywhere near as much as the scoreboard.

DVOA OFF DEF ST TOT ATL 4.0% 29.8% -18.9% -44.8% NE 29.4% 11.6% 3.9% 21.6%

Or perhaps it depends what stat you are looking at on the scoreboard. Believe it or not, the Falcons actually averaged more yards per play in this game than the Patriots did, but the slim margin of 6.1 to 6.0. Yes, most of that offense showed up in the second half, but it isn't like it only showed up in garbage time. The Falcons had two drives that were mostly in the third quarter. One was 55 yards and ended with a missed field goal. The other was 70 yards and ended with the failed Taylor Gabriel jet sweep on fourth-and-goal from the 1. That play took place with 14:36 left in the game. A 20-0 game with 14:36 left is not in garbage time. Teams can come back from that, especially given how high offensive levels are in the NFL right now. I'm not sure if you've heard about this, but a few months ago there was even a team that was down 25 points near the end of the third quarter and came back to win the game.

The fourth-down stop is a positive indicator for the Patriots. The 70 yards they allowed before that is not. The blocked field goal in the first quarter was a good play for Patriots special teams, but not one that's predictive for the future. The missed field goal in the third quarter was not in any way New England's doing. The drives of 52 and 55 yards before those missed field goals still happened and they matter for judging the Patriots defense going forward. The Patriots had one of their better defensive games of the year, enough to get them out of last place in defensive DVOA. (Tampa Bay is there now.) But it wasn't really a great defensive game. It was a slightly below-average defensive game with a few really great defensive plays in the most important situations.

Plus, the Falcons are now 21st in DVOA. Despite the hype of a Super Bowl rematch, the Patriots aren't getting boosted in DVOA for playing Atlanta.

Now, this is where we advise everyone not to take our ratings as if they are the tablets brought down from Sinai. Does DVOA think the Patriots have not been one of the dozen best teams in the NFL this year? Yes, that's correct. Do I personally think the Patriots are actually one of the dozen best teams in the NFL this year? Hell yes, I do. We're all expecting the Patriots to right the ship the way they have in past years. I'm expecting it too. It feels like the Patriots should be higher than 13th after that win on Sunday night. Perhaps further research will show that we need to increase the amount that past performance matters in our DAVE ratings, and continue that later into the season instead of filtering it out after Week 8. That would put the Patriots higher, and it would put the Jaguars and Rams lower. ESPN's FPI does it that way, and they have the Patriots much higher than DVOA with the Rams much lower. Is that more accurate? We'll have to see what happens as the rest of the season goes along, and we'll have to see by looking at a dozen years worth of teams rather than just the 2017 New England Patriots. I have a feeling that the Patriots are an asterisk -- a special case of a team that tends to resist regression trends because of a great head coach and great quarterback, not a team you should design your system to predict. As my father always told me, "hard cases make bad law."

While we're giving strong playoff odds to the Patriots and Bills, the same can't be said for the other two teams in the AFC East. The Jets and Dolphins are both part of what I'm now calling the Awful Eight: the eight teams that are way, way behind the rest of the league in DVOA. The gap between No. 24 Tampa Bay and No. 25 New York Jets is colossal: over 12 percentage points. The distance from 17th to 24th is smaller than the distance from 24th to 25th. None of the teams in the awful eight are better than 20th on offense, and the only one that is above average on defense is Chicago at No. 13.

The Awful Eight consists of the New York Jets and Giants, Chicago, Miami, Arizona, San Francisco, Cleveland, and Indianapolis. That's the correct order. With their overtime loss to Tennssee, the Browns climbed out of the bottom spot in DVOA this week. The Colts have two close wins over two other members of the Awful Eight, but they've been destroyed in most of their other games and have faced an easier schedule than Cleveland. It's sort of remarkable how easy the schedules faced so far by the Awful Eight have been. Every one of these teams has a remaining schedule ranked in the top dozen, and Chicago is the only one where the schedule gets easier from here on out. Either Cleveland or San Francisco goes 0-16 in 14 percent of this week's simulations. Both Cleveland and San Francisco go 0-16 in 0.4 percent of this week's simulations.

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Perhaps the most surprising team in the Awful Eight is Miami. After all, the Dolphins are 4-2. What the hell are they doing down with the winless San Francisco 49ers? The answer is that Miami has not been good. Their four wins all have come by less than a touchdown, against an easy schedule. (Scott Kacsmar talks about their unsustainable record of fourth-quarter comebacks in Clutch Encounters this week.) They also got shutout 20-0 by New Orleans and lost to the Jets 20-6. They've gotten lucky from opposing field goal kickers missing 5 of 12 kicks, although one of those was a 59-yarder from Atlanta's Matt Bryant and those usually don't connect.

The Dolphins are not quite the worst 4-2 team in DVOA history. The 2007 Detroit Lions were even worse. Here's the list for your perusal. Usually I do these lists to 10 or 12 teams, but once you get to teams with DVOA around -12% there's really no similarity to the current Dolphins. It is interesting to note that the other teams on this list all improved in the second half of the season except for the 2007 Lions. The 2015 Vikings and 2010 Buccaneers improved significantly, to the point where their final DVOA ratings were a much closer match for their win-loss records. And honestly, given the way this season seems to be going, a 5-5 record the rest of the way probably still has the Dolphins in the wild-card race.

Worst 4-2 Teams by DVOA, 1989-2017 Year Team DVOA Rank Remaining

W-L Final

DVOA Final

Rank Playoffs 2007 DET -27.1% 27 3-7 -29.0% 29 None 2017 MIA -25.5% 28 -- -- -- -- 2016 HOU -23.2% 30 5-5 -21.9% 29 Win vs. OAK 27-14, Lost at NE 34-16 1992 DEN -20.6% 20 4-6 -14.9% 22 None 2015 MIN -20.4% 28 7-3 5.7% 11 Lost vs. SEA 10-9 1990 CIN -14.9% 20 5-5 -12.3% 21 Win vs. HOIL 41-14, Lost at LARD 20-10 2010 TB -14.5% 25 6-4 3.7% 12 None

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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.

The Football Outsiders stars for Week 7 are:

S Kevin Byard, TEN (HERO): 3 interceptions

3 interceptions P Drew Kaser, LACH: averaged 51.6 gross yards per punt on 8 punts with two downed inside 10.

averaged 51.6 gross yards per punt on 8 punts with two downed inside 10. CB Marshon Lattimore, NO: Held Davante Adams to 2 catches, 12 yards on 5 targets.

Held Davante Adams to 2 catches, 12 yards on 5 targets. OT Ryan Ramczyk, NO: Helped Saints RB to 12 carries for 71 yards, 67 percent success rate on runs to the right.

Helped Saints RB to 12 carries for 71 yards, 67 percent success rate on runs to the right. DT Jarran Reed, SEA: 3 TFL including sack and forced fumble.

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All stats pages should now be updated through Week 7, including snap counts, playoff odds, and the FO Premium DVOA database.

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through seven 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. Opponent adjustments are currently at 70 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.

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 19 percent of DAVE for teams that have played six games and 9 percent of DAVE for teams that have played seven 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 TOTAL

DAVE RANK W-L OFFENSE

DVOA OFF.

RANK DEFENSE

DVOA DEF.

RANK S.T.

DVOA S.T.

RANK 1 PIT 34.7% 3 33.2% 1 5-2 17.0% 5 -19.5% 2 -1.8% 21 2 LARM 27.5% 4 25.4% 2 5-2 5.5% 13 -15.2% 3 6.8% 4 3 KC 27.2% 1 24.3% 3 5-2 32.0% 1 11.2% 25 6.4% 5 4 PHI 23.1% 2 21.6% 4 6-1 12.9% 8 -3.3% 16 7.0% 3 5 NO 21.1% 7 15.5% 6 4-2 20.3% 3 -3.9% 15 -3.1% 25 6 MIN 20.6% 8 18.5% 5 5-2 9.1% 11 -10.0% 10 1.5% 18 7 HOU 18.1% 5 12.6% 9 3-3 7.8% 12 -12.2% 6 -1.9% 22 8 JAC 17.0% 10 14.4% 7 4-3 3.9% 15 -22.0% 1 -8.8% 30 9 WAS 15.2% 6 12.1% 10 3-3 10.7% 10 -6.9% 14 -2.4% 23 10 SEA 12.1% 13 13.5% 8 4-2 0.4% 17 -10.0% 9 1.7% 17 11 BUF 12.1% 9 7.4% 14 4-2 -2.7% 19 -10.8% 8 4.0% 8 12 DET 10.7% 11 8.7% 13 3-3 -10.5% 23 -11.9% 7 9.2% 1 13 NE 9.1% 15 10.8% 11 5-2 25.7% 2 19.2% 31 2.6% 13 14 DAL 8.5% 21 9.4% 12 3-3 17.7% 4 13.2% 26 3.9% 9 15 BAL 6.5% 12 6.2% 15 3-4 -14.1% 26 -12.6% 5 8.0% 2 16 GB 4.4% 18 3.7% 16 4-3 4.7% 14 2.0% 18 1.7% 16 TEAM TOTAL

DVOA LAST

WEEK TOTAL

DAVE RANK W-L OFFENSE

DVOA OFF.

RANK DEFENSE

DVOA DEF.

RANK S.T.

DVOA S.T.

RANK 17 CAR 3.6% 16 3.4% 17 4-3 -7.2% 21 -8.3% 12 2.5% 14 18 CIN -0.5% 14 0.1% 18 2-4 -13.8% 25 -9.8% 11 3.5% 10 19 OAK -2.0% 23 -1.1% 19 3-4 11.9% 9 16.9% 29 3.0% 11 20 TEN -2.9% 19 -3.5% 22 4-3 0.6% 16 6.1% 21 2.7% 12 21 ATL -3.2% 17 -2.3% 20 3-3 13.7% 7 15.9% 27 -1.1% 20 22 LACH -3.8% 22 -3.4% 21 3-4 0.2% 18 -3.0% 17 -7.0% 27 23 DEN -5.9% 20 -6.4% 23 3-3 -7.5% 22 -13.0% 4 -11.4% 32 24 TB -8.2% 24 -7.6% 24 2-4 14.1% 6 19.8% 32 -2.5% 24 25 NYJ -20.4% 28 -20.0% 26 3-4 -13.6% 24 7.6% 23 0.7% 19 26 NYG -20.6% 25 -18.4% 25 1-6 -5.6% 20 7.6% 24 -7.5% 28 27 CHI -23.3% 29 -21.6% 27 3-4 -22.0% 30 -7.0% 13 -8.3% 29 28 MIA -25.5% 30 -21.8% 28 4-2 -20.0% 29 7.2% 22 1.7% 15 29 ARI -28.6% 27 -26.4% 29 3-4 -15.6% 27 2.8% 20 -10.1% 31 30 SF -30.0% 26 -28.6% 30 0-7 -18.8% 28 15.9% 28 4.7% 6 31 CLE -40.1% 32 -38.1% 31 0-7 -31.1% 32 2.6% 19 -6.4% 26 32 IND -41.7% 31 -39.1% 32 2-5 -28.8% 31 16.9% 30 4.0% 7

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).