Aaron SchatzESPN WriterOct 13, 2023, 06:50 AM ET9 Minute Read
Early in the NFL season, you hear a lot about the pace of certain stats. Things like, “Tua Tagovailoa is on pace for 5,400 passing yards.” But most of the time when you see “is on pace” stats, we lack the appropriate context.
Over time, player and team performance usually regress toward the mean. Teams and players that started super hot will slow down. Teams and players that were terrible early will get better. So we don’t want to compare a team’s performance after five games to what other teams have done in full 16- and 17-game seasons. We want to compare that performance to what other teams have done in the same number of games.
We can do that with DVO (defense-adjusted value over average) stats, explained further here. We can go back and rerun every season since 1981 to see what DVOA would have looked like as of a certain week in the past. In other words, we can see how teams are historically rated solely based on what they’ve done through five games, and opponent adjustments are based only on opponents through five games.
Using these numbers, we can see that it has been quite a year for extremes. Some teams have been historically bad, such as the Denver Broncos (as I wrote last week) and New York Giants. Others have been historically good, including the San Francisco 49ers, Miami Dolphins and Buffalo Bills — not to mention one of this year’s rookie quarterbacks. Let’s take a closer look and then look at what happened to similar situations from the past to get an idea of where these teams and players might be going over the final three months of the season.
Jump to:
49ers | Dolphins | Bills | Giants | Stroud
1. San Francisco is the seventh-best team ever through five games
The 49ers (5-0) are red hot after their 42-10 dismantling of the Cowboys on Sunday night. My DVOA ratings say that the 49ers have been historically great, better than almost any team of the past 42 years through five games.
In fact, the surprise with DVOA might be where it ranks the 49ers’ defense. The defense is “only” seventh in the league, while the offense is second behind Miami. The 49ers are fourth in the league in rushing and first in passing, with the fifth-best pass offense DVOA ever measured through five games. (They are behind the 1984 Dolphins, 2013 Broncos, 1998 Broncos and 1999 Washington.) The 49ers are even above average in special teams for good measure, ranking 10th.
What’s most remarkable is that this is the best five-game start for any 49ers team in the history of DVOA, which includes the entire San Francisco dynasty in the 1980s and ’90s. The 49ers finished in the top five of DVOA for 16 straight years but never started a season this strong. (The previous best 49ers start by DVOA was actually 2012, not one of the dynasty seasons, followed by 1995 and 1984.)
What we can expect from the 49ers going forward:
There are a lot of Super Bowl champions on the list of best five-game starts since 1981. Just below the 10 teams listed above, you’ll find the 1985 Bears, 1990 Giants, 1996 Packers and 1997/1998 Broncos.
But do you notice anything about those teams? They all played in the last century, not this one. Here’s the weird thing about great starts over the past two decades: Those teams don’t win a lot of Super Bowls. If you look at the 25 best starts by DVOA since 2000, only two won the Super Bowl — the 2009 Saints and 2002 Buccaneers. Seven teams lost the Super Bowl, four lost the conference championship game, 10 lost in the wild-card or divisional rounds and two didn’t even make the playoffs.
I certainly don’t expect this year’s 49ers to collapse like the 2003 Buccaneers (41.8% after five games) or 2009 Giants (48.9%). But as good as they look right now, history shows us that a 49ers championship is far from assured.
Lest you think this is an issue with DVOA, I will also point out that only four of the teams to win the Super Bowl since 2000 started the season at 5-0: 2004 Patriots, 2006 Colts, 2009 Saints and 2015 Broncos. Since 2000, 8.7% of 5-0 teams went on to win the Super Bowl, along with 8.7% of 4-1 teams.
2. Miami has the fifth-best offense ever through five games
You may have heard that the Dolphins (4-1) have broken the NFL record for the most offensive yardage through five games. They have 2,568 yards, moving them ahead of the “Greatest Show on Turf” Rams of 1999, who had 2,527 yards through five games. So why doesn’t their offense come out No. 1 in DVOA history?
There are two reasons. First, DVOA normalizes every year so that the league average is zero. That brings down Miami’s rating because the average offense today is better than the average offense of 1999 or even 10 years ago in 2013. The other issue is schedule strength. So far, the Dolphins have played the third-easiest schedule of opposing defenses. Only Denver and Washington have had it easier on offense. The Dolphins’ remaining schedule of opposing defenses is the ninth hardest by average DVOA of opponent, so we’ll see if this offense can be slowed.
The balanced excellence of the Miami offense is truly remarkable. It currently ranks second passing the ball, behind San Francisco, and first running. The Dolphins’ run offense DVOA of 33.9% is the second highest ever through five games, trailing only the 2009 Cowboys. The Cowboys’ offense averaged 6.2 yards per carry to start the season with a three-headed running back committee consisting of Marion Barner, Tashard Choice and Felix Jones. Jones — who has shades of De’Von Achane — had 21 carries for 212 yards before missing Weeks 4 and 5.
What we can expect from the Dolphins going forward:
Out of the 25 best offensive starts since 1981, three teams won the Super Bowl: the 1997 Broncos, 1998 Broncos and 2009 Saints. Seven more lost the Super Bowl. Four of these offenses didn’t make the playoffs, but those were all teams that started 3-2 or 2-3.
However, those three Super Bowl champions also started with top-10 defenses, and the Dolphins’ defense hasn’t been very good. It currently ranks 25th in DVOA. Since 1981, only one team has won the Super Bowl after starting the season with a defense ranked below 20th over the first five games (2006 Colts, who ranked second on offense and 26th on defense during a 5-0 start). As great as their offense is, it’s hard seeing the Dolphins making a run to the Super Bowl without improving the defense.
3. Buffalo is the best 3-2 team ever
It’s certainly better to start 5-0 than 3-2, but two close losses obscure just how good the Bills have been — in particular since Week 2.
The Bills won their games in Week 2-4 by a combined score of 123-33. Their 48-20 victory over Miami in Week 4 comes out as the best single game of the year by DVOA. Then came this week’s 25-20 loss to Jacksonville. The Bills played very well, despite the loss. The biggest problem was possession, as the Jaguars ran 81 plays compared to 53 for the Bills. That’s indicative of which team was better on Sunday — but what’s predictive going forward is each team’s efficiency per play, not the total number of plays ran. The Bills gained 7.2 net yards per play, compared to 5.8 for the Jaguars. Each team had two turnovers.
Those stats combine to give the Bills 29% DVOA for this game. It’s rare to have a loss with a rating that high, and it means their rating for the full season did not drop very much. As a result, the Bills are still one of the 20 best teams we’ve ever tracked through five games … and the best 3-2 team since at least 1981.
What we can expect from the Bills going forward:
It’s certainly possible that the Bills could collapse like the 1997 Cowboys, who crumbled by losing their last five games. However, 12 of the 14 best 3-2 teams by DVOA did make the playoffs, and the top 14 averaged 10.2 wins. Two of them made it to the Super Bowl, both in the same year, when the 2005 Steelers (who would rank 11th on our table) beat the Seahawks (10th) in Super Bowl XL.
Since 2000, eight of 206 teams that started 3-2 went on to win the Super Bowl, which is 3.9%. The 2005 Steelers and 2020 Buccaneers were strong early despite a couple of close losses, but many of these teams recovered from poor starts. For example, the 2003 and 2014 Patriots had negative DVOA after five games, and the 2007 and 2011 Giants were close to zero.
The Bills certainly are good enough to win a lot of the games left on their schedule and make a run at a Super Bowl title. But it will be a lot harder now with two of their best defensive players — linebacker Matt Milano and cornerback Tre’Davious White — done for the season with injuries.
4. The Giants are the 12th-worst team ever through five games
This rank for the Giants (1-4) might surprise you. Most probably think of Carolina as the worst team in the NFL; after all, the Panthers are the only team left that hasn’t won a game. Other fans might prefer the crumbling Patriots or the horrible defense of the Broncos. But by DVOA, the Giants have been the worst team by a good margin, despite their comeback victory over Arizona in Week 2. The difference between the Giants and No. 31 Carolina is roughly equal to the difference between Carolina and No. 25 Atlanta.
The main issue for the Giants is on offense, where they are dead last in the NFL with 4.0 net yards per play compared to an NFL average of 5.4. The Giants are last in both adjusted line yards (which cuts runs at certain distances to try to separate blocking from the running backs) and adjusted sack rate (which measures sacks and intentional groundings per pass play, adjusted for situation and opponent). But the Giants aren’t good on defense (28th) or special teams (23rd), either.
This is the worst start for any Giants team in the DVOA database. Previously, the worst came in 2013 when the Giants started 0-6 before improving substantially and finishing 7-9. They also started 0-5 in 2017 and 2020.
What we can expect from the Giants going forward:
The list of teams that started worse than the Giants is a list of bad teams with one exception. The 2001 Washington team, coached by Marty Schottenheimer, was a very strange story. Washington began the season with five losses. Three of them came by 27 points or more. Then Washington followed that with five straight wins before finishing 8-8.
However, other than 2001 Washington, 24 of the previous 25 worst teams after five games finished no better than 5-11. Even including Washington, these 25 teams averaged just 3.0 wins per season. Nine of the 25 teams had the No. 1 overall selection in the following draft, and 18 picked in the top three.
5. C.J. Stroud is one of the five best rookie QBs ever through five games
The Texans’ offense was not expected to be good. Frankly, you can’t go into a season expecting a rookie quarterback to be good, even a very high pick like Stroud (No. 2 overall). There’s just a history of too many young, talented QBs taking a bit of time to get acclimated to life in the NFL, even if they do eventually develop into quality starters.
Stroud isn’t taking any time to get acclimated. The Texans’ offense currently ranks sixth in pass offense DVOA. You know how teams like to protect their rookie quarterbacks with a strong run game? Well, the Texans rank dead last in DVOA running the ball. Dameon Pierce is averaging less than 3 yards per carry. And yet Stroud has been excellent, with the Texans at 2-3.
What we can expect from Stroud going forward:
Our list of rookie passers with the most DYAR looks at each player’s first five starts, not the first five games of a given season. And that’s a really good list. Most of the quarterbacks on it have had productive careers. The Texans will be happy if Stroud turns into a mix of these quarterbacks, and he looks like he’s in line for a long, successful career.
Maybe that 2022 Week 18 win over Indianapolis last year will turn out to have been a good thing after all.
2023-10-13 10:50:00
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