Coming On Strong

The playoffs are fast approaching, and the goals of the season are starting to change across the league. Teams that have been scrapping just to make the playoffs are now hungrily gazing at the larger prize, just three or four victories away. We’ve seen fifteen games from each of these teams, and by now we have a good handle on what they are and are not capable of.

Except, that’s not entirely the case. Fifteen games tell us a lot about these teams, but that isn’t the whole story. These games have been played over a period of nearly four months, and we would be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge that games from early September don’t provide as much predictive value as those that were played a week ago.

The theory of “finishing the season strong” doesn’t have a great deal of statistical backing, but it is still something worth looking at. Who is playing well over the final weeks of the season, and who is limping to the finish line? To do this, I’m going to turn once again to our friends at Football Outsiders and their metric DVOA.

Over the course of the season they publish DVOA numbers for each team covering their success on a play by play basis through the year so far. But late in the season they publish another number, a weighted DVOA that puts more value on recent performance. The disparity between these numbers provides some interesting information, a look at which teams are playing well and which are playing poorly down the stretch.

Before we go any further, I just want to be clear that there isn’t much rigor involved with this. I don’t know how good a measure this is of recent performance, or how well this can predict playoff success. Mostly I was just curious, and I decided to share my curiosity with the handful of you that are reading this.

And now that that’s taken care of, let’s start by looking at the offensive side of the ball. Below I’ve listed the 32 teams in order of their offensive DVOAs, beside which I’ve placed the weighted DVOAs and the corresponding disparities. The 14 teams mathematically still alive for the playoffs are in bold, in case you want to focus on the teams that will still be playing after this weekend ends.

There are a few interesting quirks that jump out right away. The very top of the leaderboard hasn’t seen much movement, with a bunch of small flips among the top six. Moving down we spot an interesting pair, Oakland and Tennessee. Oakland’s offense has fallen off lately, partially due to a hand injury suffered by Derek Carr. Tennessee came on strong, but they fell just short of making the playoffs. Of course, both teams lost their young star quarterbacks last weekend, which bodes poorly for their offenses no matter how they were trending before.

A few more teams catch the eye, but none that will be in position to compete in the playoffs. Baltimore’s sudden return to offensive competence wasn’t enough to knock the Steelers off the top of the AFC North, and Philip River’s valiant efforts to carry San Diego’s beleaguered offense have waned as the season has gone along. But for the most part, what we’ve seen is what we’re going to get from the playoff caliber offenses.

Defensive DVOA tells a slightly different story.

 

It’s immediately clear that there is a lot more variance on the defensive side of the ball, which matches what I’ve found in the past looking at season to season results. It is a lot harder to sustain a consistent level of defensive performance, as teams like Seattle, Minnesota, and Philadelphia have found out. Without Earl Thomas the Seahawks have struggled defensively the past few weeks, while the Vikings and the Eagles saw promising seasons fall to pieces when they were no longer locking down the opposition on a regular basis.

On the other hand, late season defensive improvements give reason to hope for a number of playoff teams. Atlanta is no longer an embarrassment to the game of football on that side of the field, thanks in part to the emergence of second year pass rushing star Vic Beasley. Pittsburgh has turned it on as a trio of talented rookies has moved into the starting lineup.

Most stunning of all is the performance by New England. Much has been made of how they are leading the league in scoring defense, a product of schematic smoke and mirrors, an easy schedule, and an offense that protects the ball, all of which cover for a defense that really isn’t that good. But as the season has gone along, it looks like they may have started to come together on that side of the ball. With their brutally efficient offense, even a middle of the pack defense leaves them in a position to contend, and a top ten unit would make them the prohibitive Super Bowl favorites.

And now that we’ve looked at both sides of the ball, let’s see if any clear trends emerge from overall team DVOA.

 

Looking at the teams that are in line to make the playoffs, we don’t see a great deal of variance. And that isn’t surprising, since it takes consistent success to win 10+ games over the course of an NFL season. The teams that have come on really strong are like Tampa Bay and Indianapolis—too little too late—while the ones that have fallen off are like Philadelphia and Denver—promising starts derailed by fundamental flaws.

Of the teams destined for the playoffs, the biggest positive movers are Kansas City and the Giants, while the biggest fallers are Oakland and Seattle. There certainly is some sense to this, as the two at the top have emerged from packed Wild Card races while the two at the bottom have suffered possibly season dooming injuries.

Whether any of this means anything, we will have to wait and see. But right now it doesn’t look like we can say clearly that any team has gotten hot at the right time, or that anyone is clearly struggling as they fight through the final stretch before the playoffs.