DVOA: A Near Perfect Way to Predict a Team's Final Record

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Every year,  experts, writers, and fans have made their predictions for the upcoming NFL season. For many, it seems almost like a guess, trying to understand the teams and players. Injuries, projections, and the stats that are not looked at make up a huge part of predictions though.

Rarely do you see a person make perfect predictions. There isn’t even a computer program that could simulate it perfectly. The best thing that is out their, in my opinion, is DVOA, or Defense Adjusted Value over Average.


DVOA? Explain please

Of course I will explain. Defense Adjusted Value over Average, or DVOA, is a formula written by the people at www.footballoutsiders.com. For short, what it does is evaluates a play, every play, and compares it to the league average.

The real tricky part, though, is it does NOT use 2008 (or the year prior) statistics, instead it uses PROJECTIONS for the upcoming season.

It takes things into account such as quarterback experience, injuries on the offensive line, and other things. There are many more things that go into it, and if you would like to read about it more, you can read about it at the website.


Ok, it sounds interesting, but what does it predict?

DVOA predicts the mean wins a team will get, their offensive rank, defensive rank, and special teams rank. It will also rank the teams with a percentage, based on the league average.

Each statistic gets a percentage, and that percentage is either negative or positive. That is how much better, or worse, the team will be at that statistic. Note, that like all predictions, it is not perfect. It is probably the closest I’ve seen though.


Can it predict individual games?

Good question, but the answer is no. It predicts it on an season basis, at the beginning of the season. As the season goes on though, and more stats are available, the predictions are updated. This gives a better understanding and better estimate for final records and rankings as the season goes on.

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