Falcons And Football Outsiders

[falcndave]

Here is my question. Is DVOA non-sense, or are the Falcons just better than the aggregation of their stats?

My answer is this. The Falcons don't play as well as they can. Intentionally, or unintentionally, they play as well as they have to. In the business world we would say they are efficient. They expend as little resource as required to accomplish a goal. When they play as well as they can you get the Giants game. When they play like they normally play, you get last weeks game. DVOA can't tell the difference between demonstrated ability and actual ability.

The problem with playing as well as you need to? Well, you don't actually know how well you need to until its to late to adjust your level of execution sometimes. They might want to consider adding a little safety factor to their level of effort over the next two games

[falcons007]

DVOA is not perfect and makes lot of assumptions. DVOA has been wildly inaccurate in predicting playoffs and I don't think any #1 DVOA team won a SB in recent years. SEA had #1 DVOA but they still lost the game.

[freebird310]

Most stats are very ambiguous, just another way of trying to project , stats can not possibly figure all variables of a given situation ...

[falcndave]

I think this weeks notes say it all. Seattle gained a ton of DVOA on that 2 minute drive at the end of the half that resulted in zero points. It can't factor in things like coaching, and it doesn't dock a rookie QB for not throwing the ball away.

The Falcons are by far the least penalized team in the league. Discipline helps you win, but doesn't do squat for DVOA. Also, just think about all the junk yards we give up.