by Aaron Schatz

This week, the Cincinnati Bengals sit atop the Football Outsiders DVOA ratings for only the second week ever.  Yes, that's right: going all the way back to 1989, we find only one other week where Cincinnati topped our DVOA ratings, exactly nine years ago.  In Week 3 of 2005, the undefeated Bengals were on top with 69.6% DVOA. 

That's the number based on the current formula, of course.  If you actually go back to look, you can see that things were a lot different back in the third year of Football Outsiders' existence.  The formula at the time had Cincinnati even higher even though it already included a small amount of opponent adjustment early in the season, plus at that point we numbered the DVOA columns based on the week to come rather than the week that just ended.  Instead of DAVE, we were ranking teams early in the year with something I cobbled together called "FOX Rank," because that was back when the DVOA ratings appeared each week on FOXSports.com with a comment about each team.  Wow, was that a long time ago. 

Anyway, I digress.  The Bengals have not been this good in a long time.  The Bengals had only been No.  1 once before today, but they were in the top three in seven different weeks.  Six of those weeks were Weeks 2-4 and 13-15 of 2005.  The other was Week 2 of 1995, when the Bengals started out with two wins that were not as close as the final scores but then lost four straight and finished the season 7-9.  Not as fun as 2005. 

Have the Bengals been on top of the DVOA ratings less than any other team?  Nope.  There are five franchises that have never had a week at No.  1 in DVOA: Arizona, Carolina, Detroit, Minnesota, and the new Cleveland Browns. ( The old Browns were No.  1 for 10 different weeks in 1989.)  Atlanta has only been No.  1 for only one week (Week 3 of 2012) while the Bengals now join two other franchises that have only been No.  1 twice: Jacksonville (Weeks 9 and 11 of 1999) and the New York Jets (Week 4 of 1993 and Week 9 of 2011). 

What team has been No.  1 most often?  Scroll down for the answer or click here. 

As remarkable as it is to see the Bengals on top for only the second time, it's even more remarkable to see just how low their rating is as the No.  1 team.  Last year, Seattle and Denver were No.  1 and No.  2 after three weeks, each with over 65% DVOA.  Including both of those teams, there have been a remarkable 83 different teams since 1989 with a higher rating after three weeks than the current Bengals.  This is only the fifth time that the No.  1 team after Week 3 was below 40%.  The others: Buffalo 2011 (39.7%), Kansas City 2010 (36.5%), Tampa Bay 2000 (35.2%), and Kansas City 1994 (33.5%). 

Adding in the opponent adjustments next week should boost the Bengals a bit, especially since one of the teams they beat is the team which currently ranks No.  2, the Atlanta Falcons.  Of course, Atlanta's rating is primarily caused by a single blowout victory over Tampa Bay this week. ( If you missed it, I wrote specifically about that game in a special XP commentary late Thursday night.)  I don't think any of us expect Atlanta to finish this season as a top-five team.  And that blowout means that while Cincinnati is an abnormally low-rated No.  1 team right now, Tampa Bay is absolutely not an abnormally high-rated No.  32 team. 

The numbers should start to make more sense in a week once we've incorporated early opponent adjustments, but there are some interesting wrinkles here.  For example, although they haven't looked particularly impressive, the New England Patriots are still No.  7 so far in 2014.  The Patriots' offense has been mediocre, ranking just 23rd, but the Patriots' defense ranks No.  1 in the league.  Only the Lions have allowed fewer yards per play, and only the Bears have as many interceptions plus fumbles (including fumbles recovered by the offense).  The Patriots have been average against the run but they have an awesome pass defense so far even though Darrelle Revis has only looked really good in one of the three games.  Some of this is a case of "small sample size, it's still early," but of course, that's also a reason to believe the offense will get better.  Some of this is also a case of "we're not including opponent adjustments yet," however, which suggests that the defense isn't quite this good but the offense hasn't really been any better than it has looked so far. 

It's also a bit of a shock to see Arizona only ranking 12th despite being one of only three still-unbeaten teams.  This is also one where your first instinct is to think, "opponent adjustments should take care of that."  Except... the teams Arizona has played haven't really been that good.  San Francisco is only No.  18, San Diego is No.  20, and the New York Giants are No.  28.  Except... San Francisco and San Diego should see their ratings go up once we're adjusting for the fact that each one had to play good teams, and that in turn should raise Arizona's rating.  That's two excepts.  You can see where this starts to get confusing to guess at in your head before we have enough weeks of sample size. 

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Once again in 2014, we have teamed up with EA Sports to bring Football Outsiders-branded player content to Madden 15 Ultimate Team.  Each week, we'll be picking out a handful of players who starred in that week's games.  Some of them will be well-known players who stood out in DVOA and DYAR.  Others will be under-the-radar players who only stood out with advanced stats.  We'll announce the players each Tuesday in the DVOA commentary article, and the players will be available in Madden Ultimate Team packs the following weekend.  We will also tweet out images of these players from the @fboutsiders Twitter account on most Fridays.  One player each week will only be available for 24 hours from the point these players enter packs on Friday. 

The Football Outsiders stars for Week 3 are:

WR Julio Jones, ATL (24 HOURS ONLY) : Led all Week 3 WR with 95 DYAR.  Caught 9 of 11 passes for 161 yards and 2 TD. 

: Led all Week 3 WR with 95 DYAR.  Caught 9 of 11 passes for 161 yards and 2 TD.  LE Cameron Heyward, PIT: 3 hurries, 3 QB hits, 1 sack, and drew an offensive holding call. 

3 hurries, 3 QB hits, 1 sack, and drew an offensive holding call.  MLB Curtis Lofton, NO: 6 run tackles, all for Stops and a combined 0 yards, plus an additional TFL on a Matt Asiata pass reception. 

6 run tackles, all for Stops and a combined 0 yards, plus an additional TFL on a Matt Asiata pass reception.  RB Joe McKnight, KC: Second among all Week 3 RB with 54 DYAR.  Caught 6 of 7 passes for 64 yards and 2 TD.  Yes, we were also shocked to find out he is still in the league. 

Second among all Week 3 RB with 54 DYAR.  Caught 6 of 7 passes for 64 yards and 2 TD.  Yes, we were also shocked to find out he is still in the league.  RG Mike Pollak, CIN: Subbing for the injured Kevin Zeitler, allowed no sacks or hurries and helped Bengals running backs to 83 percent Success Rate on runs up the middle or to the right side. 

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All stats pages are now updated with Week 3 information, including FO Premium, snap counts and playoff odds are also fully updated.  There is (or soon will be) a new format for the tables on the snap counts page which should be easier to read and will offer filtering and searching capabilities. 

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And the answer to our DVOA trivia question... You all remember which team DVOA always loves in an extra special way, right?  The most frequent team atop the DVOA ratings has been Philadelphia, in 42 different weeks of the regular season between 1989 and right now.  The Eagles have been No.  1 at least once in nine different seasons: 1992, 1993, 1994, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009, and 2010. 

Three different teams are tied at No.  2, with Dallas, Denver, and New England all spending 33 different weeks at No.  1.  As you might imagine, all of the Cowboys' No.  1 appearances are between 1992 and 1997.  Denver's are all 1997-1998 or 2012-2014.  New England was actually No.  1 after Week 2 of 1997, but only spent one week at No.  1 during the three Super Bowl seasons (Week 7 of 2004).  The rest of their No.  1 appearances are all from 2007-2012. 

San Francisco is fifth with 32 different weeks at No.  1. 

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These are the Football Outsiders team efficiency ratings through three weeks of 2014, 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.  As always, positive numbers represent more points so DEFENSE is better when it is NEGATIVE. 

Please note that there are no opponent adjustments in DVOA until after Week 4. ( It's still called DVOA below because I honestly didn't feel like going through and changing all the tables manually this year.  You folks know what's up, anyway.)  In addition, our second weekly table which includes schedule strength, variation, and Estimated Wins will appear beginning after Week 4. 

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 55 percent of DAVE. 

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>