How To Look Like a Genius In Your Pro Football Pool

[font=Verdana][size=1][i]Over the past four years, Aaron Schatz and his staff at [color=#0000ff]Football Outsiders[/color] have applied the same principles of critical thinking to professional football that Bill James used to revolutionize baseball analysis two decades ago. [/i][color=#0000ff]Pro Football Prospectus 2007[/color][i], their third annual NFL guide, analyzes every team and is loaded with research on everything from player development to on-field strategy. Today's excerpt, the second in a three-part series, uses Football Outsiders' advanced stats to identify some surprise playoff contenders. Yesterday's piece explained why no NFL team will ever emulate the 2006 Indianapolis Colts. Tomorrow, Schatz explains why it's so difficult to analyze NFL games and how the league itself may be standing in the way of a deeper understanding of the pro game.[/i][/size][/font]
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[font=Verdana][size=1]The NFL has more year-to-year change than America's other major sports leagues. Over the past decade, nearly 50 percent of the teams in the NFL playoffs didn't make the postseason the previous year. Every preseason, fans and football pundits struggle to predict which teams will surprise. At Football Outsiders, we identify teams on the rise with the help of our DVOA metric. Generally, our picks turn out pretty well. Last year, we missed on the Saints and Jets like everyone else, but we [color=#0000ff]forecast a return to the playoffs for the Eagles and Chargers[/color] and were the only pundits to predict that the Oakland Raiders would become a top defense. And going back a bit, we won Salon's preseason predictions contest in both [color=#0000ff]2004[/color] and [color=#0000ff]2005[/color].[/size][/font]

[font=Verdana][size=1]How does DVOA help us make predictions? DVOA, which stands for Defense-adjusted Value Over Average, is compiled by breaking down every play and comparing it with the league average based on situation and opponent. (You can learn more about the statistic [color=#0000ff]here[/color].)The most important aspect of DVOA is that, since it is based on play-by-play data, it can be broken down into smaller sets—plays that involve a certain player, down, or situation. Within those breakdowns, you'll find a number of trends that will help project the sleeper teams of 2007.[/size][/font]