The 2024 NFL season is now five games old and it's a good time to take stock of the league landscape. A month and a change in football is a large enough work to draw some sort of definitive conclusions – for example, that the Kansas City Chiefs are fine as long as they have Patrick Mahomes, or that the New England Patriots are one of the worst teams are in the NFL.

There's still a lot to play for and a lot can change, but we're now at the point where we have a general idea of ​​who these teams are.

To better identify competitors, bottom performers, and everything in between, it's helpful to look at advanced statistics. No matter where you fall on the analytics spectrum, there's no denying that they're a useful and sometimes entertaining way to look at team performance from a different perspective. They help capture the bigger picture in a way that a simple win-loss record cannot.

To that end, we asked ourselves: What would the NFL rankings look like if ranked by defense-adjusted value above average (DVOA)?

For those unfamiliar, DVOA is a metric originally hosted on Football Outsiders that aims to find out how much better or worse a team is performing compared to the league average. The stat is now on FTN Fantasy and is explained as follows:

“DVOA is a method for evaluating teams, units or players. Every single game during the NFL season is recorded and each one is compared with a league average base value depending on the situation. DVOA measures not only yardage, but also yardage toward a first down: five yards on third-and-4 is worth more than five yards on third-and-12. So performance is also adjusted to the quality of the opponent. A team with a DVOA of 10.0% is 10% better than the average team, and a quarterback with a DVOA of -20.0% is 20% worse than the average quarterback . Because DVOA measures scoring, defenses are better when negative every day of the year is normalized so the average for that year is 0%.

Essentially, DVOA is an aggregate statistic that measures how far above or below average an NFL team performs in the three phases of the game. For example, the Vikings rank first in total DVOA. Statistics estimate that Minnesota will perform over 40% better than the average team in 2024. The Cleveland Browns, on the other hand, are doing almost 50%. worse than the average NFL team this year.

For more information on the exact calculation, please visit the FTN Fantasy website.

Now that you understand what the statistics mean, let's use them. How would the current NFL rankings perform if they were ranked by total DVOA instead of record?

AFC East

AFC West

AFC South

AFC North

NFC East

NFC West

NFC South

NFC North

This new table doesn't tell us who's going to the Super Bowl, but it does provide an interesting look at who's good and who's bad in the league.

It's safe to say the NFC North is every bit as good as advertised. The Vikings are still way above the rest in terms of overall play, and the Lions reminded everyone why they were considered contenders by beating the Cowboys and driving up their DVOA. In total, the division has four teams with positive DVOA, which no other division can boast.

It will be a little jarring for AFC West fans outside of Missouri that the Kansas City Chiefs are still the fourth-best team in the league according to DVOA, despite looking worse than last year's Super Bowl squad. The Patrick Mahomes Effect.

And the Browns…man, they're bad beyond words. The teams in their general proximity on the DVOA chart have reasons for being so low. The Dolphins play backup quarterbacks. The Panthers are fundamentally a disaster. Cleveland was supposed to compete in the AFC North this season and instead is the worst team in football by a significant margin.

A fun, different way to look at the leaderboard.