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Since the Tennessee Titans put themselves in position to clinch the No. 1 seed with a win, analytics experts have been pointing to metrics that look down upon the team’s 2021 campaign despite its success.
The most popular one has been where the Titans rank based on DVOA, or “Defense-adjusted Value Over Average.”
Before we go any further, a definition of DVOA, per Football Outsiders:
DVOA breaks down the entire season play-by-play, comparing success on each play to the league average based on a number of variables including down, distance, location on field, current score gap, quarter, and opponent quality. While it can be used as a measure of total team performance, it differs from other power ratings found throughout the Web because it can be broken down to analyze team effectiveness in any number of ways: down, quarter, rushing vs. receiving, location on field, passes to backs vs. passes to receivers, and so on.
This week, Football Outsiders’ Aaron Schatz pointed out that the Titans have the worst DVOA (-2.4) ever when compared to past No. 1 and No. 2 seeds.
New DVOA analysis. It turns out the Titans would currently have the worst DVOA ever not just for a 1 seed but also for a 2 seed! But they probably won't if they beat Houston on Sunday. And yes, that doesn't account for all the injuries. There have been a lot of them! https://t.co/eL2HfE2vS4
— Aaron Schatz đ (@FO_ASchatz) January 4, 2022
Based on his own numbers, ESPN’s analytics expert, Seth Walder, had a similar take.
Saw @PFF_Moo mention this and our numbers agree: the Titans may earn the No. 1 seed but they're also one of the worst teams in the AFC playoff field.
If Colts and Chargers grab final two spots, Titans would rank 6th among AFC teams in FPI rating, with a chance to drop to 7th.
— Seth Walder (@SethWalder) January 3, 2022
But there’s a big problem with what analytics, and more specifically, DVOA, are saying about the Titans, as Schatz pointed out: it doesn’t account for injuries.
Tennessee has fielded a record number of players this season because of said injuries, so not factoring that into things just doesn’t tell a completely accurate story of this year’s team, no matter how you slice it.
The Athletic’s Ben Baldwin rightly points out that the Titans are a hard team to measure because of the aforementioned injuries.
This year's Titans are a real challenge from a team strength modeling perspective because they got blasted in a few games while fielding a team comprised of practice squad players, but have a real shot of (if they win next week), resting up and getting healthy after the bye
— Computer Cowboy (@benbbaldwin) January 3, 2022
When asked about analytics looking down on the Titans, left tackle Taylor Lewan hit the nail on the head: it doesn’t matter.
“I don’t think that matters at all,” Lewan said. “Those guys either played the game or never played the game and their job is to say things, give provoking thoughts to people like a Paul Kuharsky so he can put it on PaulKuharsky.com and either agree with them or (expletive) on them. And so, for us, it’s like we’re the ones playing the football game, so it doesn’t matter if we’re the one seed or the four seed, or whatever seed we could be. Winning takes care of everything, so people can say whatever they want.”
Analytics are certainly a useful tool, but should never be the only tool used, whether it comes to analyzing a team, or a team making decisions on the field.
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