NFL Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) Explained

Defense-adjusted value over average (DVOA) may sound like total gibberish to most people. To football stats enthusiasts, however, DVOA is a popular term that gets used all the time.

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If you want to learn about advanced football stats and discover how DVOA can aid your NFL betting, you have come to the right place. Read on to find out more.

What is DVOA?

Essentially, defense-adjusted value over average measures a team’s success on each play against the league average. This success is then adjusted for the strength of each opponent, giving you a percentage.

It is worth noting that DVOA takes many factors into account, including the strength of the opponent, down and distance, score and field location. All of these factors are used to produce the final percentage.

DVOA percentages can appear as both positive and negative. For example, -10% DVOA means 10% worse than the league average, while +15% DVOA means 15% better than the league average.

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How to Use DVOA When Betting

There are plenty of reasons why bettors should use DVOA. After all, DVOA percentages can help you gain the edge over sportsbooks when it comes to betting on the NFL.

It could be argued that DVOA is the best way to quickly find out how good teams are, especially when comparing and contrasting matchups. Since DVOA explains past performance and predicts future success, bettors are able to gather lots of useful information.

You can use DVOA to help with different bets and markets. For example, good rushing offense, good passing defense and poor opponent rushing defense are great DVOA indicators for a team aiming to sustain or extend a lead.

On the flip side, good passing offense, good rushing defense and poor opponent passing defense are great DVOA indicators for a team trying to close a deficit in a game.

How is DVOA Calculated?

Three main factors are considered when calculating DVOA. These factors are value of yards, success rates and adjusted for situations.

When it comes to the value of yards, different yards on the field are assessed based upon their importance. In terms of adjusted for situations, aspects like the score and time remaining are taken into account.

Meanwhile, success is defined as gaining at least a certain percentage of yards needed for a first down, half the yards needed on second down and the remaining yards on third and fourth downs.

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Cons of Using DVOA

Unfortunately, DVOA is not perfect. Although there are many advantages of using DVOA, the advanced metric also has its shortcomings.

For example, when the sample size is small at the beginning of the season, high variance results can confuse the metric. This is because DVOA relies on contextualizing for opponents, meaning early-season results can skew projections.

It is also worth remembering that the reliability of DVOA is higher when it comes to evaluating larger units. While DVOA is largely reliable for passing and rushing of offensive and defensive units, it can be less reliable for more complex factors.

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