Each week, Football Outsiders simulates the remainder of the season 30,000 times and gives a breakdown of the paths every NFL team’s season could take based on their DVOA metric.
DVOA stands for Defense-adjusted Value over Average. It looks heavily at every single NFL play and compares a team’s performance to the league average while factoring in strength of schedule.
FO also uses a metric called DYAR, or Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement, to quantify individual player performance relative to the league average replacement player. Think of DYAR as football’s answer to baseball’s WAR metric.
After a 3-4 start, FO has the Oakland Raiders making the playoffs in 25.