The National Football League has created various stats to track success rates of teams and individual players. One of those stats is Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA). DVOA was created by Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders and calculates a team’s success based on the down-and-distance of each play during the season, then calculates how much more or less successful each team is compared to the league average.
Schatz notes that DVOA projections are different than the hard data he gets during the season as his projections are a forecast for what could happen this season, with offense, defense, and special teams DVOA all projected separately using a system based on looking at trends.