The advanced statistical analysis web site Football Outsiders has released its projections for the 2017 season and the forecast has the defending NFC champion Falcons missing the playoffs.
The Panthers are slight favorites to win the NFC South and the Falcons will not qualify for one of the conference’s two wild-card berths, according to the forecast. The Panthers actually are rated lower than the Falcons but the projection gives them a 45.5 percent chance of making the playoffs compared to 42.2 percent for the Falcons because it foresees an easier schedule for the Panthers.
The projections are based on Football Outsiders' Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average metric, which "measures a team's efficiency by comparing success on every single play to a league average based on situation and opponent." All NFL teams use a similar system to rate their performance.
The Football Outsiders system predicts that after the Falcons fielded a top-ranked, record-setting offense in 2016 they will be merely very good on offense in 2017 (No. 5 in DVOA). The defense will improve slightly from No. 26 in DVOA in 2016 to No. 24 in 2017 and the special teams will fall from No. 7 in DVOA to No. 28, according to Football Outsiders.
For the record, the Football Outsiders 2016 projections gave the Falcons just a 24.3 percent chance of making the playoffs. They went on to become the NFC's No. 2 seed and advanced to the Super Bowl for the second time in franchise history.
Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders explains the methodology for the season projections:
"Our system starts by considering the team's DVOA over the past three seasons and, on offense, a separate projection for the starting quarterback. Then we look at a number of other variables which suggest when a team will be better or worse than would otherwise be expected due to standard regression towards the mean. Factors include major offseason personnel changes, coaching experience, recent draft history, combined tenure on the offensive line, and certain players returning from injury (or, in the case of these preseason updates, certain players getting injured in the preseason)."
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