A Numbers Game | October 14, 2026 | Hour 3

Gill Alexander (0:01)

This is VSiN, the SportsBetting Network.

Jeff Erickson (0:09)

The numbers told the story, they always do. Those idiots who believe in analytics. This is A Numbers Game with Gill Alexander on VSiN.

Gill Alexander (0:17)

Our number three of A Numbers Game at VSiN, the SportsBetting Network, vsin.com, GamePlus, iHeartRadio, YouTube TV, SiriusXM, Channel 189, Gill Alexander, Kelley Bydlon. Here as well, I from Circa. This is always a treat. This is a guy who has come on the Beating the Book podcast and betting dork before that. I mean, for almost a decade and a half now, back when I was a little pishy back in the day, he was still kind enough to come on the show.

And he has also done the radio side here at A Numbers Game quarterly throughout the years to give us thoughts in a historical context about DVOA, not to mention his thoughts on awards because he's one of the 50 award voters at the Associated Press. It is the creator of DVOA, granular level play-by-play football analysis against league average, dating all the way back now into the late 70s. They've gone that far back. He is now at FTN Sports. It's our friend Aaron Schatz, everybody. Pioneer in football analytics. You can follow him on Twitter at a Schatz, S-C-H-A-T-Z-N-F-L.

Aaron, how you doing, man? Good to see you.

Aaron Schatz (1:25)

Hey, good to see you guys too. Nice to be here. It's been a fun season so far, so I'm looking to talk about it.

Gill Alexander (1:31)

Yeah, before we get before we say anything, because we're talking a little bit about this off air, obviously, in addition to creating DVOA, you founded Football Outsiders before moving on many years later to FTN. Now there's some some sort of coalescing between those two.

Aaron Schatz (1:47)

Yeah, I've finally been able to connect with the guys who own football outsiders at this point, and you'll find there's actually something up at the site for the first time in a couple of years, and we are working to put the archives back online. So all the 20 years of archives, early days of writers like Bill Connolly and Bill Barnwell and Doug Farrar is all going to be up.

I'm going to stay at FTN, current DVOA stays at FTN. It won't be a live site, it'll just be archives. But in this day and age, when companies go offline, their Internet sites go offline and all kinds of great writing disappears. And it's a real shame. And we're trying to get that back.

Gill Alexander (2:26)

It's very true. It does go into the ether. Good for you. You seem very happy about it. I can tell just by your your energy or you're pumped about it. We're all pumped to hear about it as well. Let's talk about DVOA through five weeks again, with 17 games were never perfect with the quarterlies, but five games now deep with the exception of two teams into the NFL season. The Niners are your number one DVOA team will show the top ten here on the screen.

Jaguars, two Bills, three Chiefs, four. I'm curious about the Bengals. You seem to have them rated, at least when Kelley and I do our hack power ratings, we don't have them nearly as high. What's driving the Bengals there at five?

Aaron Schatz (3:06)

Yeah, they went up. Part of what's driving them is that there's a collection of teams that are very tight with each other. But they went up a lot last week, which is a surprise because they played Miami. Some of it is that early on, opponent adjustments are not usually at 100 percent because we don't know just how good or bad teams are.

But that really only applies to Miami. Otherwise, Cincinnati has played a fairly average schedule. They're not getting a weird schedule boost or anything. So I just have them as playing really well. The funny thing is they're fifth overall, but they're not that high in any unit. They're seventh on offense and 14th on defense. But the way it adds together comes out to fifth overall once you add in specialties.

Gill Alexander (3:50)

Okay. And the Niners at one love that you put these in historical context. DVOA goes all the way back to 1977 at this point. I should, parenthetical aside, are you trying to go further back or is that just a fool's errand?

Aaron Schatz (4:05)

We've got most of 76 and most of 75 We're not gonna be able to get the whole thing. There's games we just can't find that were never on video. You know, nobody ever, there were no VCRs back then, you know.