Last Sunday, the Oakland Raiders' defense held the Houston Texans to negative net passing yards. David Carr completed 7 of 14 passes for 32 yards, no touchdowns and no interceptions. He was sacked five times for -37 yards behind the typically porous Houston offensive line (currently ranked 27th in the NFL in Adjusted Sack Rate), which left him five yards in the hole. But the Texans won the game, 23-14, because the Raiders' offense couldn't get anything going against the second-worst defense in football.
Oakland's defense is doing a great job this season – Houston scored on a fumble return, a 3-yard run and three field goals - and is going unnoticed, as the Raiders continue to lose in ways that are embarrassing, both on and off the field. That Raider defense currently ranks sixth overall in Defensive DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average, explained here), and this is an especially impressive accomplishment, because Oakland's offense is an absolute disaster.
The Raiders rank last in the league in Offensive DVOA, and they do so by a rather crushing margin – their -32.0% is close enough to the 2005 49ers' historically inept -39.8%, and far enough away from the 31st-ranked offense in 2006, Tampa Bay's -21.9%, to be truly disquieting. Oakland's 6th-to-32nd swing from defense to offense speaks to a massive DVOA imbalance, and prompted me to go back from 1997 (that's the earliest season for which Football Outsiders has charted DVOA at this time) and discover the biggest swings from one unit to the other. What I discovered was that Oakland's current disparity, embarrassing as it may be, doesn’t hold the top spot from 1997 through 2006. While the Raiders have swung that wide twice since 1998, several teams have walked through seasons with limps even more pronounced.
Disparity of 26 places in rank 1998 Oakland Raiders (Overall DVOA - 25th) Offensive DVOA Rank: 28th (-24.9%) Defensive DVOA Rank: 2nd (-18.1%) Record: 8-8 1998 San Diego Chargers (Overall DVOA - 23rd) Offensive DVOA Rank: 29th (-26.7%) Defensive DVOA Rank: 3rd (-17.4%) Record: 5-11 2006 Oakland Raiders (Overall DVOA - 28th) Offensive DVOA Rank: 32nd (-32.0%) Defensive DVOA Rank: 6th (-11.2%) Record as of 12/8/06: 2-10
What I found most interesting about these numbers is the fact that you can have a massively unbalanced team and still make the playoffs, as the 2005 Bears and 2000 Vikings both did. The 2000 Vikings made it all the way to the NFC Championship game. Of course, the squad on the high side had best be stellar, as Chicago's defense and Minnesota's offense were in both cases. Most of the teams listed, as one might expect, cancel out to a great extent from high to low – seven of the eleven finished at 8-8 or 7-9. In some cases, the imbalances were the byproducts of new coaches installing new systems on formerly horrible teams (John Fox's 2002 Panthers and Jon Gruden's 1998 Raiders come to mind), and it's easy to tell that Fox was a defensive mind and Gruden an offensive mixmaster before their first head coaching jobs.
Some Super Bowl winners since 1997 have had large disparities, and we can look at the three teams that are renowned for alleged imbalance – the 1999 St. Louis Rams, the 2000 Baltimore Ravens, and the 2002 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Rams, known for their high-flying offense, ranked 1st in offensive DVOA and 3rd on defense. Not what you'd expect from the "Greatest Show on Turf", right? The 2000 Ravens were thought to possess an offense just good enough not to lose games for their incredible defense, and their 21st ranking offensively and 1st rank defensively proves that to be true. The 2002 Buccaneers were the Ravens redux in that regard and their rankings were exactly the same – 21st and 1st. Those unbalanced 1st rankings couldn't reflect run-of-the-mill personnel units, either. Those defenses had to be among the best of all time to win championships despite the liabilities elsewhere.
What does this tell us about the 2006 Oakland Raiders offense? That the principle also works in reverse. It tells us that since 1997, no single element of a team, when broken up into offensive and defensive units, has ever torpedoed an entire organization in quite this fashion.
In that regard, this Raiders team is truly … special.
Good piece. I wonder if strength of schedule, and/or weaknesss o####iven conference in any single year, has anything to do with a "disparity" team being successful and even making the playoffs? It is a bit freakish, and you're absolutely right about the Raiders. I was at Qualcoom for their best offensive game; they actually put together four decent drives against the Chargers in one game (one drive ended with a missed field goal, another with an interception). But overall, their offensive ineptitude has been "truly" historic.
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