Buffalo Rumblings
Let’s have some fun with stats and charts!
I’m always looking for interesting angles to pursue as a writer with Buffalo Rumblings, and I stumbled on something I found fascinating while prepping work for the Buffalo Bills at Indianapolis Colts matchup. My original thought was to do splits between Anthony Richardson’s performance and Joe Flacco’s work, to see which quarterback the Colts have been better off rolling with.
When I started stat diving on that idea, the stat-minded side of my brain thought it saw a patter. Regardless of who’s been under center, the Colts’ offense has been trending down as the season wears on. Don’t believe me?
Okay, fine. These are technically charts — but stop trying to ruin my fun. I tried to keep these pretty simple, but here are a couple pointers.
These will be brief conversation points from yours truly, but as usual I’ll haunt the comments. We’re looking at points scored, which is actually the data that led to my decision to do this trend analysis rather than direct splits based on quarterbacks.
Note that there’s some meaning to the Richardson/Flacco split, with an obvious spike when Flacco replaced Richardson against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the following week. That said, Flacco dipped right back down against the Tennessee Titans and the points output against the Vikings was bad with Flacco running the show.
As a matter of fact, that week I could have changed the data to say “6” rather than “13” points. The only touchdown from the Colts came from their defense, and this article is talking about offensive output.
What’s wild to me about this particular chart is how closely the actual results follow the trendline. Now, obviously, trendlines are made after the data input, but what this shows is low volatility — which suggests a higher likelihood of accuracy to the trend, aka “decline.” Flacco’s presence is accompanied by a one-week boost against the Jacksonville Jaguars (first game starting) but then turned around and helped fuel the biggest outlier in the other direction against the Titans as well.
The run game has some interesting data. Overall, the trendline shows a similar pattern but the anomaly against the Houston Texans in the more recent matchup sticks out. There’s an even bigger spike against the Green Bay Packers in Week 2. Looking at the numbers from the game, the longest run in...
