Colts’ Week 12 QB analysis: Well, it was fun while it lasted.

Thanks to the nflFastR project, Pro Football Focus and NFL NextGen Stats for the timely sources of data.

For those of you new to this, I will publish key QB stats each week judging how well the upcoming opponent QB has performed. Yes, O-Line, receivers, and play-calling impact these numbers but they are primarily QB measures. I will probably modify the charts throughout the season. Commentary will be brief but feel free to let me know in the comments that stats aren’t everything. (click charts for larger view)

Contrary to the box score, I have been assured by social media that Anthony Richardson actually played really well against the Lions. Evidently, the numbers don’t reflect how well he played and that anybody who disagrees with that didn’t watch the game.

Well, I certainly don’t want to be one of those lazy, no-attention-paying, doesn’t-know-football, idiot, stat guys who never watches the games. So I watched the game . . . again. And I came to the same conclusion that I did the first time: AR did not have a great game and anybody who disagrees with that doesn’t know how to read the numbers.

Now, to preemptively counter arguments that will be thrown my way, I always judge QB play based on the average starting QB, playing with an average team against an average opponent. If you want to tell me about how AR is still developing and that the O-line was injured and that our receiving corps isn’t the best and that Detroit has one of the best pass defenses, please don’t bother. I already know all of those things.

If you want to hand-waive away numbers because of drops/pressure/play-calling/supporting cast/penalties/reasons/etc., then have at it. If you want to claim he played well for <insert most recent excuse here>, then fine. It’s not that I disagree with you per se, rather it’s that I’m not interested in yeah-but-what-if arguments. I measure what happened.

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(Use the right-left arrows to toggle between stats for the week and the season).

• The Colts leaned on the pass more than last week, implementing a well-balanced offense and for the nth week in a row, the run game was not very productive (17th edp, 22nd arsr).
• AR took almost all of his snaps from the shotgun (surprise!) and didn’t face a lot of zone looks (6th sg%, 27th oz%).
• He was pressured a lot even though he didn’t hold onto the ball vey long (6th pr%, 10th ttt). This tells me that the pass protection wasn’t very good because numbers mean things.
• He continued to throw the ball far (4th adot) and had one of the deepest average completion depths for the week (3rd ay/c).
• Unfortunately, as has been the case for the majority of his career, he could not complete enough passes to make that matter (28th cmp%). For those obsessively counting drops, how many incompletions will it take for you to think maybe the problem...