Stampede Blue
Each week during the season, I will be walking through the data from the previous Colts game and analyzing the numbers to form a sort of “what happened” narrative, as well as comparing the Colts against all other teams in the league. For a glossary of the stats listed, reference Season Stats. Thanks to Pro Football Reference, NFL.com, Football Outsiders, and the nflFastR project for being awesome sources of weekly data.
You all saw the game, the offense was bad.
They managed only 268 yards and 11 first downs, with a 55.0% Drive Success Rate (5th percentile). They entered the red zone twice and thanks to a dropped TD pass, came away with only 6 points.
Drives were killed by penalties and inefficient play across the board. After the 2nd field goal, they were unable to cross the 50 yard line until it was far too late.
(Use the right-left arrows to toggle between stats for the week and the season).
The 6 point effort results in the 2nd to worst ranking for both Points per Drive and DSR. Their 5.5 yards per play actually ranks 12th best, but the aforementioned penalties wiped away gains and left an average of 9.8 yards to the sticks on 3rd downs, the longest of any team. So, it’s no surprise that the offense had the 7th worst 3rd down conversion rate and the 3rd worst overall conversion rate.
On the year, the Colts drop to 20th in PPD and 26th in Drive Success Rate. DVOA ranks them at 22nd, so take yer pick.
(Use the right-left arrows to toggle between stats for the week and the season).
As I wrote about in my QB analysis, Anthony Richardson ended with a below average EPA efficiency and Passing Success Rate (20th EPA/d, 24th PSR). Many people have pointed out that those numbers understate his level of play and while I don’t necessarily disagree, I never said those stats capture everything. I look at a suite of numbers to describe QB play and those are 2 big ones.
Two other important stats are completion % and CPOE, something he has struggled with most of the year and this game was no exception. Yes, there were dropped passes, throw-aways and completions called back on penalties. But even accounting for all of that, he simply had too many incompletions.
For this game, I saw a QB try to put a team on his back, but fail because he had no help. His play in this game was not as good as week 11, but better than all his other games this year.
On the season, the Colts passing ranks 18th in EPA/d and 29th in PSR. DVOA has them 21st.
(Use the right-left arrows to toggle between stats for the week and the season).
Even with AR’s designed runs included, the run game was anemic. They could muster only 3 first downs on 20 carries...
