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.
It all started out so well. After back to back opening drives that yielded 10 points, the Colts offense looked unstoppable against Denver. Unfortunately, the rest of the game happened. On the 13 subsequent Indy drives, 10 of them earned 20 yards or less and the Colts could only muster another 3 points off of short field gifted by a defensive takeaway.
Simply put, the offense was inept. They turned the ball over 5 times and when they weren’t giving the ball away, they couldn’t move it down the field. They finished with a 56.2% Drive Success Rate (7th percentile).
I know this was a very emotional game for a lot of Colts’ fans, but let’s put the feelings aside and try to look at what actually happened in this game. For the people that think J.T.s fumble was a “momentum-changer”, please look at the 4 drives prior to that event, where the Colts averaged 8.5 yards per drive and added in a turnover for good measure. Even on the fumble drive, it only consisted of a 6 yard pass and a 15-yard penalty before J.T. headed for the endzone. It’s not like the Colts were driving the ball down Denver’s throat up to the point of the fumble.
This chart shows the cumulative EPA per play by play after the Colts scored on their opening drive. The red dot is the fumble. Does that really look like an inflection point? If there was a change of momentum, it happened way before that play.
(Use the right-left arrows to toggle between stats for the week and the season).
The pick-6 (lat 6? fumble 6?) counts as negative Points per Drive, so the Colts earned a total of 6 net points on 15 drives for a last place finish of 0.4 PPD. That pairs well with a 30th DSR.
There’s no real story to tell here. The 30th success rate (adj TSR) reveals that the team just consistently failed to earn positive value plays. They had a good number of explosive plays, but couldn’t avoid mistakes to cash those in for points (turnovers, penalties).
On the year, this performance drops the offense down to 25th place in PPD and 30th in DSR. I mean . . . ** sigh **.
(Use the right-left arrows to toggle between stats for the week and the season).
The 30th EPA per dropback was heavily driven by Richardson’s 2 picks and Mitchell’s fumble. But even Pass Success Rate, which counts those merely as 3 failed...
