Week 1 Colts Offensive Rankings and Analysis: When is a good offense not a good offense?

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.

Rule #1 of football stat analysis is that you don’t talk about football stat analysis no single number describes everything. It is why I look at a suite of numbers and how they relate to each other to tell me the story of a game. Games like this are a great example of why you have to do that.

On paper, 27 points is a good number. A 73.7% Drive Success Rate is also a decent number. But what those numbers don’t tell you is that 7 of those points were gift-wrapped by special teams and that over half of the Colts yardage production came from just 3 plays.

Explosive plays are critically import, but for ongoing success an offense must be able to move the ball when those infrequent plays don’t happen and the Colts did not do that against the Texans. Ignoring those three 50+ yard completions, the Colts were 11 for 16 at converting first downs, which is a 68.7% DSR which is about a 43rd percentile performance.

TEAM TOTALS

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

The 7th best points per drive and 3rd best yards per drive sounds like a powerhouse offense. However, a 16th ranked Total Yards and 19th best Success rate (adjTSR) tell a different story.

The big plays are great, but it makes it hard to see what the offense was without them. I mean are you willing to bet that AR continues to throw 50+ yard completions consistently? Yeah, me neither.

Outside of the big plays, the Colts struggled. All you Time of Possession junkies should be agreeing with me.

The bottom line is they scored a lot of points, which is what matters for the game, but the manner in which they did it is not repeatabIe and that matters for the rest of the season.

PASS TOTALS

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

Richardson’s big passes skew a lot of his numbers. so he end up with the 6th best EPA per dropback and the #1 Net Yards per dropback. But the rate-based numbers are nowhere near as impressive: 18th Passing Success Rate, 19th 1st down %.

I mean outside of the bombs, he was 6 for 16 for 41 yards and a pick. His completion rate was simply Tebow-like. I just can’t get excited about that, even with the deep passing.

Obviously, he has only played a few games and I won’t fully judge a QB until they have a few years under their belt, so I am probably being overly harsh. Its just that according to everything I am reading, he is the Colts’ savior. Maybe he will be, but this game doesn’t instill faith in me.

RUSH TOTALS

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

The run game didn’t have much total production, but it was fairly successful. An 18th ranked Yards per Carry makes it look bad, but as I have written numerous times, YPC can be easily biased.

One way to demonstrate this is that 41% of Colts rushes ended in first downs (including 2 TDs), giving them the #1 conversion rate of any team. This helped give them the 9th best adj rushing success rate for the week.

CONCLUSION & LOOK AHEAD

I guess whatever works, works and the Colts offense added a lot of value through the air and on the ground. So, on paper they were one of the better Week 1 offenses. I just didn’t see much to give me hope for week 2.

Next week pits the Colts against the Green Bay Packer defense, who in week 1 gave up the 6th most points per drive and 7th highest Drive Success Rate. Of course, that was against the Eagles whose offense I’m guessing most people would rate as much better than the Colts.

The Packer D stumbled against the pass, giving Jalen Hurts the 4th highest EPA per dropback among week 1 QBs. On the ground they put up a much better fight, giving up the 10th lowest adj. Rush Success Rate.

So, although the Colts run game has promise, this isn’t a good match-up for that. Let it fly AR, let it fly.