Colts’ Week 5 QB analysis: Flacco

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)

This is the part where I say things that no one agrees with, like the Colts rushing game was pretty good. Let’s get on with it.

DASHBOARD

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

• The Colt’s rushing game was pretty good (4th arsr). Keep in mind, I am not talking about volume. The Colts definitely leaned on the pass (4th edp) and so, therefore didn’t rack up a lot of rushing yards, but on the carries they did have, they made them count (7 first downs, 1 TD).
• Flacco didn’t see a lot of pressure (27th pr%), but because he is not very mobile, he ended up with a lot of sacks (11th sck%).
• Even though Flacco’s Time to Throw was about average among QBs (14th ttt), 2.8 seconds is still too long to execute an NFL play cleanly, so him holding the ball was definitely a sack factor.
• He had an average depth of target (15th aDOT), but his accuracy (5th cpoe) helped him complete the longer attempts for a 5th best depth of completions (7.0 ay/c).
• YAC was low for the given depth (26th yacoe), but the high completion rate boosted his Yards per Attempt to 12th best (26th yacoe, 8th cmp%, 12th ypa).
• He didn’t abandon many passes (22nd aa%), but as stated earlier he was sacked a lot, which reduced his yards per abandoned attempt (18th yaa) which slightly dropped his overall yardage efficiency (13th ny/d).
• He threw a decent amount of first downs and TDs (16th 1st%, 9th TD%) and was better than average on turnovers (21st to%)

All of that combines for the 7th best EPA efficiency on the week. However, like AR, that is a result of leaning on the explosive play and not on consistency, which is revealed through a 17th ranked Passing Success Rate. So, basically the result was good, but the way it was achieved was probably not repeatable.

HOW WELL?

Flacco started and ended well, with a bit of a drought in between. If he had a few more positive value plays, I think we win this game.

In the next set of graphs, the last 2 data points are just Flacco and all the preceding weeks are Richardson. Other than net yards per dropback, Flacco’s numbers are higher than most of AR’s. AR wins on net yardage efficiency due solely to the extremely long completions.

HOW FAR?

Flacco didn’t make any attempts over 20 yards until they were down 2 scores late. The passes in the 2nd quarter were comprised of a lot of check-downs and you can see that very few moved the chains.

He ended up with great yards per attempt and completion %, but the value consistency just wasn’t there. Without those big late throws, this game wouldn’t have even been close.

Depth of target fell, but completion depth increased. Addition by subtraction.

TO WHO?

Pierce has been a monster when it comes to deep passes.

HOW ACCURATE?

Flacco’s accuracy is night and day compared to AR.

HOW FAST?

He gets rid of the ball quicker, too.

TO WHERE?

The middle of the field was a little more problematic this week.