Week 7 Colts Defensive Rankings and Analysis: Good against a bad 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.

For the 2nd week in a row, the Colts defense faced a poor offensive opponent and for the 2nd week in a row, Indy held them in check.

Obviously, giving up only 10 points is a huge defensive win, but going deeper into the numbers shows that Indy held the Dolphins to a 62.1% Drive Succes Rate, the best defensive mark for the Colts this year.

One thing I noticed was that Miami accumulated 18 first downs, which is a decent total, but it was spread across 12 drives, which is why the DSR was so low. The reason for such a large number of drives was because the Indy offense kept giving the ball right back to Miami and I just wanted to point that out.

TEAM TOTALS

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

It was the 6th lowest Points per Drive given up in week 7, which pretty much matches the 7th best defensive DSR and the 8th best defensive conversion rate.

The defense wasn’t very good on 3rd downs (21st 3DC) and they again, gave up a lot of explosive plays (8th most), but they limited the yards on those plays and kept overall yards per play to 12th lowest.

Two take-aways helped lock in the 4th lowest EPA per play against and they gave away only 1 first down on penalties.

So overall, it was a good job that moves them up 3 spots to 17th in PPD against, but only 21st in DSR given up. I feel that range is fairly accurate.

PASS TOTALS

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

Tyler Huntley got hurt and Miami was forced to finish with their waterboy 4th string QB Tim Boyle. Their combined efforts earned the 10th lowest EPA per dropback, yet the 13th highest passing success rate.

The Colts held Miami to the 9th lowest yards per play and gave up only 1 explosive completion. I guess at face value that looks good for Indy’s defense, but is it really? I mean come on . . . Huntley and Boyle?

Without even adjusting for opponent, the Colts drop 2 spots against the pass on the season to land at 22nd. Imagine if this reflected quality of opponent. Yikes.

RUSH TOTALS

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

Fortunately, the run defense showed up this week. Miami leaned heavily into the rush and so accumulated a decent amount of yards (5th most) and a lot of those carries also occurred on first downs, which tend to earn far more yards than later downs and so the Dolphins ended with the 8th best YPC.

However, all those yards and carries earned them 0 TDs, the 13th lowest conversion rate, 2 lost fumbles and the 2nd to worst EPA per carry. That combines for the 6th best rushing defense for the week.

It also moves the Colts up 2 spots on the season to 11th against the run. I do feel that rating is too high, though, and I plan on writing an article about why. Stay tuned.

CONCLUSION & LOOK AHEAD

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, when you play a bad offense, you expect your defense to shut them down and the Colts did. The defense did their job. On the season, however, they have not done their job. They are a below average defense.

On to Houston . . . literally. The Texans offense has put up 2.09 Points per Drive, which is the exact same amount as the Colts. As such, they are tied for 15th in PPD but only 21st in Drive Success Rate. So, they rely on explosive plays just like the Colts.

C.J. Stroud has struggled a bit this year (as I predicted). He’s only 20th in EPA/d and 19th in Passing Success Rate. He’s holding the ball too long and takes a lot of sacks (11th ttt, 11th sck%). Maybe the Colts can get some pressure on him.

On the ground, Houston is pretty bad. I have them ranked 29th in adj Rush Success Rate and they have the 7th lowest EPA per carry. They are about average in explosive carries, so hopefully, the Colts can put a lid on that.