Colts’ Week 12 QB analysis: Well, it was fun while it lasted.

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)

Contrary to the box score, I have been assured by social media that Anthony Richardson actually played really well against the Lions. Evidently, the numbers don’t reflect how well he played and that anybody who disagrees with that didn’t watch the game.

Well, I certainly don’t want to be one of those lazy, no-attention-paying, doesn’t-know-football, idiot, stat guys who never watches the games. So I watched the game . . . again. And I came to the same conclusion that I did the first time: AR did not have a great game and anybody who disagrees with that doesn’t know how to read the numbers.

Now, to preemptively counter arguments that will be thrown my way, I always judge QB play based on the average starting QB, playing with an average team against an average opponent. If you want to tell me about how AR is still developing and that the O-line was injured and that our receiving corps isn’t the best and that Detroit has one of the best pass defenses, please don’t bother. I already know all of those things.

If you want to hand-waive away numbers because of drops/pressure/play-calling/supporting cast/penalties/reasons/etc., then have at it. If you want to claim he played well for <insert most recent excuse here>, then fine. It’s not that I disagree with you per se, rather it’s that I’m not interested in yeah-but-what-if arguments. I measure what happened.

DASHBOARD

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

• The Colts leaned on the pass more than last week, implementing a well-balanced offense and for the nth week in a row, the run game was not very productive (17th edp, 22nd arsr).
• AR took almost all of his snaps from the shotgun (surprise!) and didn’t face a lot of zone looks (6th sg%, 27th oz%).
• He was pressured a lot even though he didn’t hold onto the ball vey long (6th pr%, 10th ttt). This tells me that the pass protection wasn’t very good because numbers mean things.
• He continued to throw the ball far (4th adot) and had one of the deepest average completion depths for the week (3rd ay/c).
• Unfortunately, as has been the case for the majority of his career, he could not complete enough passes to make that matter (28th cmp%). For those obsessively counting drops, how many incompletions will it take for you to think maybe the problem is with AR?
• Receiver YAC was a bit higher than expected (+1.0 yards per catch) given the passing depth and so, it was a miserable completion rate that was entirely to blame for dragging the 3rd deepest completions down to the 24th ranked yards per attempt.
• He had a below average abandon rate, which is an accomplishment given how much pressure he was under (19th aa%). And when he gave up on the play, he threw the ball away and scrambled instead of taking sacks (10th ta%, 13th scr%), which is exactly what you want your QB to do.
• Because he is smart under pressure, his yardage efficiency ranking gets a boost when adding in sacks and scrambles (20th ny/d). Going in to the year, my concern was that he would leave pockets and run around (because he can) and abandon a lot of plays. He has not done that at all and that is huge, because it is the downfall of a lot of mobile QBs, causing their net yardage to plummet (Russell Wilson I am looking at you).
• He didn’t throw a lot of first downs (22nd 1st%) and had 0 TDs (yes, I know 1 was dropped).
• He had 0 turnovers which is certainly an improvement.

His overall EPA efficiency was poor (21st EPA/d) and his passing success rate returned to a basement level 34.5% (26th PSR). Both of those were primarily driven by incompletions.

So, if you believe incompletions for this game (and year) are basically the result of a poor protection and dropped passes (the same O-line and receivers that Flacco completed 67% of his passes with), then I guess move along, nothing to see here. However, I tend to be an if-it-walks-like-a-duck kind of guy.

Richardson is dangerously close to Will Levis territory here.

HOW WELL?

AR started off really good. The first half saw a lot of positive plays without a lot of highly negative plays. If I’m judging just first halves, he had good game. Unfortunately, the 2nd half counts as well and he did not do well. He had 3 completions the whole half and some big fails on 3rd/4th down.

His production was poor across the board in the top 4 stats. Completing just a few mid-range passes would lift all of those stats and result in more points in general.

HOW FAR?

He continues to try and push the ball downfield as he threw 20+ yards on 7 of his attempts, completing 1. On the year, 23.9% of his attempts are 20+ yards and no other QB is even close to that number (Russell Wilson 17.3%).

On passes <=10 yards, he completed only 47%, which is coincidentally and infuriatingly also his season completion %. Simply put, he has to learn to attempt and complete higher probability throws.

This next graph tells me he throws far. Hooray! (that’s sarcasm by the way).

TO WHO?

Pittman nearly cracked 100 yards. The other receivers were . . . also present.

Lower right quadrant is not where you want to be. Pittman, you can leave. The rest of you stay after class.

HOW ACCURATE?

Accuracy . . . well, it is what is.

HOW FAST?

One thing AR has always been good with is Time to Throw. Most QBs that throw as far as he does . . . well, no one throws as far as he does, so let me re-phrase. Most QBs that throw the ball far, take a long time to do it, inviting pressure. AR does not. He gets rid of the ball “on time”. That is really important and I don’t want it to go unnoticed.

TO WHERE?

That’s a lot less green than last week. He had some success between 10-20 yards. I would have liked to see more passes in that range.