Colts’ Week 11 QB analysis: Now, that’s more like it.

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)

Prior to this game, there was a lot of talk about how Joe Flacco limits rushing and that a return to a mobile Anthony Richardson under center against a horrible Jets run defense would let Jonathan Tayor run wild. That didn’t happen.

But let’s look at what did happen.

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

• The Colts leaned heavily into the run game even though the rushing was very inefficient (31st edp, 25th arsr)
• As usual with Richardson, the Colts ran the offense primarily from the shotgun, but the Jets did not utilize a zone heavy pass defense (6th sg%, 23rd oz%)
• Richardson faced a lot of pressure and while some of that was certainly due to how long he held the ball, the numbers relative to each other imply poor pass protection (4th pr%, 10th ttt). Preliminary PFF data backs that up (8th worst weighted grade)
• However, he responded to that pressure well, by primarily throwing the ball away (3rd ta%). He still took a few sacks instead of scrambling (28th scr%, 12th sck%), but under the high pressure, he kept the overall abandoned rate in check (13th aa%). This is the one area that he has been pretty good at all year and its a critical measure for a QB.
• As usual, he threw a lot of deep passes, which boosted his average depth of completion (5th adot, 4th ay/c). What was different this week, was that his overall completion rate was much, much better. In fact, when adjusting for depth (and other factors), he had the 10th best completion % going into Monday night (18th cmp%, 10th cpoe).
• Usually, longer than average passes earn shorter than average YAC, but in prior weeks, AR has broken that norm as his big passes earned a lot YAC. I have previously called that “unearned” YAC as is shouldn’t be repeatable and week 11 numbers agree with me. Receiver YAC fell below average (22nd yac). In fact, given passing depth, it fell a little more than expected (22nd yacoe). Basically, instead of hitting wide open receivers downfield, he was finding and throwing to more contested receivers. That’s not a bad thing.
• Because he was able to finally complete a lot of his passes, he earned the 5th highest yards per attempt for the week. That gets tempered a bit when adding in sacks and scrambles, but he still had the 8th highest net yards per dropback.
• His TD rate was below average, because his 2 rushing TDs were on designed runs and thus excluded from my measures. You may not care about that distinction, but there is a good reason to keep them separate.
• However, his first down rate was excellent and this was the first game where he was consistently moving the chains (7th 1st%). Most people ignore first downs when judging a QB and that is a huge mistake. I can’t overstate how important it is that he improved in this number.
• He still couldn’t completely avoid turnovers (13th to%) and he has one of the highest season turnover rates in the league. But, it was just 1 turnover on a sack fumble, so that’s actually improvement.

Overall, he earned a very high EPA efficiency (7th EPA/d), which isn’t new as his deep ball passing has always added a lot of raw value. What is new is that his success rate was well above average too (12th psr). He has never done that before and its a giant leap forward in his development (hopefully).

You know how this felt like more of a “complete” game from him? That is because of his passing success, which was driven by the ability to get first downs. Basically, he kept the deep ball ability and filled it in with much better passing underneath.

His cumulative season numbers are still far below average, but maybe this is sign that he has turned things around.

HOW WELL?

He really only had 2 stand-out negative plays, the sack on 3rd and 6 and the sack-fumble. All of the other negative plays were limited in scope and he had a bunch of positive plays. I wasn’t sure I would ever write those words, so do let me do it again: Anthony Richardson had a bunch of positive plays.

Not only did he have a bunch of positive plays ( I can’t stop writing that), but he had a bunch of high-value positive plays. That combination allowed him to be not only successful, but consistently successful, which is the key ingredient that has been missing since he joined the NFL.

He was really good in all of the top 4 stats, but it is the 1st downs that has me the most excited. The high points in that graph from weeks 4, 9 and 10 belong to Joe Flacco. AR has never even sniffed a good first down conversion week, until he blew it out of the water this week.

HOW FAR?

This graph displays that consistency in getting first downs and it came on a variety of passing depths, which is great and sort of new. His incompletions were mostly on passes > 20 yards, which means he was completing shorter passes, which is a dramatic improvement.

If I had to pick just 2 stats to show his growth in this game, it would be completion % and conversion rate, which were night and day to previous games.

This next pair of graphs is a mixture of Flacco and AR, but can you see the trend in completion depths? It’s not because passes are getting deeper, it’s because passing is getting better (yes, even with Flacco).

TO WHO?

Downs and Pierce owned yards, while Pittman had the most targets. I like that mix.

This is how this graph should always look, WRs with big EPA and depth.

HOW ACCURATE?

Prior to this week, all of the above-average accuracy measures belonged to Flacco, but this week, AR put his big-boy pants on.

HOW FAST?

Time to Throw ticked up under AR, but given the passing depth, that is understandable. Personally, I would like to see him throw quicker, shorter passes, but TTT is not a problem that AR has.

TO WHERE?

Wow, that’s a lot of green! I guess, he was weak on screen passes, but . . . oh, well.