Week 18 Colts Defensive Rankings and Analysis: End of Year Final Rankings

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.

I know the Jacksonville offense isn’t very good, but the Indianapolis defense performed admirably in week 18 and I’m not going to take that away from them.

The Colts held the Jags to a 67.9% Drive Success Rate, which ranks in 32nd percentile of offenses this year. They stalled the Jags with 5 three-and-out drives and stopped another with a turnover. They also played a disciplined game by not giving up any 1st downs on penalties.

TEAM TOTALS

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

It wasn’t a dominating defensive performance, but the Colts held their opponent to lower than average points per drive (14th) and fewer than average yards (15th).

They held the Jags to the 11th lowest yards per play and the 12th lowest play success rate. However, they also gave up a lot of explosive plays, which made it easier for Jacksonville to score.

For the year, the Colts defense finishes 19th in opponent PPD and 15th in defensive DSR. Many talking heads use total yards to measure defenses and in that world, the Colts finish 29th, but that isn’t a great way to judge a defense. DVOA has them at 19th and that makes far more sense.

PASS TOTALS

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The passing defense continued its woeful play, letting Mac Jones have the 12th highest EPA per dropback and the 15th highest Pass Success Rate.

They were able to limit his first down production (15th defensive 1st%) with the help of 2 sacks and an INT. But, overall Jones had a much better game than he should have had.

On the season, I have Colts passing defense at 22nd in EPA/d and 23rd in Pass Success Rate. DVOA think even less of them, giving a 25th end of year rank.

RUSH TOTALS

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

As it has been for most of the year, the Colts run defense was good. They gave up too many conversions on 3rd downs (4 of 5), but they kept YPC and EPA per carry low (11th and 13th respectively). Adjust for situation and that yields a 10th ranked defensive adj Rush Success Rate, which nearly mirrors the season rank of 11th. DVOA gives the run defense a season ranking of 14th.

CONCLUSION

This wasn’t what I would call a great game by the defense, but they did a commendable job overall and it was leaps and bounds better than last week.

Looking to next year, the Colts absolutely have to fix their pass defense and maybe a change of defensive coordinator will do that. But it seems to me that the team just doesn’t have the players and I’m not sure how much new coaching is going to fix that.

On the other hand, I’m just a stats guy, so I’ll let the X’s and O’s guys battle that one out.