Colts’ Week 7 QB analysis:

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)

DASHBOARD

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

• The Colts leaned on the run game, which came through after some previously shaky performances (23rd edp, 11th arsr).
• Richardson faced a lot of pressure and reacted to it by scrambling a lot and taking no sacks (9th pr%, 2nd scr%, 30th sck%). So, he abandoned a lot of passes, but did it in a favorable way (9th aa%).
• He held the ball a long time, which most definitely added to his pressure, but also allowed for a lot of deep passes (7th ttt, 6th adot).
• His god-awful 41.7% completion rate torpedoed his yards per attempt (31st cmp%, 27th ypa), but his smart reactions to pressure lifted his overall yardage efficiency to just below average (20th ny/d).
• He didn’t throw many first downs or TDs, but he also didn’t turn the ball over (27th 1st%, 25th td%, 23rd to%).

His overall value per play was pretty low, primarily driven by his terrible accuracy (21st epa/d, 31st cpoe). His success rate was even worse, illustrating a reliance on big plays instead of consistency (29th psr). That has really been the story all year; poor accuracy that leads to a lot of bad plays, punctuated by some deep completions.

HOW WELL?

Richardson had only 9 of 29 dropbacks that added positive value and 3 of those were completions of 20+ yards. He simply can’t complete shorter passes to move the sticks.

He’s well below average in the most important measures and it is not trending up.

HOW FAR?

I’m not sure what more to say other than completing passes is important.

His passing depth has consitantly been long, which leads to deep completions.

He is not reliant on YAC for his yards, which is neither a good nor bad thing.

TO WHO?

He spread the ball around a lot in week 7, but Pittman was the only one with decent yards. On the season Pierce still has the most overall yards.

HOW ACCURATE?

Let me beat the dead horse some more by saying the graph on the left shows the #1 mostest importantest factor of ARs game, poor accuracy.

HOW FAST?

Holding the ball over 3 seconds rarely leads to success, but when you adjust AR’s time to throw by depth of target, it is right around the expected time. So, he is not sacrificing depth with time.

TO WHERE?

That is a lot of red, both on the week and for the season.