Colts’ Week 9 QB analysis: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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)

There was a new QB but it ended with the same old misery. I have no doubt that currrent-Flacco is a better QB than current-Richardson, but he certainly did not show it Sunday night.

DASHBOARD

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

• The run game took a significant step back, which is unfortunate as the Colts leaned on the run on early downs (25th arsr, 23rd edp)
• Flacco faced a lot of zone looks and played from under center waaaaaay more than Richardson ever has (3rd oz%, 21st sg%).
• Flacco faced significant pressure even though his time to throw was not much longer than average (5th pr%, 12th ttt).
• He threw much shorter than AR, but his higher completion rate resulted in longer average depth on his completions (12th adot, 21st cmp%, 13th ay/c).
• Unfortunately, his accuracy was still way off. which partially explains the low yac (29th cpoe, 23rd yac, 26th yacoe).
• However, even given poor accuracy and bad yac, Flacco’s yards per attempt was above average (15th ypa), but the pressure at the end of the game led to a lot of sacks depressing his overall yards per dropback (10th sck%, 18th ny/d).
• He was decent at throwing for first downs, but could not convert that to TDs (13th 1st%, tied 29th TD%).
• Add in a couple of turnovers (10th to%) and you ended up with pretty poor EPA efficiency (28th EAP/d, 23rd PSR).

What we saw at the beginning of the year with AR and Flacco both, was high EPA efficiency but low success rate, which means the Colts relied on the big play to get value out of their passing. I predicted that would not sustain itself and that efficiency would start to drop to “meet” the low success rate and that is coming true.

HOW WELL?

Flacco had sporadic successful plays, but too may negative ones and a couple of big negative value plays (INT, turnover on downs).

These charts are both Flacco and Richardson combined. Notice that the overall EPA value this week was basically the same as AR last week, but the other drivers were actually better (success rate, conversion rate, yardage efficiency).

HOW FAR?

There were only 2 attempts > 20 yards and one of them was a desperation pass interference call. Flacco’s increased completion rate led to more first downs than what AR provided.

Passing attempt depth dropped off but completion depth did not.

Colts have the 3rd longest attempts, but when factoring in only completions, that falls to 9th.

TO WHO?

Downs was the only real target, which is becoming a pattern.

On a per target basis, Mitchell and Pierce outperformed Downs, but Downs made up for it in total volume.

HOW ACCURATE?

Accuracy bounced back a bit from AR’s low, but it still was far from good.

HOW FAST?

Flacco threw it a bit quicker, which makes sense as he saw more pressure and threw shorter.

TO WHERE?

That is a lot of red.