NFL Network's RedZone Colts stat of the week: Week Five

by Brad Wells on Oct 13, 2009 10:41 AM EDT in Colts Analysis

This post is sponsored by Comcast and their NFL RedZone channel, a new NFL Network channel. Want to see every touchdown from every NFL game as it happens as well as live look-ins to all of Sunday's games in key situations? Then you need Comcast's NFL RedZone.

Following the NY Jets Week Two win over the New England Patriots, NFL Sirius radio personality Pat Kirwan was raving about how "tough" the NY Jets defense was and how much he loved Rex Ryan blitzing the hell out of people. When a caller phoned in to talk about the Colts defense, Kirwan pointed out that teams (like the Jaguars) are not "afraid" of the Colts, suggesting Indy was not "tough" enough to handle teams that liked to run the ball.

Well, after watching the Miami Dolphins torch the Jets for 30 points last night, carving them up on the ground with the Wild Cat and through the air with Chad Henne, I wonder if Kirwan will admit that he was... well, WRONG! Seriously, when you blitz a QB, you better get him because if you don't, he'll hit Ted Ginn Jr. on a long TD that will make your supposedly tough defense look like swiss friggin cheese.

Oh, and the Jets allowed 151 rushing yards and a last second fourth quarter TD to Ronnie Brown, winning the game for the Dolphins. Not knocking the Jets or anything. This is more a knock on Kirwan, who is kind of a tool. He seems to love blitzing defenses and hates "prevent defense," aka the Tampa 2.

After five weeks, the Colts defense is ranked 7th in total defense, which is a silly statistic because it only considers average yards per game, and yards are about as meaningless a stat as time of possession is. The key defensive stats are:

The Colts are the #2 scoring defense in football (14.2 points per game)
The Colts have the #7 pass defense in football
The Colts are #2 in average passing completion yards per game (5.5)
The Colts are #6 in opposing QB rating (71.1)
The Colts are #8 in sacks (13 total), with most of them coming from the defensive line (10)
The Colts have only allowed 7 pass plays over 20 yards and have not allowed any over 40
The Colts have moved from ranking near the bottom in run defense to #14 in the league. Throw out the Dolphins game, which seems to be a fluke because other supposedly "tough" defense can't figure out how to stop it, and the yards against is nearly cut in half (277 yards). That means (minus the Dolphins game) the Colts have allowed 277 rushing yards on 38 attempts for an average of 3.7 a carry.

This is a dramatic improvement over last year's defense, and much of the credit should go to Jim Caldwell and Larry Coyer. Remember, the Colts are doing this without Bob Sanders and Kelvin Hayden as both have missed several games due to injury.

Look for shake n bake's DVOA rankings and mgrex03's more advanced stats later in the week.

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The D is SOLID

Rock solid. And with the bye, they’ve got time to heal up a little and inflict some pain on St. Louis before they hit though tough second half of their sked.

by slash196 on Oct 13, 2009 11:27 AM EDT reply actions

I really hate the measurement of defense with yards

Games are not decided by yards, they are decided by points.

Oh btw, for Colts Pass D:
You have to take into account the number of attempts against the Colts, Colts have the 2nd highest attempts per game against them (this reminds me… didn’t Warner attempt like 50 passes against the Colts?). So, sure the Colts may be 7th yardage wise, but are they really number 7 yards per attempt or yards per completion?

Oh no!

by Bluedude on Oct 13, 2009 1:09 PM EDT reply actions

I love that with Brady back down to earth the trolls have to go back to cherry picking from a small sample

Luck is probability taken personally, clutch is probability attributed to individuals.

by shake n bake on Oct 13, 2009 1:36 PM EDT reply actions

As I recall from grad school

My stats professor required a minimum N of 20 for any reliable results. If you have less data, you can only work with what you’ve got of course… but it’s considered less than reliable.

I hate Joe Namath. That's how long I've been a Colts fan.

by Bobman on Oct 13, 2009 2:37 PM EDT up reply actions

We Still Have a Questionable D

There is a reason Kirwan is not as high on our D as most of us fans are – the teams we have beaten this season are not the cream of the crop.

Jags: 2-3
Miami: 2-3
Arizona: 2-2
Seattle: 2-3
Titans: 0-5

I think our Defense is much better than it has been the last 3 seasons. Mathis is playing Pro Bowl level again, the young corners are looking super sweet, and we’re taking it to the QBs. I believe Coach Coyer is a better match for our talent than Ron Meeks ever was. And, Coyer actually has something in his pocket other than a soft cover-2 that gets eaten alive by the power runners. If you don’t believe was a problem, all you have to do is look at his record against the run in Carolina this year.

BUT, until we play hard against a power run team (like the Ravens), there will still be doubts. We wiggled past the Jags, and only Manning’s ability to consistently score TDs in less than a minute let us beat Miami. By my count that two very close games with teams that have a strong running game. The other teams were suffering from runner, o-line or QB injury issues when we played them.

by Grendels04 on Oct 13, 2009 3:07 PM EDT reply actions

I think you can look at the Arizona and even the Titans game

to see that the Colts’ defense is legit. They completely shut down arguably one of the top 5 passing offenses in the league with Warner, Fitzgerald, and Boldin, then they turned around and held the #1 running back (statistically) Chris Johnson to 9 carries for 34 yards.

The Jags wasn’t as close as the score indicated; the offense made some very rare turnovers in that game. Also the Ravens aren’t really running the ball like did last year, and even last season ,our defense held the Ravens to 3 points with their power running style.

"Do I believe in aliens?" Stephon Marbury asked. "I don't know, because I've never seen one. But I believe in Jesus because I saw him in the shower the other day."

by KMR24 on Oct 13, 2009 10:47 PM EDT up reply actions