Here’s as good a place as any to mention that Brandon Marshall finished seventh this week in receiving DYAR, so there won’t be any comment on him in the receiving charts that follow. How do you finish outside the top five receivers of the week when you set a single-game receptions record? Well, not all receptions are created equal. Marshall was thrown 28 passes on Sunday; one was intercepted, and six fell to the ground incomplete. All six were either on first-and-10 or second-and-8, but the pick came on a third-and-6 from the Colts 20. Marshall doesn’t get penalized for the interception, but he does get penalized for the incompletion. A catch there is very important.

Now, let’s look at Marshall’s 21 completions. Five of them were considered unsuccessful plays despite being complete, meaning that they didn’t do enough to push the team forward towards a first down. Those catches include a four-yard completion on third-and-8 and a 14-yard completion on fourth-and-18 on Marshall’s final catch. All five of those passes went for negative DYAR. Every single one of Marshall’s catches came while the team was down by 11 points or more, so our methodology takes some air out for picking up yardage in a situation where the winning team is generally playing looser coverage. At the end of the day, with 12 of his 28 targets resulting in a negative play for the team, those 21 catches only yielded 36 DYAR.

On one hand, that underestimates Marshall’s performance, since it doesn’t consider the effect his presence had on the rest of the offense and the defense’s coverage scheme. On the other hand, our figures also don’t account for the Colts’ secondary being ravaged by injuries; at points on Sunday, Indy was one more defensive back on the shelf away from being forced to employ Pierre Garcon as an emergency corner. And while Marshall undoubtedly had some impact on the rest of the offense, the Broncos ended up scoring a grand total of 16 points, and the other seven guys that ran the ball or caught a pass could only muster 157 yards. So Marshall’s big day couldn’t be worth that much.

was that I totally missed the St. Elmo’s shrimp cocktail at the airport! I’ll just have to go back… that stuff is AWESOME!

I don’t know what to think about that article. I like Gosselin and his objectivity and apparent higher intelligence. I like that he’s taking a mildly contrarian approach here. And I agree that Marshall’s big day wasn’t a big deal.

That said, if anything, the shutdown corner is making a slight comeback. I hate the term Shutdown Corner because even the very best of them can’t completely shut someone down – the offense always has the advantage because of the play design – but compared to 3-5 years ago, the league actually has a bunch more guys who can play a near-dominant Man coverage. Revis’s ascension has people noticing this and reporting on it.

Of course, that still doesn’t change the notion that the Colts eschew that philosophy and go with zones to prevent big plays and that that works – in general, anyway. (I deleted the recording but I believe that at least 3 of the 5 big plays in the Pats game were against a zone… so it’s not perfect.) In truth, this year’s Colts team plays a lot more man than they used to (though they still played more man in the past than most people realize). They can do this because Powers has given them a lot of flexibility, and because they switch in and out and that variety makes it a bit tougher on the offense. This variety and aggressiveness up front has been what makes this year’s team so much different than last year.

That said, it was pretty frustrating to watch them play a lot more zone Sunday against Marshall, who was then free to glide into a seam and catch a ball basically uncontested – Jennings takes a ton of crap for “not covering” him but in many cases that wasn’t his job on those plays anyway, as I repeatedly argued earlier this year – even though they did limit the YAC for the most part. (There were a few plays where he broke off some runs afterwards due to some less than optimal tackling and pursuit – probably Jennings’ bigger flaw in that game if memory serves.) Obviously the design of the zone has those weak spots, which are the cost of the better deep coverage, but a large part of me wonders what the down side of more man-under coverage would’ve been – the safety is still back, giving help and a safety net, but the corner could still follow Marshall around underneath and at least try to combat some of those super easy completions. Marshall is good enough that he’d have caught most of those anyway, of course, but I’m not really seeing too much of a downside to that idea. I assume they didn’t do it because it would’ve changed LB responsibilities, which I assume were pretty specific in this (and every, I guess) case.

I guess I do not strongly agree or strongly disagree with his conclusion. No defense is perfect, and no coverage guy is unbeatable. The biggest take home point of that article is that it does a great job explaining why many statistics are overrated, why a T2 D can give up lots of yards but not so many points, and why it’s certainly a viable defense even though it lacks flash. One other point I wish he had raised is that it’s a lot easier to find the right personnel cheaply for that, which frees up the money to be spent on those positions that Polian defines as the true disruptive defenders/key positions – SS, DE, QB, etc. This is how they’re able to turn over the D so often and compete every year despite spending so much on those top few guys.

Losing kind of takes the fun out of records.

and i get to read him dallas all of the time… glad you recognize his greatness.. GO COLTS