2015 NFL Week 16: Inside the Colts Numbers - Streak Ender

The Colts ended their three game losing streak Sunday afternoon, defeating the Dolphins 18-12, thanks to a red zone stop in the final minute that finished with a blown call from the Dolphins Offensive Line, leading to a race to the QB for the Colts Defensive Linemen. It ended a three game losing streak (keeping the win 3 / lose 3 streak going at 18 games), and thanks to a couple wins Sunday/Monday, the Colts are still mathematically alive for a Playoff spot.

Matt Hasselbeck has been tempting fate each of the last four weeks, and Sunday proved to be the final straw for his broken body, suffering a shoulder injury just before halftime that appears to have ended his season. To add to the craziness of the Colts QB position, Charlie Whitehurst was scrambling away from Damontre Moore and pulled his hamstring, which has put him on IR and unavailable this week. Had the Dolphins scored late and given the Colts some time, it would have been Stephen Morris making his NFL debut trying to win the game. Seeing as the Colts signed two QBs Tuesday, I doubt he would have been successful.

I hadn't realized until during the game that this was the first game Frank Gore played in Miami since his college days, as I had just assumed he played there at some point with the 49ers, but apparently he was hurt the one time they did. He had one of his best games as a Colt, rushing for 85 yards on just 15 carries and a pair of touchdowns from 37 and 11 yards out. I think his fate with the Colts will be largely decided by whether the front office changes, as I'm guessing a new GM will probably decide to go with a younger option, despite Gore being an OK addition in 2015. A bigger discussion is warranted, but that's for the offseason.

While the Colts won, and the raw stats look pretty good, you'll see why adjusting for opponent is necessary to do any statistical comparisons.

Non-Adjusted Stats for Week 16:

Adjusted Stats for Week 16:

Some thoughts:

• You'll notice a big difference in the Offensive Ranking between the Adjusted and Non-Adjusted tables, and I think there are two reasons the gap is so large. First, the Dolphins Defense is terrible, ranking 31st, so the stats won't look nearly as good as they do normally because they can't stop anyone. Second, this week was a good week for Offenses, as the Season Ranking is a lot better than what the weekly one shows. If I had to put a phrase on it, I'd say "slightly below average", which is an improvement over what we've seen over the past month.
• No turnovers and 50% on 3rd/4th downs are a big reason for the good looking raw numbers. The 3rd/4th down numbers have been atrocious as of late, so this was obviously an area of emphasis in practice this week.
• Less than 30 yards per drive is about what you'd expect with these Quarterbacks, and only two drives were longer than 40 yards (75 and 80), both TD drives. I've said all along expect two to three decent drives, which is exactly what we saw.
• I already talked about the two red zone stops by the Colts Defense, which included an interception in the end zone by former Dolphin Vontae Davis and the game-ending stop on 4th down late in the game on a blown play, which was set up by a really nice play by Darius Butler on 3rd down. You can see ranks of 4th and 2nd in Orange and Red Zone Efficiencies for your proof.
• The problem was they let the Dolphins drive up and down the field way more than they should have, allowing five drives of 66 yards or more. See ranks of 29th, 31st, 31st, 31st, and 32nd in our major drive stats.

Season Stats through Week 16 (Adjusted):

Some thoughts:

• Not a whole lot changing here on either side, as they played mediocre against a bad team.
• The top two stats, Drive Success Rate and Adjusted Net Passing Yards per Attempt, have a comfortable lead over all the other stats in terms of producing winners, both over 85%.
• The Cardinals have moved into the #1 spot overall in the Winning Stats, as they're the best team at moving the ball on Offense, and best in the NFL at getting Turnovers, a lethal combo. I think they are the team to beat this January/February, much to the chagrin of my Panthers future.

Week-to-Week Comparison:

The Colts overall played an almost identical game to the one from a week ago, with the main difference being the Texans are at least close to average, while the Dolphins are at the bottom of the NFL. It also helped they got two red zone stops in the red zone without giving up any points, something they didn't do the week before. Amazingly, these two games are very similar to the first three games the Colts played this season. While we saw flashes of brilliance, these numbers paint a very clear picture: the Colts were consistently not a very good team this year. And that fact is going to be the reason for the house cleaning we're all expecting to happen.