Indianapolis Colts by the Numbers: Week 2 Defensive Stats

Every week, I will present a summary of some basic and advanced stats for the Colts performance relative to the league. Thanks to Pro Football Reference, NFL.com and the nflSCrapR project as the sources of weekly data.

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Remember everything I wrote about the defense last week? Take the opposite of that and you have this week’s summary. What a turnaround.

The defense held Washington to 3 field goals of offense limiting them to a 64.5% DSR, which is very good (well that’s a bad DSR which is good for the defense).

Washington only broke into the red zone on 2 drives and on one of those was promptly sacked behind the 20.

The Indy D did not yield a first down via penalty all game and notched 3 sacks, 1 more than the previous week.

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TEAM TOTALS

Ranked by Adj PPD, the Colts D put up the second best mark of the week and limited Washington to a paltry 4.7 yds per play (which unfortunately was the same as our offense).

The defense also held Washington to a bottom 10 performance in first downs conversions with <30% of plays converting and only 1 in 3 on 3rd downs.

This was just an end to end good performance that was sorely needed.

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PASSING DEFENSE

Ranked by ANY/A, Alex Smith was held to 5.5 yards. While the Indy defense gave up almost a 72% completion rate, that was driven by an average pass of only 4.8 yds through the air. Smith posted a 3.5 the week before so that wasn’t so much a function of our D being stingy but rather that Smith likes short passes.

Receiver YAC was held to a below average 4.1 yards and helped limit Smith to only 6.3 YPA. That’s a solid effort against a QB that put up 8.5 the week before.

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RUSHING DEFENSE

Washington rushing was stifled at 65 yards, much of which was a function of trailing in the game. But even so, the defense was stingy on the ground, limiting Washington to less than 1 success in 3 carries and less than 25% overall weighted success rate.

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CONCLUSION

Over 2 weeks the defense has been Jekyll and Hyde and so it’s tough to truly say how they are performing. If the D from this week shows up the rest of the year, it won’t be a question of playoffs it will be a question of home field or not.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Comments? Leave it below.

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METRIC DEFINITIONS

Offense

• Pts: All team points
• Adj PPD: Points per drive with defensive and special team scores removed from team points and drives ending in QB kneels excluded from drive counts
• Net PPD: Adj PPD with adjusted points reduced interception and fumble TD returns
• Strt Fld: Average starting field position (all drives)
• DSR: Drive Success rate calculated as FD + TD / (Drives + FD). Typically TDs are included in FD counts and so DSR = FD / (Drives + FD - TDs). Drives ending in kneel downs are typically excluded.
• 1st%: The number of non-penalty first downs divided by plays.
• 3DC: The % of third downs converted to firsts.

Pass

• 1st%: The number of non-penalty passing first downs divided by attempts + sacks.
• aDOT : The average depth of passes thrown relative to the line of scrimmage (completed or not)
• aYd: Air Yards for completed passes
• 20+ : Pass plays for more than 20 yards
• ANY/A : Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt = (Yds - Sack yds + 20 * TD - 45 * Int) / (Att + Sacks)

Rush

• 1st% : The number of non-penalty rushing first downs divided by carries.
• 10+ Yds : Rush plays for more than 10 yards
• RSR: Rushing Success rate is the % of carries that result in success defined as a TD, First Down, 45% of ytg on 1st down and 60% of ytg on 2nd down. 4th quarter adjustments are included for time remaining and point differntial
• wRSR: Weighted RSR is RSR with a weighted value attached to each success type. TD = 2, FD = 0.9, 45% of ytg on 1sts = 0.65 and 60% of ytg on 2nd = 0.55.
• EPA/c: Expected Points Added per carry. This uses EPA data as calculated by the nflscrapR project.