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In week 7, the 1-5 Colts destroyed Buffalo 37 to 5. After that game, power rankings had the Colts listed around 27th in the NFL, which amazingly was exactly their ranking by record. Oh, NFL media analysts, you add so much to the conversation.
At the time, my own take was this:
”Personally, I feel the Colts are playing much better than their record and I have the data to back up that claim”.
After I wrote that, the Colts won 8 of the next 9 games on their playoff push to eventually be considered one of the better teams in the league. This isn’t to pat myself on the back or trumpet my wisdom (although, I am kind of a big deal), rather I wanted to re-visit that exercise to see where the Colts rank heading into the playoffs.
THE DATA
Here are the metrics I previously used updated through the end of the regular season.
ODDS
After beating the Bills, Sportsline.com had the Colts odds of winning the Superbowl at 100:1, which put them as the 20th best team. As of today, those odds have improved to 25:1, tied for 8th place with 3 other teams.
POINT DIFFERENTIALS
Wins are obviously highly correlated to point differentials. Through 7 weeks, The Colts had scored 4 more points than their opponents, which ranked 18th in the league. After burying the Titans for the 2nd time this year, the Colts differential ended the season at +89. That’s the 8th best mark of any team.
PYTHAGOREAN WINS
Point differentials can be converted into Pythagorean Win Expectation, which estimates the number of wins a team “should have”. When the Colts were sitting at 2-5, Pythagorean Expectation predicted the Colts to win 8.2 games which put them in 17th place at the time. The season long +89 mark translates to 10.3 expected wins, which is eerily accurate and ranks 8th for the year.
BLOWOUTS
Buffalo was the first blowout win the Colts logged in the 2018 season but it wasn’t the last. Defining a blowout as a 3+ score win, the Rams had the league’s most with 4. Along with 7 other teams, the Colts notched 3 (Titans, Cowboys, Bills). So, that means the Colts are at worst 9th in that measure (or 2nd depending on how you look at it).
DRIVE SUCCESS RATE
The Colts started the year with a 7 week offensive DSR of 71.1% while the defense gave up 70.6% to opponents. The difference between those numbers was a team measure of +0.5%, ranked 17th at that time. Over the following 9 weeks, Indy improved their season offensive DSR to 75.1% (5th) while the defense held steady at 70.3% (13th). The end of year differential of 4.8% is the 7th best mark of any team.
DVOA
Football Outsiders takes a detailed look at team performance and adjusts their data by opponent. In their DVOA measure, the Colts were 14th after week 7, but ended the year 8th (10th offense, 10th defense, 12th special teams).
CONCLUSION
Most of these metrics put the Colts at or around the 8th best regular season team, which is also their win record rank (4-way tie). So have we come full circle? Are lazy pundits right and the Colts really are what their record says they are?
No. I believe that when incorporating the whole season, then 8th is a good estimate of overall play, but those that have watched the Colts know that this team is much better now than when they started the year. We are overall healthier, Andrew Luck has scraped off the rust and the rookies have developed into some league leading players (Quenton Nelson, Darius Leonard et al.). And while the Colts are seemingly on their way up, other teams slowed from their electric starts. So, season long averages are probably not the best measure of how good a team is after week 17.
To power-rank the teams, I need a better methodology (and yes I just verbed power rank . . . and acted as if verbed is a word). In my weekly stats articles, I show trailing 5 week averages but that is such a small sample that opponent strength can be far too much noise.
Football Outsiders applies a recency weighting (early weeks = low weight, recent weeks = full weight) to calculate a weighted DVOA for each team. I think this is the right approach and so I borrowed those weights and applied them to a few of the metrics listed above.
Weighted Rankings
| Team | Playoff Team | Wgt DVOA | Rank | Wgt Pyth Wins | Rank | Wgt Off DSR | Rank | Wgt Def DSR | Rank | Wgt DSR Diff | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team | Playoff Team | Wgt DVOA | Rank | Wgt Pyth Wins | Rank | Wgt Off DSR | Rank | Wgt Def DSR | Rank | Wgt DSR Diff | Rank |
| KC | x | 31.2% | 1 | 11.0 | 7 | 72.8% | 2 | 71.3% | 32 | 1.5% | 13 |
| NO | x | 26.0% | 2 | 12.0 | 1 | 75.1% | 1 | 68.2% | 23 | 6.9% | 3 |
| LAC | x | 23.7% | 3 | 11.1 | 5 | 68.2% | 12 | 64.5% | 11 | 3.7% | 9 |
| IND | x | 22.1% | 4 | 11.1 | 4 | 71.0% | 5 | 64.0% | 8 | 7.0% | 2 |
| CHI | x | 19.9% | 5 | 11.8 | 2 | 68.5% | 11 | 60.6% | 1 | 7.9% | 1 |
| LAR | x | 19.0% | 6 | 10.3 | 9 | 70.4% | 6 | 65.3% | 16 | 5.0% | 7 |
| BAL | x | 18.7% | 7 | 10.1 | 10 | 67.8% | 14 | 61.7% | 4 | 6.1% | 5 |
| NE | x | 17.7% | 8 | 11.3 | 3 | 68.7% | 10 | 62.7% | 7 | 6.0% | 6 |
| MIN | 15.6% | 9 | 8.8 | 12 | 62.3% | 26 | 62.0% | 5 | 0.3% | 16 | |
| PIT | 12.5% | 10 | 10.0 | 11 | 71.9% | 3 | 65.3% | 14 | 6.6% | 4 | |
| DEN | 8.7% | 11 | 7.5 | 17 | 63.8% | 23 | 64.3% | 10 | -0.5% | 18 | |
| CLE | 8.5% | 12 | 7.3 | 21 | 64.6% | 21 | 68.1% | 22 | -3.5% | 24 | |
| HOU | x | 7.9% | 13 | 11.1 | 6 | 64.7% | 20 | 60.7% | 2 | 3.9% | 8 |
| SEA | x | 6.1% | 14 | 10.4 | 8 | 68.9% | 9 | 66.4% | 18 | 2.5% | 10 |
| NYG | 4.8% | 15 | 7.4 | 19 | 64.2% | 22 | 68.0% | 21 | -3.8% | 25 | |
| PHI | x | 3.6% | 16 | 8.5 | 15 | 67.3% | 15 | 65.0% | 13 | 2.3% | 11 |
| ATL | 1.8% | 17 | 8.1 | 16 | 70.0% | 8 | 70.8% | 31 | -0.9% | 19 | |
| TEN | -0.1% | 18 | 8.6 | 13 | 65.2% | 19 | 64.3% | 9 | 1.0% | 15 | |
| DAL | x | -2.5% | 19 | 8.5 | 14 | 68.1% | 13 | 66.1% | 17 | 1.9% | 12 |
| CAR | -3.0% | 20 | 7.4 | 18 | 71.6% | 4 | 70.2% | 29 | 1.4% | 14 | |
| GB | -5.5% | 21 | 7.1 | 22 | 67.0% | 16 | 68.5% | 24 | -1.4% | 22 | |
| DET | -5.8% | 22 | 7.4 | 20 | 66.2% | 17 | 67.3% | 20 | -1.1% | 20 | |
| BUF | -7.2% | 23 | 6.3 | 23 | 59.9% | 28 | 61.1% | 3 | -1.2% | 21 | |
| TB | -10.6% | 24 | 6.2 | 24 | 70.1% | 7 | 70.4% | 30 | -0.3% | 17 | |
| JAX | -15.1% | 25 | 4.9 | 27 | 57.2% | 30 | 62.1% | 6 | -4.9% | 27 | |
| NYJ | -17.4% | 26 | 4.1 | 30 | 57.1% | 31 | 64.8% | 12 | -7.6% | 29 | |
| CIN | -17.7% | 27 | 5.0 | 26 | 63.8% | 24 | 68.6% | 27 | -4.8% | 26 | |
| SF | -19.0% | 28 | 5.5 | 25 | 65.2% | 18 | 67.3% | 19 | -2.0% | 23 | |
| OAK | -19.6% | 29 | 3.7 | 31 | 63.3% | 25 | 68.6% | 26 | -5.3% | 28 | |
| WAS | -25.4% | 30 | 4.8 | 28 | 62.2% | 27 | 69.8% | 28 | -7.7% | 30 | |
| MIA | -29.6% | 31 | 4.4 | 29 | 58.2% | 29 | 68.5% | 25 | -10.3% | 32 | |
| ARI | -44.8% | 32 | 3.0 | 32 | 56.6% | 32 | 65.3% | 15 | -8.7% | 31 |
Using weighted data, the Colts rank 4th by DVOA, 4th by Pythagorean wins and 2nd by DSR Differential. To me, this is more indicative of where the Colts team is now, which of course is what a power ranking should be.
Heading into the playoffs the Colts are one of the more dangerous teams. The Texans are not playing nearly as well (13th DVOA, 8th DSR Diff), so any given Sunday aside, the Colts should feel confident heading to NRG Stadium.
(pay no attention to the man behind the curtain who says the colts are 2.5 point underdogs)