Week 4: Offensive Rankings and Analysis

Each week during the season, I will be walking through the data from the previous Colts game and analyzing the numbers to form a sort of “what happened” narrative, as well as comparing the Colts against all other teams in the league. For a glossary of the stats listed, reference Season Stats. Thanks to Pro Football Reference, NFL.com, Football Outsiders, and the nflFastR project for being awesome sources of weekly data.

Getting blanked on the first 5 drives is never a good omen for an offense, but scoring 3 TDs on the next 5 is a good way to make up for it. Overall, the Colts' offense was about average in their ability to move the ball. They earned 19 first downs on 26 series for a 15th-ranked 73.1% Drive Success Rate.

TEAM TOTALS

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The team ranked 16th in points per drive, which bumps them up one spot to 18th for the season.

By yards per play, the offense came in 13th-best, but that did not translate as well to EPA efficiency with an 18th-place spot there. The lost fumble is the likely culprit for that drop.

Directionally, the offense is getting better.

PASS TOTALS

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The passing game ranks 13th on the week and 19th on the season, an improvement of 1 spot. Even though Anthony Richardson’s EPA rank was just 13th, +0.23 EPA/d is a very good number. In week 1, that would have been 6th best.

Richardson was not very consistent, however. He was not good until the 4th quarter when he set the place on fire. If I only look at 4th quarters, then he had the 3rd best efficiency of the week. Of course, the first 3 quarters count and there he ranked 21st.

His 146 explosive play yards jacked up his net yard per dropback to 8th-best, even though he had the worst accuracy this week (32nd cpoe). It will be very difficult to maintain that volume of explosive plays, so he needs to get more accurate to make up for it.

RUSH TOTALS

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The rushing game took a step back from last week, finishing 21st in adj. Rush Success Rate. That drops the season total 3 spots to 14th.

Their Yards per Carry was OK at 16th, but the team just couldn’t get that to translate to first downs, with a 26th-ranked conversion rate. Part of that may be that the Colts only ran once on 3rd down, even though the team had the 8th shortest average yards to gain.

CONCLUSION & LOOK AHEAD

It sucks to improve at offense and still lose, but here we are. The offense is not bad and with a rookie QB, that is actually a compliment. I think JT’s return will improve the run game and Richardson is already showing improvement in most areas. So the future seems bright to me.

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It’s been a few weeks since we had a divisional game, so bring on the Titans.

Tennessee’s defense ranks 18th in points per drive surrendered, but 12th in Drive Success Rate against. They are 7th best at preventing 3rd down conversions even though their opponents have had the shortest average 3rd down yards to gain. That’s impressive.

The Titans' defense gives up the 10th-highest EPA efficiency to opposing QBs and the 7th-highest passing success rate. That’s a favorable match-up for AR.

On the ground, Tennessee’s defense is formidable, giving up the 5th lowest adj. rushing success rate to opponents. Jonathan Taylor may have picked the wrong week to stop pretending to be hurt . . . allegedly.