Late Start and Turnovers Dooms Colts Offense

Nov 30, 2022 - 6:00 PM

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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.

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19 first downs on 27 series isn’t terrible, but it is below average. A 70.4% Drive Success Rate is in the 43rd percentile of offenses this year. If any of the 5 three-and-outs had managed to move the ball, it might have been a decent day. The 2 turnovers didn’t help either.

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TEAM TOTALS

The 22nd points per drive was driven by the 29th yards per play and the 24th first down conversion rate. I don’t know much about football, but I do believe that if you can’t gain yards, it's hard to get first downs. And if you can’t get first downs, it’s hard to score.

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PASS TOTALS

Matt Ryan coupled his 24th EPA per dropback with a 15th-ranked success rate. Basically, he had a lot of successful plays, but they weren’t high-value ones and the big negative plays dragged his overall EPA down.

His net yards per dropback ranked 26th and his first down conversion rate came in 21st. I don’t know much about football, but I do believe that if you can’t gain yards, it's hard to get first downs. And if you can’t get first downs, it’s hard to score.

Interceptions in your own territory don’t help either.

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RUSH TOTALS

Even though the run game finished with a 10th-ranked adjusted RSR, the supporting numbers weren’t very good: 17th-ranked YPC, 19th-ranked conversion rate. I don’t know much about football, but I do believe that if you can’t gain yards, it's hard to get first downs. And if you can’t get first downs, it’s hard to score.

Fumbles on the 1-yard line don’t help either.

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CONCLUSION & LOOK AHEAD

The story of the 2022 offense is that they are bad at running, bad at passing and bad at football.

Next, the Colts' offense travels to Dallas to take on the best defense by DVOA in the league. The Cowboys' defense gives up the 6th-fewest yards per play, the 11th-lowest conversion rate, and the 3rd-fewest points per drive. I don’t know much about football, but I do believe that if you don’t give up yards, it's hard to give up first downs. And if you don’t give up first downs, it’s hard to give up points.

The Cowboys are #1 in DVOA against the pass, which is an awesome match-up for our 31st-ranked passing team. They are 10th against the run and our lowly Colts wield the 32nd-ranked run game.

Great.