Quick Thoughts - Week 10

[Colts And Orioles]

Originally Posted by albany ed

I'm not sure why you say that.

The offense is 9th in the NFL in terms of points per game

but

The defense is 25th in the NFL in terms of points allowed per game.

Up until this last game, the Colts were the only team in the NFL to score at least 20 points in every game.

o


Points-per-game alone can be sometimes be a deceiving statistic.


A) ) The offense can turn the ball over deep in their own territory, and if the opposition scores a FG or a TD it looks just as bad for the defense as does a sustained, 80-yard drive for the opposing offense.

B) ) The offense can throw a pick-6 and/or fumble the ball in their own end-zone, and that TD/7 points counts as the defense allowing points.

C) ) When the Colts scored 27 points in their win against the Panthers, the defense scored 14 of those 27 points ...... so yes, the team scored 20-or-more points in that game, but the offense did not.



Anyone watching the games with their own lying eyes can see that the Colts' defense had a horrible games against the Saints, but have been at least adequate (and sometimes more than adequate) in most of their other games this season ...... in the game against the Browns the defense officially gave up 38 points, but 7 of those points were scored by the Browns' defense, 7 were scored by the referees after the defense did their job of closing out the game in the final seconds of the 4th quarter, and the offense turned the ball over a total of 4 times (the one in which the Browns' defense scored a touchdown by recovering the ball in the Colts' end-zone, plus 3 additional turnovers.) And of the other 3 turnovers, 2 of them were in the Colts' own territory ...... the Browns 2 scoring "drives" off of those turnovers were 6 yards on 4 plays for a FG, and 36 yards on 5 plays for a TD ...... PLUS, the Browns added another FG off of a blocked FG-attempt by the Colts. That scoring "drive" was 0 yards on 4 plays.

In 2 of the Colts' 5 wins so far this season (the Panthers game and the Patriots game), the defense carried the team to a win while an extremely-challenged offense had done very little.



So no, this is not the 1968 Colts defense, or even some of the Robert-Mathis-Dwight Freeney-led Colts defenses of the 2000's ...... but they have done pretty darned well while playing alongside a back-up QB for the majority of this 2023 season.

o

[ChaosTheory]

Originally Posted by albany ed

I'm not sure why you say that.

The offense is 9th in the NFL in terms of points per game

but

the defense is 25th in the NFL in terms of points allowed per game.

up until this last game, the Colts were the only team in the NFL to score at least 20 points in every game.

C&O beat me to it, but eyeball test it.

Just look at the CLE game. They had one good drive and one long final drive aided by universally recognized bullshit penalties. Other than that, our D crushed them as they should have when they had a backup QB. Yet they ended up with our season high 39 points. Goofy.

New Orleans and Los Angeles legitimately lit us up. Of course there were significant personnel differences between those games and, say, the Baltimore game where they showed what a decently healthy unit can do.

[YDFL Commish]

Originally Posted by albany ed

I'm not sure why you say that.

The offense is 9th in the NFL in terms of points per game

but

the defense is 25th in the NFL in terms of points allowed per game.

up until this last game, the Colts were the only team in the NFL to score at least 20 points in every game.

HERE HERE! Comparing this defense to the '68 defense or the the '71 defense or even the '07 defense is completely ludicrous!

We haven't even made the playoffs yet for crying out loud!

[albany ed]

Originally Posted by Colts And Orioles

o


Points-per-game alone can be sometimes be a deceiving statistic.


A) ) The offense can turn the ball over deep in their own territory, and if the opposition scores a FG or a TD it looks just as bad for the defense as does a sustained, 80-yard drive for the opposing offense.

B) ) The offense can throw a pick-6 and/or fumble the ball in their own end-zone, and that TD/7 points counts as the defense allowing points.

C) ) When the Colts scored 27 points in their win against the Panthers, the defense scored 14 of those 27 points ...... so yes, the team scored 20-or-more points in that game, but the offense did not.



Anyone watching the games with their own lying eyes can see that the Colts' defense had a horrible games against the Saints, but have been at least adequate (and sometimes more than adequate) in most of their other games this season ...... in the game against the Browns the defense officially gave up 38 points, but 7 of those points were scored by the Browns' defense, 7 were scored by the referees after the defense did their job of closing out the game in the final seconds of the 4th quarter, and the offense turned the ball over a total of 4 times (the one in which the Browns' defense scored a touchdown by recovering the ball in the Colts' end-zone, plus 3 additional turnovers.) And of the other 3 turnovers, 2 of them were in the Colts' own territory ...... the Browns 2 scoring "drives" off of those turnovers were 6 yards on 4 plays for a FG, and 36 yards on 5 plays for a TD ...... PLUS, the Browns added another FG off of a blocked FG-attempt by the Colts. That scoring "drive" was 0 yards on 4 plays.

In 2 of the Colts' 5 wins so far this season (the Panthers game and the Patriots game), the defense carried the team to a win while an extremely-challenged offense had done very little.



So no, this is not the 1968 Colts defense, or even some of the Robert-Mathis-Dwight Freeney-led Colts defenses of the 2000's ...... but they have done pretty darned well while playing alongside a back-up QB for the majority of this 2023 season.

o

I'm not saying this is a bad defense, but to say that the D is what has kept this season afloat is a little extreme. The team has given up 30+ points in 4 of the games played (all losses). Sure, some of those points can be blamed on the offense, but this is not a great defense and without a good QB it's not a good offense. I would say that both sides could take blame and credit for keeping the team afloat so far.

[Colts And Orioles]

Originally Posted by albany ed

I'm not saying this is a bad defense, but to say that the D is what has kept this season afloat is a little extreme. The team has given up 30+ points in 4 of the games played (all losses). Sure, some of those points can be blamed on the offense, but this is not a great defense, and without a good QB it's not a good offense. I would say that both sides could take blame and credit for keeping the team afloat so far.

o


This is a flim-flam that is glossing over what almost any Colts fan knows about this team ...... there is no way that one can equally distribute the blame/credit for the successes and failures of this team so far this season. The defense has been noticeably stronger than the offense has been so far this season. That would probably not be the case if Richardson were the QB for most of the season, but he has not. Minshew has been the quarterback for the majority of the season, and the offense has had more bad games than has the defense (largely) because of that.

o

[albany ed]

Flim flam? Would it surprise you if I told you that the offense and the defense are almost equal in the amount of yards per game? Only 6 teams in the NFL give up more yards per game than the Colts. 25 teams give up less. That, my fellow Colts fan does not impress me.

[Dam8610]

Originally Posted by albany ed

Flim flam? Would it surprise you if I told you that the offense and the defense are almost equal in the amount of yards per game? Only 6 teams in the NFL give up more yards per game than the Colts. 25 teams give up less. That, my fellow Colts fan does not impress me.

Not saying you're wrong, but I'd be more interested in metrics like third down success rate, red zone success rate, takeaways, sack rate, pressure rate, negative plays forced, points per drive, etc. As metrics of a successful defense than yards allowed. Yards allowed can be skewed by a high volume of plays, which, as Chromeburn pointed out earlier, the Colts defense has the most plays run against them in the league.

[Colts And Orioles]

Originally Posted by Dam8610

Not saying you're wrong, but I'd be more interested in metrics like third down success rate, red zone success rate, takeaways, sack rate, pressure rate, negative plays forced, points per drive, etc. As metrics of a successful defense than yards allowed. Yards allowed can be skewed by a high volume of plays, which, as Chromeburn pointed out earlier, the Colts defense has the most plays run against them in the league.

o

Correct.

The Colts' defense had one of their best games of the year in their win over the Ravens, but they ceded 364 yards in that game ...... in the Panthers game, the Colts' defense gave up only 275 yards, and they played similarly well in that game as they did in the game against the Ravens ....... but if you looked strictly at the number of yards ceded by the defense and compared the two, you would think that they played considerably better in the Panthers game than in the Ravens game. Additionally, the Colts were playing a much more potent offense when they played against the Ravens compared to the offense in which they faced against the Panthers.



As I stated earlier, watch the games with your own lying eyes if you want to see how a team and/or their specific units are playing rather than relying on generic statistics such as points allowed and/or yardage ceded.

o

[YDFL Commish]

Originally Posted by Dam8610

Yards allowed can be skewed by a high volume of plays, which, as Chromeburn pointed out earlier, the Colts defense has the most plays run against them in the league.

The volume of plays is a direct result of being ineffective on defense. There is is a simple fix to that. It's called three and outs. That's what good defenses do.

[Dam8610]

Originally Posted by YDFL Commish

The volume of plays is a direct result of being ineffective on defense. There is is a simple fix to that. It's called three and outs. That's what good defenses do.

Not necessarily. I'd posit a bad offense would be highly correlated to a high volume of defensive plays, for example.