To me this defense is elite. By elite I mean that they can win a game when the offense stinks. They are not the best defense but they did throw a shutout on the cowgirls. We are good enough to play with anyone on any given Sunday. If you want to call that just good I’m fine with that. To be clear I want us to focus on defense this offseason

Well, here a stat (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average - DVOA) at Football Outsiders which purports to measure the quality of a defense based upon their opponents, among many of other factors such as defensive situations, home-road influences, etc. The goal is obviously to come up with a more meaningful read on the basic statistics that I mentioned in my prior post.

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/teamdef

After considering these factors, and prior to this week’s game, they have the Colts’ defense ranked11th. Maybe now they'll be a slot or two higher after Sunday’s game?

Keep in mind that, in a way like Pro Football Focus, stats like these are based in part upon assumptions and judgments made by the evaluators – i.e. how much weight to give to a particular situation, home/road influence. So I think it’s fair to take all of this with a grain of salt, though to my untrained eye Football Outsider’s approach seems to be more scientific than Pro Football Focus’s (which as I understand it, simply involves a bunch of guys sitting around a TV rating each player’s play-by-play performance on a -3 to +3 scale, followed by an unexplained adjustment to “normalize” the ratings).

Since the 7th game of the season (which I think includes enough games to be worth looking at) our defense has given up an average of 15 points per game. That is the best in the NFL. Taken as a whole this defense is better than its individual parts and has morphed into something resembling 'elite' if you go by the only thing that really matters, points allowed. It's great to no longer be a 'soft' finesse football team

https://i.ibb.co/48Pr0Zw/weighted-PA2.png


I weighted the PA against the offensive ranks of our opponents. the 16th ranked offense gets a multiplier of 1, any rank better than 16 gets a multiplier of 0.95, 0.9, 0.85 etc.... any offense ranked worse than 16th, gets a multiplier of 1.05, 1.1, 1.15 etc...

So in this scenario, the 21 points we gave up to the texans in our win counted as 16.8 because they are the 12th best offense. the 38 we gave up to the patriots counts as only 17.1 as they are the 5th best. conversely, the 34 we gave up to Cincy is more Like 49.3 because they are ranked a lowly 25th.

So in this way, a PA against the worst offense counts as 1.8 PA... a PA against the best offense counts for 0.25

So our actual PA was 313
Our weighted PA was 390.05
the average rank of our opponent is 22.2

We've only beaten two teams in the top half. We had an easy schedule.

Who are the top ten? You might be shocked.

Top ten scoring offenses according to NFL.com are as follows:
1. Baltimore
2. Tennessee
3. Chicago
4. Dallas
5. Houston
6. Jacksonville
7. Seattle
8. Chargers
9. Denver
10. Indianapolis

Houston is the only one of those to put up more than 4 TDs. The rest, we have held in check for the most part.

Weird, no KC, no LAR, no Saints?

in 2006, the colts gave up 14 sacks and forced 25.

in 2018, the colts have given up 16 sacks and forced 38. That's almost 3 a game.

This has got to be defenses. No way Baltimore is a top ten offense.

Say it with me now: "E - Ber - Flus!"

I really REALLY hope this doesn't become an Arians situation where the guy gets hotlisted for a HC job after this season. I'd really like to see what he can do with this team over several years.

FO is WAY better about disclosing their methodologies and using standardized measurements to produce their metrics than PFF. Whereas PFF is hot garbage, FO is quality, at least to me.

I heard Venturi say today that we are 8 on offense and 10 on defense after week 15. That's a hell of an improvement from last year. These numbers don't make sense.

Sorry, it was Pro Football Reference, not NFL.com For some reason, it has them ranked strangely. When I go to PPG, I get a different list.

https://www.pro-football-reference.c...l_team_scoring

G RshTD RecTD PR TD KR TD FblTD IntTD OthTD AllTD 2PM 2PA D2P XPM XPA FGM FGA Sfty Pts Pts/G
1 Baltimore Ravens 14 17 17 1 2 37 1 3 33 34 28 30 341 24.4
2 Tennessee Titans 14 14 14 1 29 1 25 27 23 27 268 19.1
3 Chicago Bears 14 12 27 1 5 45 3 4 39 41 22 28 1 383 27.4
4 Dallas Cowboys 14 11 17 28 1 1 25 26 27 33 276 19.7
5 Houston Texans 14 8 24 1 3 36 1 34 35 34 39 352 25.1
6 Jacksonville Jaguars 14 6 15 1 1 23 2 20 21 21 23 2 225 16.1
7 Seattle Seahawks 14 11 31 1 1 44 1 1 40 43 19 23 363 25.9
8 Los Angeles Chargers 14 14 31 1 1 47 6 8 32 39 23 28 395 28.2
9 Denver Broncos 14 18 16 2 36 3 33 33 19 23 306 21.9
10 Indianapolis Colts 14 10 34 44 4 5 37 39 21 25 372 26.6
11 New Orleans Saints 13 21 31 1 53 4 5 46 47 25 26 447 34.4
12 Minnesota Vikings 14 9 26 2 1 38 3 5 32 33 19 29 323 23.1
13 Washington Redskins 14 12 15 1 28 2 3 24 25 23 26 265 18.9
14 New England Patriots 14 16 24 1 1 1 43 1 41 42 25 30 374 26.7
15 Pittsburgh Steelers 14 16 31 1 2 50 3 4 41 46 11 18 2 384 27.4
16 Philadelphia Eagles 14 12 22 34 5 5 28 29 23 28 311 22.2
17 Green Bay Packers 14 11 23 1 1 36 2 3 31 33 27 34 332 23.7
18 Detroit Lions 14 10 19 2 31 5 26 26 24 28 284 20.3
19 Buffalo Bills 14 12 9 1 22 1 2 19 20 20 24 1 215 15.4
20 Los Angeles Rams 14 19 27 1 2 1 50 5 7 41 43 31 37 2 448 32.0
21 New York Giants 14 9 20 3 32 3 6 25 26 28 29 307 21.9
22 Cleveland Browns 14 15 23 38 4 10 23 28 16 21 1 309 22.1
23 Carolina Panthers 13 15 24 1 40 2 5 32 35 16 18 324 24.9
24 New York Jets 14 10 15 1 3 29 1 25 28 31 33 292 20.9
25 Arizona Cardinals 14 9 13 2 24 1 2 22 22 8 12 192 13.7
26 San Francisco 49ers 14 6 23 1 1 31 1 5 24 26 29 30 1 301 21.5
27 Miami Dolphins 14 7 24 1 1 2 35 1 1 32 33 17 18 295 21.1
28 Kansas City Chiefs 14 14 45 1 1 2 63 1 58 62 21 24 499 35.6
29 Atlanta Falcons 14 10 30 1 1 42 2 6 34 36 22 23 356 25.4
30 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 14 10 31 2 43 1 3 36 41 16 22 344 24.6
31 Cincinnati Bengals 14 13 25 2 2 42 3 37 39 16 20 337 24.1
32 Oakland Raiders 14 7 19 1 27 1 2 24 25 24 29 260 18.6
Avg Team 12.0 23.3 0.2 0.1 0.6 1.2 0.1 37.5 1.8 3.6 0.0 31.8 33.8 22.2 26.2 0.3 327.5 23.5
League Total 384 745 6 4 20 38 3 1200 57 114 0 1019 1083 709 838 10 10480 23.5
Avg Tm/G 0.86 1.67 0.01 0.01 0.04 0.09 0.01 2.69 0.13 0.26 0.00 2.28 2.43 1.59 1.88 0.02 23.5

OK, so I looked at the numbers and they rank them in the order I showed, but when you go to PPG, the list is completely different. It is also different when you look at TDs. I have no idea how they ranked Baltimore first.

That list is the top 10 scoring defenses.

Makes sense

The list you posted is top 10 scoring defenses.

We have also played a lot of complete shit offenses

Edit: should have kept reading. Chuck had this point handled

Not sure why the link said it was scoring offenses. Strange, but that makes sense.

It's OK Grandpa, computers are hard.

Agree that's got to be considered, but did you take a look at the Football Outsiders link I posted yesterday regarding their opponent-adjusted defensive rankings? They still had the Colts at 11, even before the Dallas game, but again you'd have to buy into their methodology.

No. I didn’t

o



2 MONTHS LATER (vs. GIANTS, 12/23)


The Colts had a similarly bad defensive game today, just as they did against the Raiders in October.

Also similar to that Raiders game from 2 months ago, they were able to get 3 key stops on the Giants' final 3 possessions of the game ........ the first was when they held them to a field goal to keep it a one-possession game at 27-21, the second was when they made the Giants go 3-and-out when they had them pinned deep in their own territory, and the 3rd culminated in the game-winning INT by Malik Hooker.


o

o


(vs. TITANS, 12/30)


The team needed the defense to have a good game, and they did.

7 out of the 17 points that the Titans scored tonight came against the Colts' offense.



11 TITANS POSSESSIONS


6 Punts

2 INT's

1 Turnover on Downs

1 TD

1 FG

o

o


vs. TEXANS, 1/05 )) (Wildcard Playoff Game)


The Colts' defense had one of their best games of the season.



9 TEXANS POSSESSIONS


5 Punts

2 Turnover on Downs

1 INT

1 TD


o

Awesome game against a Houston offense that was extremely healthy.

To hear the excuses from the announcers you wouldn’t have thought so lol

I haven’t been a big believer in this D and I still have doubts about their ability against a good offense, but they sure as hell keep proving me wrong. Holding any NFL offense to 7 points, especially on the road in the playoffs, is damn good. Hopefully they keep proving me wrong.

I guarantee you Hopkins was healthier than TY

I’d agree with that. Losing Demaryius Thomas definitely hurt them, but by far their biggest issue offensively was Watson’s inaccuracy. He missed a lot of throws a good NFL QB just has to make.

o


vs. CHIEFS, 1/01 )) (Divisional Playoff Game)


The Colts' defense was bad in allowing 2 quick touchdowns to start the game, which set the overall tone for the contest by giving the Chiefs a 14-0 lead in the 1st quarter.

They did manage to keep the Chiefs off the scoreboard in the 2nd half, which kept the Colts' slight glimmer of hope of winning the game alive (the Chiefs scored a TD late in the 4th quarter after the Colts' special teams was called for running into the kicker.)



12 CHIEFS POSSESSIONS


4 Punts (Including one that was Overridden by a Running into the Kicker Call)

1 INT

1 Turnover on Downs

1 Fumble Recovery

4 TD's

1 FG


o

Well, the defense did what I wanted them to do, have at least 6 KC drives result in punt, FG or turnover. They did 7.

Too bad our offense failed to accept the challenge to come play football today.

Walk Worthy,

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

Except TOP was horrible and the second half the Chiefs were doing what the Colts did last week vs. the Texans, playing conservative offense and sitting on a big lead

You can't seriously watch what the D did yesterday and be happy with it.

Not happy with the offense either, but the D was awful in the first half as well and dug the team a hole on the road nothing was getting them out of