The Colts' Defense, 2018

[Chaka]

Originally Posted by NoLuck4Chuck

I will say what they did against Dallas was impressive. If they make playoffs that's what the D will have to bring.

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).