brownalytics
CLEVELANd (1-0)
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​Indianapolis (0-1)
Saturday, August 17th 2019
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Indianapolis, in
​Indianapolis and Cleveland resume their preseason slates this week with a Saturday night tilt that falls on the heels of two inter-squad practices on Wednesday and Thursday. This week should result in better looks against an opposing defense for starters who are likely to get very limited time in the actual game again. An underrated aspect of shared practice time, especially from the Browns perspective, is evaluating how players react to unfamiliar circumstances. It's also a challenge for a newly-assembled coaching staff to provide leadership and structure for their team during a week removed from the norms that have started to set in since camp opened a few weeks back. If the Browns are able to exhibit the same crisp play on both offense and defense that they did against Washington last week, it's an indication that the players and coaches are starting to become a cohesive unit at this point of preparation for the 2019 season.
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Overview:
Similar to the Browns, the Indianapolis Colts enter the 2019 season in a far better place than they were at this time last year. For one, their franchise QB's ability to throw objects is no longer a staple on ESPN's 'Bottom Line' every day (Update: Luck's "small little bone" now leads several sports talk shows). Further, they've got an exciting team on both sides of the ball, a clear, value-oriented strategy on the personnel side, and a coach in Frank Reich who seems to embrace the marginal value of the passing game in today's NFL. Similar to the Browns on paper, the Colts' aims this year have to be competing for an AFC Championship. The practical difference here is that the Colts were contenders last season, finishing 10-6 and winning a wild card match-up before losing in the divisional playoff to an excellent Kansas City squad. The Colts are subjectively more "on schedule" as a franchise than the Browns are, and should be a more worthwhile measuring stick in week two of the preseason.
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So how exactly should we expect the Colts to test Cleveland in their preseason game this week?
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Offensive Ranks:
The Browns defense was the flashier unit on balance in week one, but a strong argument can be made that Washington was a poor test (even for a preseason opponent) due to their unimaginative offensive philosophy and serious uncertainty at the QB position. Indianapolis will be a better test, as is evidenced by the numbers they put up in 2018. First and foremost, the Colts protect their QB extremely well, ranking first in sack allowance metrics. This is helped a bit by Andrew Luck's ability to get the ball out of his hands quickly (Luck ranked 9th of 39 qualifying QB's in NFL Next Gen Stats's "Time to Throw" metric in 2018), but the point is that relying on pressure to slow this team down is likely not a winning formula. Beyond sack avoidance, the Colts rank top quarter or top half in the league in a host of important metrics that help to predict wins from week to week; points, passing and 3d conversions are all strengths for this Colts team. Weaknesses for this Colts offense are few, but the rushing game stands out as an issue that *could* be an exploitable fault. If the Colts' play calling tendencies (more on those below) and rushing success match what they put up in 2018, a team defending in a heavy nickel package (like the 2019 Browns) could solve for coverage and run support in equal measure against this offense, reducing the Colts' ability to "surprise" the Browns' defense by exploiting mismatches in the passing game on downs where more conservative play callers tend to run the ball.
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Defensive Ranks:
The Colts finished 2018 ranking top half in the league in 12 of the 18 box score categories tracked in the chart above; not bad at all. Notable defensive strengths are against the run, point scoring allowance, first down allowance, and high variance activities in 4th down conversion allowance and turnover generation. Weaknesses seem to be related to the passing game as Pass YPA, sacks and completion percentage allowed by this defense all ranked bottom half of the league in 2018. To address this, the team invested heavily in the secondary on draft weekend, selecting Temple CB Rock Ya-Sin in the second round as well as safeties Marvell Tell and Khari Willis in an effort to bolster the group. Correspondingly, Justin Houston arrives via trade from Kansas City to reinforce Indy's pass rush. Considering the heights that this group reached in 2018, Colts fans are right to be bullish on this team being a strong contender in the AFC.
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Playcalling Tendencies:
Frank Reich's first year at the helm of Indianapolis evidenced a distinctly pass-first style as the Colts led the league in first down passing rate in 2018. This is an important tendency. Since the 2009 season, pass plays on average result in 6.3 yards per play, while running the ball results in only 4.4 yards per play. Going further, recent research by The Athletic's Ben Baldwin shows that this 2.1 yard difference is important to predicting touchdown probability on a particular drive. According to Ben's findings, a team gaining 6.3 yards on 1st & 10 would flip their touchdown probability from about 24% to over 28% versus a team gaining 4.4 yards on that same first down play. This may seem insignificant at first glance, but it's an edge in a league where points lead to wins and wins are hard to come by. Historically speaking, passing is more likely to gain this edge for your team than running is.
In the red zone, the Colts become marginally more conservative as air space is limited by the boundaries of the field and this falls in line with league wide tendencies.
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Offensive Effectiveness:
By EPA, we can see that the Colts' passing attack was most dangerous up the middle of the field in 2018. We also can see that they spread the ball out well in terms of both target depth and target location (i.e. Left/Mid/Right side of the field). All in all, the chart above evidences a highly efficient passing attack in Indianapolis.
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Continuing to look at the passing game, if you've watched the Colts in recent years (or just had him on your fantasy team) it's no surprise that T.Y. Hilton jumps off the charts for ADoT and EPA as the Colts' best overall target. What is very interesting about this chart is the grouping of receivers who were targeted at around 10 yards of target depth, followed by a smaller group targeted around 6-7 yards, followed primarily by backs who were targeted closer to the LOS fairly consistently. The levels of this offense, and Andrew Luck's ability to spread the ball around, become apparent again here. Targeting the area between 5-15 yards in target depth consistently and with a number of receivers seems to be one of the hallmarks of a truly modern NFL offense.
The Colts didn't fare very well rushing the ball in 2018 and this is surprising given the quality of their Offensive line. In terms of directional productivity, we see that YPA was above average to most gaps in the line and that EPA/Att was mostly positive as well. Success Rate is a bit low in about half of the lanes (Hist. Avg: 37%), which could evidence that the Colts only really rushed on expected rushing downs, but a more detailed analysis would be needed to investigate that theory.
​Defensive Effectiveness:
Indy's pass defense was a weak spot last year, and they invested a few picks in the 2nd - 5th rounds of the drafts in an attempt to upgrade there. Justin Houston adding pressure on opposing offenses in tandem with ex-Brown Jabaal Sheard won't hurt at all either. The Colts seem weakest when targeted down the whole right side of the field, yielding at least above average EPA to opposing offenses on these targets in aggregate. Short throws of 1-10 yards were completed against the Colts at a high rate, but EPA didn't follow, evidencing a strong Linebacker and/or Safety corps, which isn't surprising given the presence of Darius Leonard and Malik Hooker in both of these position groups.
The Colts' rushing defense seems weakest along the left side of their defensive line. The team will hope that additions Justin Houston and depth signing Margus Hunt can help in this regard, but there is no evidence of the team making a very concerted effort to upgrade their run defense in the 2019 off season. It's likely that the Colts will remain content to allow a certain amount of success to opponents in the run game in 2019 while focusing efforts on stopping the passing attack more reliably.
Sources:
1. Horowitz, Maksim, Ventura, Sam & Yurko, Ron (2016). NFLScrapr; Rstats package for accessing NFL play-by-play data, providing expected points and win probability estimate. Retrieved 8/9/2019.
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2. Pro Football Reference. Retrieved from https://www.pro-football-reference.com; 8/4/2019
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3. Ourlads NFL Scouting Services. Retrieved from https://www.ourlads.com/nfldepthcharts/depthchart/WAS; Retrieved 8/4/2019.
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4. @benbaldwin (2019, Aug. 2). "Versions of success rate that count gaining 4 yards on 1st & 10 as a successful play are #wrong. This is why@nflscrapR's EPA model has most 4-yard gains on 1st & 10 as negative-EPA plays". Retrieved from https://twitter.com/benbbaldwin/status/1157338817348734976?s=20