Colts’ Week 18 QB Analysis: Like anybody cares.

Thanks to the nflFastR project, Pro Football Focus and NFL NextGen Stats for the timely sources of data.

For those of you new to this, I will publish key QB stats each week judging how well the upcoming opponent QB has performed. Yes, O-Line, receivers, and play-calling impact these numbers but they are primarily QB measures. I will probably modify the charts throughout the season. Commentary will be brief but feel free to let me know in the comments that stats aren’t everything. (click charts for larger view)

It’s pretty fitting that Joe Flacco wraps an 8-9 season with a performance that is best described as . . . “ it’s fine”.

HOW WELL?

Flacco had no turnovers, so his only big negative play was a 4th & 1 sack, but he didn’t have many positive plays either, so his overall EPA was below 0. That also led to a low Pass Success Rate.

He was basically average in the most important stats.

HOW FAR?

He had too many incompletions on the day, although some deeper passes made up for that to give him a decent yards per attempt.

His depth of targets and completions remained high this week.

TO WHO?

He did a good job of spreading the ball around.

HOW ACCURATE?

Flacco again got rid of the ball quickly.

HOW FAST?

He didn’t hold on to the ball long especially given his depth of targets. On the year, Time to Throw was not an issue for either QB.

TO WHERE?

Flacco avoided the middle of the field like the plague. Probably not a good thing.

DASHBOARD

(Use the right-left arrows to toggle between stats for the week and the season).

• This was a run heavy game on a day when the run game was working (26th edp, 3rd arsr).
• Flacco was not pressured much at all and relative to his time to throw, that implies very good protection (16th pr%, 9th ttt).
• He threw it deep, but had trouble connecting on many attempts (3rd adot, 24th cmp%)
• YAC was low, but given the depth it was more than expected (21st yac, 14th yacoe), which helped boost his yards per attempt (14th ypa)
• He dealt with pressure by throwing the ball away, but he took a few sacks too (4th ta%, 9th sck%). Given the little pressure he saw, he abandoned too many plays, which was a drag on his overall yardage efficiency (11th aa%, 16th ny/d).
• He didn’t throw many first downs or TDs, which caused a dip in overall EPA efficiency (23rd 1st%, 24th td%, 22nd EPA/d)

It was a C- performance in a game that didn’t need much from the passing game.