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