So, what's the over/under for rushing yards against Indy when Jacksonville takes them on in Jacksonville?

Interesting that Kansas City (namely Herm Edwards) is lambasted for his gameplan against the Colts in the playoffs. It is a fact that LJ only got 13 carries; however, when those 13 carries produce only 32 yards its hard to sustain drives. Point of fact, KC had ZERO first downs in the entire first half of this game. How do you expect LJ to get more carries if he is constantly stuffed at the line of scrimmage? Its impossible to get more carries when you go 3 and out EVERY series. KC's second half stategy was more pass heavy because they were behind on the scoreboard AND because the runs were still proving to be completly useless. For this reason I thinks Herm's gameplan was primarily dictated by the results on the field.

The bigger problem for KC was the total lack of prduction by Trent Green. I sat there in stunned dis-belief that Herm did not replace Green at any point during the game. I dont know how he can justify leaving Green in the game when he was literally tripping over his own feet.

On page two of PFP 2007, Aaron Schatz states:
"If their overall yards per carry are equal, a running back who consistently gains yardage on every play is more valuable than a boom-and-bust running back who is frequently stuffed at the line but occasionally breaks a highlight-worthy run."
The problem with this analysis of the Colts run defense is a failure to apply this principle.
-Ravens game: In the 'Any Given Sunday' article on the Ravens game, Ned Macey points out "18 yards [by Jamal Lewis] came on one impressive run. The other 12 runs averaged less than three yards per carry. It's stated that Baltimore only ran six times in the second half, but it isn't mentioned that those six runs only got 17 yards (although to be fair, some were in short yardage). And the attempt by the author to make it sound like Baltimore was starting to roll at the end of the first half with 'twelve yards on two carries' (from the 20 yard line against a prevent defense that needed to run out 55 seconds) is simply disingenuous, and makes it seem like the author is cherry-picking facts.
-Patriots game: Maroney had 13 yards on eight carries; enough said. Dillon had 48 on seven, but again, most came on one play (35 yards on 4th and 1); he otherwise had a 2.2 yards per carry average. Kevin Faulk did have a good game (27 on four).
-Bears game: The author makes two points to 'show' that the Bears had success running the ball; Thomas Jones had 88 yards on thirteen carries and he had a 52 yard run. The fact that the author made these statements without noticing the obvious problem is ironic. If one run was for 52 yards, the other twelve were for 36, a 3.0 average.
Summing it all up, the author could have checked the DVOA and VOA for each game, as those would have capped the effect of the long runs on the overall average.

Good analysis. But one observation regarding Jones in the SB: Outside the huge run in the first quarter, he only had 36 yards on 12 carries. Granted, you might want to keep going back to him, figuring he could break another one. But, given they were behind and time of possession was going against them, it's easy to see why the Bears might have gotten antsy and started worrying about scoring quickly.

Bionicman beat me to it!

Longest EP lead-in ever!

"Hey, let’s run Larry Johnson only 13 times against a sieve, despite the fact that we ran him 416 times during the season"

Astute observers of football long ago noticed how hard it is to hand the ball of to a RB when he's standing on the sideline watching his defense play.

(A glance at the play-by-play will show that KC got Johnson the ball early and often; i.e. his low number of carries were not the result of the game plan, as pointed out in comment 2 above.)

I'm probably oversimplifying everything by saying this, but I was never a Manning fan because he always played like he was after stats. The SB run was the first time I ever saw him play ball control.

I respectfully disagree with much of this article, or at least find it superfluous.

The reason that the Colts defense was "so much better" against the run (other than simple variance maybe being a reason it was bad to a record-breaking degree), was simply because they could be. By that I mean, as the article does point out, that the Colts were able to play with eight guys in the box throughout the playoffs.

That's it. It's very simple. They stacked the run and stopped it. The article says that the Chiefs and Ravens derelicted their running backs because they didn't give it to them enough. No. More carries does not simply mean more production.

The issue, as I've argued elsewhere, was that none of these teams posed a sufficient outside or downfield threat.

- http://smartfootball.blogspot.com/2006/07/runpass-balance-and-little-gam...

- http://smartfootball.blogspot.com/2006/07/runpass-balance-response-to-co...

Further, time of possession and "consecutive offensive plays" mean very little. Time of possession and "consecutive plays" only matters insofar as (a) the Colts already had the lead, and (b) were thus trying to shorten the game. It is an immutable fact in football that you trade possessions. So if I run 10 plays and take 7 minutes off the clock and kick a field goal and you score a TD in one play, you have the advantage. Yes you can get into fatigue issues but I find all this fatigue talk at the Pro level overrated. At least the phenomenon is dwarfed by the strategic and structural concerns.

This is why time of possession is meaningless but turnovers can so often tell you who won a game: turnovers are the only way around the rule that teams get the same number of "possessions," or bites at the scoring apple, throughout a given game.

What is the best evidence for my conclusion as compared to yours? Look at the New England Patriots. What did they do in the offseason? Did they add big olinemen to grind the clock out more? A second back to complement Maroney? They did a few things on defense.

But no. What they did was try to add sheer speed on the outside. We will have to see how their offensive gels this year, but I am convinced that Belichick saw lots of 8 man fronts out of the Colts and is convinced that putting a bunch of 4.4 guys out there is the best - and the only way - to get the Colts to take a guy out of the box.

This makes a fantasy point as well. I think Maroney will have a very good year, assuming the other parts come together. Even if he gets the same number of carries, his YPC "should" go up. (Yes I saw the article about the average second year back.) See the articles I pasted for my arguments why.

I agree with Bionicman substantially, but have one quibble (not sure if it's enough to argue): Indy's run defense through most of the year was like it was in the AFCC and SB: 2 yards, 3 yards, 16 yards. 2 yards, -1 yard, 3 yards, 37 yards. Now why that is, I cannot say--either good opponent adjustments, or they stopped stacking the box. And clearly teams like Jax were the exception.

I was not able to watch every game, but when I did, I was climbing out of my skin as they'd stop the first two or three runs, and then get gashed for two consecutive 11-yarders.

As a 3+ decade Colt fan, all I can say is I hope the mystery turnaround gets Ron Meeks a head coaching offer somewhere. I know he helped deliver us a Lombardi Trophy, and I am sure he's a great guy, but I don't have too much faith in him. Something about that old cliche: "burn me once, shame on you; burn me 45 times out of 50 games... hit the road, dirtbag."

Clearly, the Colts defense is clutch, and it shows from their playoff performance of this year. They also know how to step it up in key situations, and are big game players.

"However, as Aaron Schatz pointed out in the Colts chapter of Pro Football Prospectus 2007, the defense allowed more yards per carry in the four regular season games Sanders played (5.55) than in the 12 he didn’t (5.27)."

That's because the four games he played in were skewed by a game with Vince Young. The Falcons and the Titans are tops in the league in yards/carry because they have scrambling QBs. Second, although Travis Henry had a good yards/carry average against the Bob Sanders Colts, he had a very poor game in DPAR, because all of his yardage came on two runs, and he fumbled on one of those two runs. Who forced the fumble? Bob Sanders.

Additionally, that choice of four games doesn't include the playoff run where Bob Sanders played and the defense was its most effective. The figure cited by Aaron is a cherrypicked small sample size that doesn't account for opponent adjustments.

"This is why time of possession is meaningless but turnovers can so often tell you who won a game: turnovers are the only way around the rule that teams get the same number of “possessions,� or bites at the scoring apple, throughout a given game."

I agreed with everything you said except that. end of half, end of game is HUGE. I play video football, if I'm playing someone better than me, I run the time to a point where I always verify I get +1 possession with all things being equal.

This is highly important, and is generally ignored how much affect you actually have on this.

RE 11:

You win the thread. That was great.

I prefer #4: Blind Luck That They Didn't Play San Diego.

Beating Baltimore and Kansas City wasn't a huge surprise. They weren't good running teams. Beating New England was impressive, but it's not like the game wasn't close!

#9: If you could control time-of-possession, it would be helpful since it means you can set the pace of the game. Better teams actually want longer games, not shorter (look at every game the Colts lost last year, specifically the Houston game) since weird stuff happens in short games. But you can't really control time of possession without dominating the other team, so it's pointless.

I don't really think this is entirely magic - the Colts defense played a bit better, but they faced ideal opponents and a fair amount of luck. Had the Patriots gotten one first down on their second-to-last possession (and that penalty by Evans might've doomed that), that game would've been over.

Heck, if the Patriots would've run the ball a bit more on their second and third-to-last possessions, it probably would've finished off the Colts, too.

Of the 5 opponents in the entire playoff field with top-10 rushing and passing offenses by DVOA, they faced one, and very nearly lost. Last year was a textbook example of why getting lucky with opponent selection in the playoffs is such a huge thing.

a) Great, great writeup, Doug.

aa) #6 -- LOL! I spose it's more of a blog item, with a link to the Indy Star, than a real EP.

b) In the actual article, that was the worst mis-use of "Kafka-esque" I've ever read.

c) #2 -- even considering your point, which I considered while the Colts-Chiefs game was going on, I was lambasting Herm for his gameplan, because despite what you're saying -- I'd have to actually go back and watch again to be 100% sure -- but my immediate impression, and my lasting impression, of the Chiefs' strategy was that they seemed to run the same exact LJ up the middle/left guard play every single 1st & 2nd down, to the tune of 32 yards and zero first downs. In principle you're making a good point but it isn't correct for this situation because Herm's gameplan wasn't hamfisted *only* because of the 13 for 32.

Lots of vary interesting disagreement with Doug's analysis here.

#2 and #3 are really only meaningful when considered in the context of total number of posessions. By getting the last posession of the half, AND having very few overall posessions in the game, the Colts managed to get the bigger share of a small set of posessions, which magnifies the effect.

re: 16,

I was wondering when someone would bring up the specific playcalling of KC and Baltimore. As explained in the EPC - Colts Run Defense article from last year, the Colts got gashed consistently last year on draws and other misdirection plays. Both KC and Baltimore seemed to miss this in their game plan.

Belichick didn't put together the greatest game plan of his career IMO, but let's be honest - the Pats offense was not the problem that game. 34 points would have been enough to win any other playoff game the Pats have played since 2001.

#17, stating the total # of points the Pats scored (34) is really only meaningful when considered in the contex of the game. 7 of those points were directly scored by the defense, and at least one other score(perhaps 2, I cant remember exactly?) was the result of a long kick-off return. I dont think the Pats offense has that much to be proud of from the AFCC. They could have (should have) put that game away when the they had the chance(s).

#8: You mean like touchdowns and points?

"Stopping the run" is enormously overrated. Even if the Colts' D didn't rise to the occasion, that doesn't mean they would have lost.

The second worst run D in 2006 was NO. In fact most of last year's playoff teams were below average in defensive run efficiency.

The league's very best run D belonged to MIN. It didn't translate into many wins for them.

For the full list and some number crunching:

http://www.bbnflstats.com/2007/03/importance-of-run-defense.html

#2 - LJ got the ball early and often but it wasn't used by KC to set anything up. It was just dumb ass run it at the wall type of game plan. Green was not capable of leading the KC O in that game.
#20 - Brian has, in my humble opinion, created a most interesting QB rating on his site. It might be the best one yet.

Pat, didn't the Colts outplay the Patriotss in DVOA? Yes it was a close game, but I think the Colts had a decent advantage in the nontraditional statistics.

#22: Game-by-game DVOA doesn't tell you if they were outplayed, since there are opponent adjustments (it doesn't matter that New England's offense "should have" done better against Indy - what matters is how they did). I don't know what the VOA for each team was for that game.

Even if there was a bit of a margin, though, it doesn't really matter - I guarantee it was a smaller margin than the first two games. And the important question to ask is "if the Colts would have faced four of that level of challenge, would they have won?" I think the answer is "much less likely."

I agree that the Colts would not have won four in a row against the Patriots or teams of that caliber, but that's a loaded question, since it's my guess that no team in the NFL could do that.

Look at the other teams that lost in the playoffs, the Chargers did lose to the Patriots, despite a vastly superior performance, and you already touched on the Ravens. Both were "better" than the teams who beat them, but that stuff happens in the playoffs a lot.

Also, you have to be lucky in the playoffs. Usually the champion only has to beat two elite teams, in the conference championship and the Super Bowl.

I still think the Colts defense improved in the playoffs. In the regular season *everyone* was able to run on them, even the bad offenses. In the playoffs they shut down some good running games, regardless of the tactics their opponents used.

Don't foget, the Colts beat the Patriots in the regular season, in Foxboro, with the same crappy defense they had all year. So who's to say they couldnt beat a team "of that level" multiple times in the playoffs?

Don,

There's absolutely no reason that they *couldn't* do so. It's just unlikely. It would have been unlikely for any team to pull it off.

As San Diego's extremely unlucky loss to the Patriots illustrates, there's a fair bit of luck involved in any given game. You have to be a lot better than the teams you face to minimize that effect.

All of this takes absolutely nothing away from Indy's championship. It's simply the reality of NFL playoff football, particularly in the salary cap era.

Doktarr, I agree with everything you are saying. I was just responding to Pat's comments, which specifically stated the Colts were not likely to beat several high level teams in a row. To me, his comment implies that the Colts were the beneficiaries of an ususally easy playoff schedule.

Pat, your anti-Colts agenda is so transparently obvious....in the future, why don't you just post "Pat was here" on Colts articles and save yourself the trouble of creating such "analysis" like:

"luck", "lucky", Pats hindsight play calling

and

"if the Colts would have faced four of that level of challenge, would they have won?� I think the answer is “much less likely.�

As if any team in the history of the league has had to face 4 teams of the caliber of the 2006 Pats to win the SB.