I can't say a whole lot here about the game that hasn't already been said. I don't want to write any moratoriums on the 2024 Indianapolis Colts: I just want to talk about the passing game. So let's do it, starting with Anthony Richardson's passing chart from NFL Next Gen Stats:
Another sub-50% completion percentage day, with a ghastly -17.1% CPOE (Completion Percentage Over Expected) to go with 0 TDs and 2 INTs. Certainly not a great look on its face. Some of the advanced numbers paint a slightly better picture, but only by comparison of the actual numbers.
PFF charted Colts receivers with 1 drop, and Richardson with 3 throwaways and 1 Hit As Thrown, bringing his Adjusted Completion Percentage to 52.9%. Again, slightly better, but you're not dreaming of an adjusted completion percentage that just barely clears 50%.
If we look to his pressure numbers, they don't paint a rosier picture. Richardson was kept clean on 51.2% of his dropbacks. On those dropbacks, he went 10/20, 117 yards, 0 TDs and 1 INT for a QB Rating of 47.3.
His under pressure numbers are bad - 7/18, 55 yards, 24.1 QB Rating - but most QBs aren't great under pressure. Still, these are remarkably bad numbers, even by under pressure standards. That can be forgiven if he's operating well when clean, but he wasn't even doing that.
We saw some absolutely beautiful passes. He's at his best when he's able to rip the ball on-time to the middle of the field, and we got a couple of those this week that were stellar.
But we also got some of the same stuff we've been seeing all season: some absolutely baffling misses off throws that should be gimmes.
Some of those misses were due to Richardson pulling the ball down after initially starting to throw. It's something he did multiple times in this game. I think he was concerned about his passes getting batted at the line. Not sure if that was something he looking for in real time or if that was something that came up during preparation for the game, but he did it multiple times.
The Broncos came into the game with 9 batted passes on the season, which put them right in the middle of the league in terms of batted passes.
There are other plays that may be complete, but still feature some wonky timing. This next clip is a result of both Richardson being too quick to set and throw - something we talked about earlier in the season - and Josh Downs [1] with some sticky feet coming out of the break. The result is a completed pass, but the timing of it all is just off.
This one also has the pull-down we saw earlier - to throw around a jumping lineman - which serves to make this look even more awkward than it would be otherwise.
To cap this all off, we got a pair of baffling interceptions.
The first one is an overthrow of Alec Pierce. Richardson has a man in his face and is trying to hit Pierce off a stalk-and-release. Richardson fades back and lofts a ball that floats a little too deep.
It's possible that he thought Pierce was fading with this, but the delay in the release meant the safety could drive on it, so the best case scenario is a jump-ball with Pierce against a safety who is beating you to the spot. Not great.
The second one is a bad decision and a bad throw. The Broncos rotate to Cover 2 after the snap and Richardson is throwing a shallow corner route. There's no window for this throw, but Richardson tries it anyway. He gives a pump fake to try to draw the underneath defender in on the slant route from the outside, but it doesn't work.
The throw is flat and the underneath defender easily picks it off.
The Broncos have a good defense this year. Per FTN's DVOA, they're the 3rd best defense, with the 6th best passing defense. So this wasn't an easy game for the Colts offense by any stretch of the imagination, but so many of these wounds feel self-inflicted. This felt like what we were seeing out of Richardson before he was benched.
With three games remaining and the playoffs merely a dream at this point (a 13% chance), I don't expect to see any major steps taken by Richardson during the rest of the 2024 season. Get his confidence up and work as hard as possible during the offseason to fix some of these issues. The talent is still eye-popping, but at some point he needs to start harnessing it. As it stands right now, he doesn't feel any closer than he did at the start of the season.
Albums listened to: Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden; Soccer Mommy - Evergreen