Things didn’t get off to the expected start for the Indianapolis Colts Week 1 of the NFL season. The Colts traveled to Buffalo to face the new-look Bills. Indy was a road favorite according to the betting lines, but in retrospect, the validation made sense. The Colts were coming off of three consecutive 11-win seasons and two straight AFC South division titles. They entered with arguably the most talented quarterback in the league and a revamped offense with improved weaponry.
Meanwhile, Buffalo was entering Week 1 having not made the playoffs once this century, with a new head coach (Rex Ryan), a new starting running back playing less than 100 percent (LeSean McCoy) and a brand new starting quarterback who had had just 35 previous passing attempts during his four-year career (Tyrod Taylor). Things were looking up for Indianapolis.
And yet, the game followed a different arc. The Bills took a 17-0 lead into halftime and won convincingly, 27-14. Taylor was very good against the Colts defense, completing 73.7 percent of his passes and finishing with a 123.8 quarterback rating. The Bills ground attack gained close to on 4.1 per carry, and the offensive line didn’t give up a single sack.
Of course, the Colts’ bread and butter has been offense for a while, which made what Buffalo’s defense did to Indy the most alarming part of the afternoon.
Andrew Luck threw the ball 49 times, not even averaging per attempt. He threw two picks, was sacked twice and generally had a hard time of things. The new running game was hardly better. Frank Gore averaged less than per carry in his first game with his new team, as did the entire Colts team against Buffalo’s front.
Indy’s loss may have simply stated that Buffalo is a force to be reckoned with this season. However, it may have instead stated that the Colts aren’t what we imagined they would be. It will take another game or two to find the truth.
Indianapolis’ next test comes Monday night when the Colts host the New York Jets in Week 2. At home, Indy has vacillated between a 6.5 and 7-point favorite over New York. This seems to be in line with what we expected of each team entering the season. It also seems to ignore what we witnessed in Week 1.
While Indy struggled mightily against the Buffalo defense, the Jets handled their business impressively against the Browns. The Cleveland Browns are certainly not on the level of Indianapolis, especially on the offensive side, but New York took it to them. Cleveland used two quarterbacks after starter Josh McCown got injured, but he and Johnny Manziel combined for just , one touchdown and one interception. On the ground, the Browns ran it 28 times but averaged a putrid per carry. The Jets also finished with three sacks, the pick and four forced fumbles on the day.
If that is the unit Indy is about to face then the Colts are just, as the saying goes, moving from the frying pan into the fire. New York will likely be without starting cornerback Antonio Cromartie for this contest, but every team has injuries. This will be a real test for Indianapolis to see if the offense is everything it’s cracked up to be.
The thing with Indy that no one wants to admit is that it’s hard to get an accurate picture of this team’s dominance because of the awful division it is and has been playing in. Many consider the AFC South the weakest division in football. Last year, the Colts won it by two games over Houston while the two remaining squads combined for just five wins. In 2013, Indy again rolled to the division title, this time by four games over second-place Tennessee. The bottom two teams won just six total games that season. When Indy and Houston both had stellar seasons in 2012, the division still contained a bottom-feeder as Jacksonville went 2-14, tying for the worst record in football. Over the three-year time frame, Indianapolis went 16-2 in the 18 games within its own division.
Since the Colts have had such an easy go of divisional games for a few years running now, outsiders have a hard time pinpointing their overall skills. Are they actually elite as their record would indicate, or have they just been feasting on inferior foes? A slow climb up the playoff standings each of the past three seasons seems to neither prove nor disprove the argument. They haven’t really been over- or underachieving but rather moving through at a snail’s pace.
Football Outsiders has a summary stat that attempts to rank teams in terms of how they perform in all situations compared to a league baseline. The stat, DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average), ranked the Colts as just the 13th-best team in football last year despite tying for the sixth-best record. The year prior, they were again ranked 13th despite tying for the sixth-most wins. And in 2012, when they went 11-5, DVOA had them ranked 25th in football. This is just one system and one set of numbers, but it goes to explain somewhat how the team may be overvalued in a larger sense.
If the offense doesn’t turn things around Week 2, the Colts will be seen as a mediocre team, even if they still go on to top the pedestrian division they reside in.
