For the first time this season http://www.thecoltsfootballauthentic.com/andrew-luck-jersey-authentic , the entire left side of the offensive line was healthy. bination of Anthony Castonzo, Quenton Nelson and Ryan Kelly would perform. The hope has been that the trio could do a lot to keep the pocket clean for Andrew Luck and to open big holes for ball carriers.At a high level view, this starting group surrendered no sacks and blocked for a ground game that averaged 5.5 yards per carry. This is certainly the type of statistical production the Colts were hoping for when they picked two offensive linemen very early in the 2018 NFL Draft.As we do each week, we will break down how rookie Quenton Nelson performed against the Jets. Spending the sixth overall pick on a guard is certainly not common practice and so I am curious to see if and how Nelson can live up to his draft billing. This week is particularly interesting given that one play seems to have defined his game, so we will start with reviewing that play and see if concern is legitimate.If you have a Twitter account and follow the Colts you’ve had a chance to become very familiar with this play. It was originally displayed from a broadcast angle and looked embarrassing for Nelson. From the sideline, it looked like Nelson was completely destroyed by Jets defensive lineman Leonard Williams (#92). Fun story about Williams, he was the sixth overall pick in the 2015 NFL Draft.Once the end zone camera angle became available there are a few things we can determine about the play. There is no doubt that Williams stunting with Henry Anderson (#96) was particularly effective. Nelson would have had to re-anchor no matter what happened after Williams got up into his shoulders. It is also clear that something bad happened after initial contact, which led Nelson to completely lose his balance. William’s initial blow created momentum to Nelson’s outside but that momentum suddenly stops, which leads to Nelson falling completely backward with no resistance. The second pause highlights where Nelson trips after his foot collides with Ryan Kelly to his inside, he may have been stepped on — it is hard to clearly see from the film. Ultimately, no — Quenton Nelson didn’t get completely embarrassed or otherwise destroyed by Leonard Williams. His inside foot/ankle clearly got tangled with Ryan Kelly.It is also clear from this view of the film that, despite Twitter rants and nonsensical arguments with Colts.com writing staff, Williams had no impact on the outcome of the play. It has been suggested that his “pressure” caused Luck to make a bad throw and that Nelson was to blame. In reality, Nelson’s trip surprised Williams and sent him to the turf. The film shows that Luck locked on to Chester Rogers on a crossing route when he saw that he had a step on the defender, and had cleared the middle linebacker. He didn’t see Darron Lee at all and led Rogers with a throw that was easily picked off. Luck doesn’t even look at Williams or acknowledge him while he is on the ground 2 1鈦? yards away.As is customary in our film review pieces, I like to start with snaps that display the weakest performance first. On this play, Nelson is lined up across from Williams and loses to a lateral move. He is left chasing. Fortunately, Luck gets rid of the ball before Williams becomes a factor. In fact, I don’t think Luck had any idea he was there. Still, this is a bad rep for Nelson and could have otherwise led to a hit or sack.After all of the attention that Nelson received for the first play in our series, it would make sense if fans had the impression that Williams had his way with Nelson all day. We will see that this is entirely inaccurate. On this play, Williams and Nelson face each other one-on-one. Nelson controls Williams throughout the entire play. Luck ends up throwing the ball essentially over Williams but don’t let this give you to the impression that Williams was effective. He was driven out of the pocket and had a wall in front of him. Luck had tons of room and chose to throw to his right.Here is another example where Williams attempt to make an outside move on Nelson, this time on a slant. He is met immediately and gets forced wide left of the pocket. Luck feels no pressure from Williams here.While I traditionally reserve all of the weak plays for the beginning of a film review Youth Denico Autry Jersey , I wanted to show Nelson and Williams first. Here we see a stunt that attacks the left side of the line and causes some confusion. You will notice that Nelson and Kelly get a little tied up here but pressure comes into Luck’s face when it should have been handled more efficiently. I also noted that Anthony Castonzo pushed the blocker into Nelson, which may have helped knock him off balance.Either way, not a great pass blocking snap.Unlike the previous play, we see a stunt across the line by Leonard Williams and Nelson is ready to engage him right away. He forces him wide of the pocket and allows Luck to make a clean throw.Anderson and Williams stunt across Ryan Kelly’s face on this play but with a much different outcome. Nelson anchors effectively and keeps Williams from making progress into the pocket. Luck gets the ball out before taking a hit after an effective bull rush against Castonzo.If the first play in this film review created concerns about Nelson’s anchor or strength, this should help. Nelson faces Henry Anderson one-on-one on this play. Remember that Anderson has been effective with the Jets and has earned some attention in the media for his efforts.Here, rookie Nelson mirrors and anchors throughout the entire snap. Luck throws a pass short after he gets to his third read but Nelson had Anderson under control in front of him.This is another example of a match-up between Nelson and Anderson. Once again, Nelson takes Anderson’s best shot and redirects him out of the pocket and leaves him grasping to try to impact Lucks’ throw. This is another example of Nelson winning a one-on-one battle. This time he mirrors the entire way and ends up getting the defensive lineman to over-commit before smashing him to the turf.ANALYSISThe reality is that Quenton Nelson faced another challenging day with Leonard Williams and Henry Anderson both capable of pressuring the quarterback. The two have combined for 5.5 sacks this season and left Sunday’s game without improving that number.There are a couple of plays where Nelson struggled a bit. He allowed pressure on a stunt and clearly got beat by a lateral move by Williams early in the game. He also tripped and now has to address a rather embarrassing piece of film that has been used to suggest that he was manhandled and easily tossed to the turf. Despite these challenges, Luck was not sacked on the day.More importantly, much of the day saw Nelson getting the best of Williams and Anderson. He took on stunts, slants, and bull rush attempts effectively. He kept the pocket clean throughout the majority of the game and had another impressive success rate when the game was over. Nothing about the Jets game creates reason for concern about Nelson or indicates that he is not having a positive impact on the game.Indianapolis Colts by the Numbers: Week 2 Offensive Stats Every week, I will present a summary of some basic and advanced stats for the Colts performance relative to the league. Thanks to Pro Football Reference, NFL.com and the nflSCrapR project as the sources of weekly data.If I could only have one stat to measure a team by, it would be the highly under-rated Drive Success rate (DSR). DSR is basically the percentage of a team’s down series that are converted to a first down or a TD.DSR = (First Downs + TDs) / (# of Drives + First Downs)It is one of the best stats there is to both explain how an offense performed as well as predict performance in future games, but unfortunately it is not an intuitive stat. In week 2, the Colts put up a 70.8% DSR but that probably doesn’t mean anything to most football fans. Therefore, I have built a drive detail graphic to help flesh the number out visually.OK tell me that graphic isn’t awesome.There is a lot of detail, but let’s walk through a bit of the Colts week 2.Each bar represents the team’s drives in top-down order, with the starting field position on the left and the ending field position on the right. Therefore, the length of the bar represents the drives net yards, which is the numbers in white.Just looking at the relative length of the bars, you can get a feel for the success of each drive.Drive 1: awesome. Drive 2: not so much.DSR basically measures the relative length of drives.The Colts had three 75 yard TD drives and one 58 yard drive that ended with a fluky pick.That is what good offenses do (not the pick). They also had 5 drives in a row without a first down. That is what bad offenses do. The mixed bag of results is why the Colts 70.8% DSR is just a bit above league average (68%) and not as good as the previous week’s 72%.TEAM TOTALSThese are the numbers for week 2 only (I’m hoping to have season totals added by next week).I have added a few metrics since last time that I think help builds out the narrative of the game.At 2.1 adjusted points per drive (drives with QB kneels removed), the offense did better than league average but just barely (just like DSR!). An above average DSR and a below average yards per play (4.7) Womens Matthias Farley Jersey , means that the Colts did not get their points with big plays. And that is backed up by the first down conversion metrics. The % of non-penalty first downs per play (25%) is below what other teams are doing. That could be a sign of a bad team or it could point to a team that runs shorter plays and pushes it’s conversions to 3rd downs. Well, what do you know, the third down conversion rate of 56.3% was 2nd best this week. Combine that with last week’s league best 64% and either the Colts are getting very lucky on 3rd downs or they are putting themselves in an easier position to convert. Average 3rd Down Yards to GainTeamWeek 1Week 2TotalTeamWeek 1Week 2TotalThe Colts have the 3rd lowest 3rd down yardage situations in the league.That’s a dink and dunk offense.Combined with a high 3rd down conversion rate, it’s a dink and dunk offense executing well. PASSINGSorted by ANY/A, Luck has a very poor mark this week, finishing 29th of all QBs.That is primarily driven by the 2 picks and the short yardage play calls. His completion rate of 67.7% is pretty high, but it’s completely due to a near league low 4.3 average depth of target. That is very low and probably can’t sustain a successful game unless your defense steps up . . . hmmmmm.As low as Luck’s aDot is, his air yards per completion is even lower at 2.7. That is a big red flag in my book as it implies that you aren’t connecting on the longer passes you do throw.Luckily the above average 5.9 YAC helps make up for that a little bit.But even combined his Yards per Attempt was only 5.8. That is . . . bad. Like lose a lot of games bad. I don’t see this offense scoring a lot of points unless they can get a little more depth out of the passing game.RUSHINGI have sorted this table by weighted Rush Success Rate as that is the most correlated to and predictive of wins than any of the other run stats presented.Indy’s week 2 is about average, with a 29% wRSR. The unweighted RSR show that about 39% of all runs were “successful”: defined as a TD, first down, 45% of yards to gain on 1st down or 60% of yards to gain on 2nd down.Since the weighted stat is lower that means that a lot of that success came from 1st and 2nd down gains (which are weighted lower).Excluding QB kneels, 24 of the Colts 26 carriescame on 1st or 2nd down.That’s neither good nor bad but it is encouraging that we are at least average in some running measure.CONCLUSIONThe DSR points to an offense that is working in aggregate, but the extremely low yardage plays are concerning. Basically, the Colts margin for error is much thinner than other teams.If 3rd down conversions start to dip, we haven’t shown that we have the explosive play ability to make up for it.It will look a lot like the middle of the Washington game, where there were 5 successive drives without a first down. But it’s only week 2 and there is a lot of offense we haven’t seen yet.Thoughts? Suggestions? Comments? Leave it below. METRIC DEFINITIONSOffensePts:All team pointsAdj PPD: Points per drive with defensive and special team scores removed from team points and drives ending in QB kneels excluded from drive countsNet PPD: Adj PPD with adjusted points reduced interception and fumble TD returnsStrt Fld: Average starting field position (all drives)DSR: Drive Success rate calculated as FD + TD / (Drives + FD). Typically TDs are included in FD counts and so DSR = FD / (Drives + FD - TDs).Drives ending in kneel downs are typically excluded. 1st%:The number of non-penalty first downs divided by plays.3DC:The % of third downs converted to firsts. Pass1st%:The number of non-penalty passing first downs divided by attempts + sacks.aDOT : The average depth of passes thrown relative to the line of scrimmage (completed or not)aYd:Air Yards for completed passes20+ : Pass plays for more than 20 yardsANY/A :Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt = (Yds - Sack yds + 20 * TD - 45 * Int) / (Att + Sacks) Rush1st% :The number of non-penalty rushing first downs divided by carries.10+ Yds : Rush plays for more than 10 yardsRSR: Rushing Success rate is the % of carries that result in success defined as a TD, First Down, 45% of ytg on 1st down and 60% of ytg on 2nd down.4th quarter adjustments are included for time remaining and point differntialwRSR: Weighted RSR is RSR with a weighted value attached to each success type. TD = 2, FD = 0.9, 45% of ytg on 1sts = 0.65 and 60% of ytg on 2nd = 0.55. EPA/c:Expected Points Added per carry. This uses EPA data as calculated by the nflscrapR project.