Bill Parcells famously said Youth Quincy Wilson Jersey , “You are what your record says you are.” 2-4-1 is tied for 27th place in the league.So, are the Colts really one of the worst teams in the league? Because record isn’t the full story, the media churns out weekly power rankings which supposedly ranks teams by how good they are irrespective of record.Chris Blystone’s recent power rankings article shows that most pundits placed Indy right around 27th.So, either they all agree with Parcells or they are too lazy to actually analyze team play and just basically go by record. I’ll let you guess which is true.Personally, I feel the Colts are playing much better than their record and I have the data to back up that claim.ODDSAs of this writing, Sportsline.com has the Colts odds of winning the Superbowl at 100 to 1 . . . so, you’re saying there’s a chance. While I have no opinion on the predictive capability of Vegas odds, I can say for certain that there are only 19 teams with better odds listed. So, according to the cumulative knowledge of the betting community, the Colts are tied as the 20th best team. Hey, it’s better than 27th.POINT DIFFERENTIALSWins are obviously highly correlated to point differentials. For example, the team currently with the highest season long point differential is the Rams and surprise, they also have the best record. Normally, teams that have less than a 0.500 record, have negative point differentials, but that isn’t true with the Colts. Through 7 weeks, Reich and company have scored 189 points, while giving up 185, which results in a +4 point differential. This suggests that the Colts record is artificially low. How low? Well Youth Darius Leonard Jersey , rank teams by point differential and the Colts come in at 18th. PYTHAGOREAN WINSFootball Outsiders performs a much math-ier transform of point differentials by calculating a Pythagorean Win Expectation, which estimates the number of wins a team “should have” given their cumulative points for and against. Statistically, the calculation does a pretty good job of estimating actual wins.According to their formula, the Colts are playing like a team with 3.6 wins and are on pace to garner 8.2 for the season. They also apply an adjustment to account for “garbage time” impacts and after including that, Adjusted Pythagorean Expectation has the Colts ranked 17th in expected wins.That was a lot of math just to improve point differentials by one spot. But I’ll take it.BLOWOUTSWhile I’m on the subject of point differentials, did you hear that the Colts went +32 over the Bills last week? Since the league went to a 16 game season in 1978, there have been 45 games decided by exactly 32 points. The winning teams from those games ended the season with an average of 9.9 wins. Of course, there is variance around that number but only 18% of those teams ended up with less than 8 wins. The point is that if you beat someone by 32, then you probably aren’t one of the worst teams in the league.DRIVE SUCCESS RATEFor the 1 of you who read my articles, you know I am a big fan of Drive Success Rate. The Colts have a season long offensive DSR of 71.1% while the defense has given up a rate of 70.6%. The DSR differential is a relative measure of how well the the team has played overall and the Colts +0.5% ranks 17th in the league. DVOASo far, none of these measures have adjusted for opponent. Football Outsiders is famous for ranking teams by their DVOA metric, which includes an opponent adjustment. After Indy’s week 7 “running of the Bills”, the Colts improved their team DVOA and currently sit as the 14th best team in the league. CONCLUSIONSThere is no such thing as a “true” ranking method but by just about any method you pick, the Colts are much better than bottom dwellers. Add to that, the fact that the team is getting healthier and that there are a lot of winnable games coming up and I believe we will see a huge turn-around in record.Will it be enough to make the playoffs? I think it will be close. Close enough that half a game matters. As we start to get into the season with teams getting settled into what they are and injuries beginning to take their toll, we begin to see teams thinking about making some last minute trades, especially with the trade deadline looming on October 30th. Pro Football Focus has put together a list of trades they would like to see made by every team, and it includes the Colts in a couple different places. The first one is pretty ridiculous given the showing we just saw from the Colts’ backup wide receivers, but PFF thinks that the Colts would be best served by trading away T.Y. Hilton, one of their most valuable offensive weapons http://www.authenticsindianapoliscolts.com/cheap-margus-hunt-jersey , to the Washington Redskins for a 2nd round pick. Here’s what the article had to say:So all this is fine and good. It is mostly true as well, Hilton would certainly offer an upgrade for the Redskins’ roster. He’d be an upgrade to any wide receiver room. The problem is if you’re going to propose a trade, you have to choose one that actually holds a benefit for the other party as well. That’s sort of the way trades work. I mean, if you’re just going to propose something absurd, why not Andrew Luck to the Jaguars for a 1st rounder? That is a totally viable option, right? It helps the Jaguars tremendously! I know, I’m being unreasonable to expect some critical thinking.Elsewhere in the article they suggest that the Colts should send a 3rd round pick to the Denver Broncos for Shaquil Barrett to help improve their defense on the edge. While I am not opposed to adding depth to the Colts’ defensive line, Barrett typically plays as an outside linebacker for the Broncos. In Matt Eberflus’ defense in particular, they are very concerned with scheme fit, and they aren’t trading away a 3rd round pick for a guy who is not quite in line with what they are looking for. The reasoning for the Colts making this move isn’t much better: I’m not going to tell you that the Jihad Ward and Kemoko Turay are better than Bradley Chubb. What I will tell you is that they both have more sacks than either he or Barrett. Denico Autry has been a good contributor on defense, but he missed two weeks with injury, which they don’t bother to mention. His absence didn’t prevent the Colts from continuing to march toward one of their most productive years in terms of sacks. Speaking of sacks, they also don’t mention that Margus Hunt has 4 on the season and has played out of his mind. In fact, they don’t mention him at all. If you’re ever tempted to listen too closely to the grades put out by PFF or care too much about what they think, remember things like this. You can bend the stats to say a lot, but you’ve got to put the time in watching the film as well.So what do you think? Are you ready to trade away T.Y. Hilton for a 2nd round pick? If so, you could probably work for PFF!