The Colts are viewed by many to be the hottest (and therefore the most dangerous) team in the NFL. They entered the playoffs on a 9-1 streak after starting the season just 1-5. They have now won 10 of their last 11 games. The team is obviously led by Andrew Luck and the Colts offense, but during their current hot streak, there has been a lot of credit given to the Colts defense that has put up really good stats during this stretch.
I’m not here to say that the Colts defense is terrible and the Chiefs will walk all over them. However, I do think that the Colts defense has built their “much improved” reputation by facing a lot of average to poor offenses. The Colts’ 11 wins this season (including their playoff win) have come against nine different teams (they have 2 wins against both Houston and the Tennessee Titans). I have listed these nine teams below along with their league rank in yards per game and points per game.
- Washington Redskins – 28th and 29th
- Buffalo Bills – 30th and 30th
- Oakland Raiders – 23rd and 28th
- Jacksonville Jaguars – 27th and 31st
- Tennessee Titans – 25th and 27th
- Miami Dolphins – 31st and 26th
- Houston Texans – 15th and 11th
- Dallas Cowboys – 22nd and 22nd
- New York Giants – 17th and 16th
The average yards per game of these nine teams? 322.4
The average points per game of these nine teams? 19.6
The average yards and points per game of the Kansas City Chiefs? 425.6 and 35.3
The bottom line here is that the Colts defense has made its reputation against offenses that aren’t even in the same stratosphere as the Kansas City Chiefs. This is especially true when talking about the passing attacks. I dug a little deeper and looked up the season passing statistics of the nine teams that the Colts have beat this season. When you average them together with the average passing attack that the Colts beat this season averaged just…
- 7.1 yards per attempt
- 207.7 yards passing per game
- 19.6 passing touchdowns
Patrick Mahomes on the other hand has:
- 8.8 yards per attempt
- 318.6 yards passing per game
- 50 passing touchdowns
The Colts simply have not beaten a team with anywhere near the offensive firepower as the Kansas City Chiefs. Period. There wasn’t even a single outlier in the teams they beat. The best passing offense they beat was either Houston or the New York Giants and neither of them has numbers anywhere near the Chiefs.
In their six losses, they did give up MUCH larger numbers. In those losses the Colts allowed 366.3 yards and 29.5 points per game. Those numbers even include an outlier game where they lost to the Jacksonville despite the fact that the Jaguars only scored six points and had 211 yards of total offense. If you exclude that game the Colts allowed 397.4 yards and 34.2 points per game in their other five losses. In other words, the Colts lost when the other team put up big numbers.
That should clearly worry the Colts and their fans. However, they are probably relying on their offense to overpower what has been a very suspect Chiefs defense. So let’s look a little at that matchup and what the teams Indy has already faced may be able to tell us about it.