Chase Stuart writes about the historical and statistical side of football at his site, FootballPerspective.com
It’s not supposed to be this easy.
Sure, Steve Young and Aaron Rodgers followed Joe Montana and Brett Favre and excelled, but the fact that those examples are so memorable shows that they are the exception to the rule.
You’re not supposed to be able to replace a Hall of Fame quarterback with another star. In Indianapolis, the Colts got a taste of what life is often like for a team in the first year after a franchise quarterback’s exit: Curtis Painter, Dan Orlovsky and Kerry Collins earned every bit of their combined 2-14 record in 2011.
But after the Colts bottomed out, Indianapolis’s fortunes changed dramatically. With the first pick in the 2012 draft, the team selected Stanford’s Andrew Luck, and the Colts appear set to be an annual contender for the next decade. Again.
Luck ranks fourth in passing yards this season, and he has shouldered the load for a Colts team that is below average in rushing, stopping the run and stopping the pass. Luck ranks “only” 19th in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt and 14th in net yards per attempt, unimpressive numbers only outside of the context of a rookie quarterback playing for what was the worst team in the N.F.L. a year ago.
Luck passes the eye test and at least one advanced metric (he ranks 6th in ESPN’s Total QBR), but part of what’s impressive about him is that even when he isn’t playing well, he remains capable of carrying his team to victory. Luck struggled for much of the game against Detroit on Sunday but still managed to pull out a most improbable victory.
In the first 56 minutes of the game, Luck was 17 for 39 for 279 yards with 3 interceptions. His team trailed the Lions, 33-21, with under three minutes remaining. At that point, Advanced NFL Stats calculated Indianapolis’s odds of winning at 2 percent.
But Luck led them on two scoring drives, and the Colts became just the seventh team to win a game despite trailing by 12 or more points with so little time remaining since 2000.
Two of the other instances involved Peyton Manning with the Colts. In 2003, Manning led the Colts on a marvelous comeback against the Buccaneers on “Monday Night Football.” Six years later, Indianapolis trailed New England, 34-21, with 2 minutes 30 seconds remaining. A Colts touchdown was followed by three Patriots plays that gained 8 yards, setting up Bill Belichick’s infamous 4th-and-2 decision.
It will be a long time before Luck could be considered anywhere near Manning’s class in terms of body of work, but his performance against the Lions is now alongside many of Manning’s memories in the annals of great Colts moments. Luck’s game-winning touchdown to Donnie Avery was just the 13th game-winning touchdown pass in the final seconds of a game since 2000.
Statistically, Andrew Luck may not be having the best year, but he has played an enormous part in the Colts’ magical run. At 8-4, the Colts are almost certainly going to make the playoffs; if they do, they will join the 2008 Miami Dolphins and 1982 Patriots on the list of N.F.L. teams to make the playoffs a year after going 2-14 or worse.
Luck will also set a couple of rookie records. With the game-winning drive he led against the Lions, he tied Ben Roethlisberger and Vince Young for the most fourth-quarter game-winning drives (five) by a rookie quarterback. By defeating Detroit and earning his eighth win, he broke a tie with Sam Bradford and now has the most wins among rookie quarterbacks selected first over all since 1950. Luck’s next victory will give him nine wins this season, tying him with Chris Chandler for the franchise record for wins by a rookie quarterback.
Calvin Johnson and the Lions’ Passing Game
Calvin Johnson led the league with 1,681 receiving yards last season and was named a first-team All-Pro by The Associated Press for the first time in his career. His encore performance may be even better.
He has gained a mind-boggling 1,428 receiving yards this season, joining Elroy Hirsch (1,495 yards in 1951) on the short list of N.F.L. players to top the 1,400-yard mark in a team’s first 12 games (in the A.F.L., Charley Hennigan and Lance Alworth each reached that mark once as well).
Johnson caught 13 passes for 171 yards against the Colts; in the process, he joined fellow Lion Pat Studstill (1966) as the only players since 1960 to gain at least 125 receiving yards in six straight games. But Johnson has a bigger record in sight. In 1995, Jerry Rice set the record with 1,848 receiving yards in a season, a mark that has not been seriously challenged since. Johnson needs 421 receiving yards in his final four games to break the record. At his current pace, Johnson would gain another 476 receiving yards, giving him 1,904.
Johnson will have some help along the way. His quarterback, Matthew Stafford, has thrown 44.5 passes per game this season, putting him on pace to break the current record by over an attempt per game. As a team, the Lions are on pace for 729 pass attempts, easily eclipsing the current record of 709 passes.
Quick Hits
- Greg McElroy accomplished an interesting bit of trivia in the process of helping the Jets defeat the Cardinals on Sunday. Scott Kacsmar has tracked fourth-quarter comebacks and game-winning drives for quarterbacks (such data is available at Pro-Football-Reference.com). It may not have been the most impressive come-from-behind, game-winning drive — Greg McElroy completed just two of three passes for nine yards — but as a technical matter, McElroy did lead a fourth-quarter comeback and game-winning drive. That makes McElroy just the sixth quarterback since 1990 to achieve such a feat in his first game.
- Three weeks ago, I noted that the Vikings’ Adrian Peterson was having a magnificent season despite tearing the anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in his left knee less than a year ago. Peterson hasn’t slowed, rushing for over 200 yards on Sunday against the Packers. For the season, he has 1,446 rushing yards and is averaging an incredible 6.2 yards per carry; Peterson, Chris Johnson (2009) and Jim Brown (1963) are the only players to average over six yards per rush while rushing for at least 1,400 yards in his team’s first 12 games since 1960.
- The Bears may be struggling offensively, but don’t blame Brandon Marshall. Marshall is second in the league in receptions (91) and receiving yards (1,182). Marshall also topped the 1,000-yard receiving mark twice with Jay Cutler in Denver, including a 1,325-yard season in 2007. Marshall and Cutler are just the third N.F.L. pair to connect for 1,000 receiving yards with multiple teams. In 1994 and 1996, Rob Moore and Boomer Esiason, first with the Jets and then with the Cardinals, became the first such pair. Terry Glenn and Drew Bledsoe became the first set to hit the 1,100-yard mark with two different teams, doing so in New England in 1996 and 1999 and then in Dallas in 2005. With 18 more receiving yards, Marshall will become the first player to hit the 1,200-yard mark on multiple teams quarterbacked primarily by the same man.