As the exciting parts of the offseason approach for the Indianapolis Colts, they face a major question at the quarterback position. Do they give Jacoby Brissett another shot or try to find his replacement in the 2020 NFL draft?
When looking at Brissett’s 2019 season on paper, it appears to be a tale of two halves. There is the “he was playing winning football” for the first seven games. Then he suffered the MCL sprain in Game 8 against the Pittsburgh Steelers. In the eight games to follow, most of the fanbase was calling for his replacement.
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But what happened to Brissett that his numbers would regress so quickly, so emphatically. Were defenses catching up to him now that they finally had some tape to go off of? Was it his knee injury and the injury bug that decimated the wide receiver corps? Were his numbers unsustainable from the first half of the season? In likelihood, it is a combination of all of those.
Here, we will take a close look at some of the reasons why Brissett’s regression hit so hard during the second half of the season.
First, the whole “winning football” mantra is a bit overused. It is essentially saying that he did just enough to not lose the game while the majority of success needs to be placed elsewhere. At the most important position in the game, that shouldn’t be a notion that sits well. Nor does it usually end in sustainable success.
When the Colts were 5-2, Brissett was in the conversation for the MVP award. Through those first seven games, Brissett completed 64.5% of his passes for 1,590 yards, 14 touchdowns, three interceptions and a 99.3 passer rating. On paper, those are fine numbers for a player stepping in immediately after the retirement of a franchise quarterback.
But there are a few numbers that raise concern. First, the passing yardage. On a per-game basis, Brissett was averaging only 227.1 passing yards per game during that span. That’s not a sustainable number for success, especially in today’s NFL. The biggest concern, though, was his touchdown percentage.
Through the first seven games, Brissett had 231 pass attempts. 14 of those went for touchdowns. That sits at a strong 6% touchdown rate—the league average hovers around 4%.
There were two paths at this point for Brissett. Either he was going to put up an MVP-caliber season or he was going to come crashing down extremely quickly.
In those final eight games after the Pittsburgh injury, Brissett’s season was simply atrocious. During that stretch, he completed 56.4% of his passes for 1,293 yards, four touchdowns, three interceptions and a 75.0 passer rating. His touchdown rate plummeted to a measly 1.8%.
There are many reasons for this. The injury had a play, his wide receiver corps couldn’t stay on the field and the unsustainable numbers he put up before were rightfully regressing to the mean.
What’s more indicative that Brissett wasn’t necessarily playing “winning football” has been his lack of desire to target downfield. It was evident throughout the entire season—not just in the second half.
Brissett’s deep passing metrics support the notion that he’s more of a game manager than someone willing his team to a win. His average depth of target (aDOT) sat at 7.9 yards, good for 21st in the NFL. His 5.5 yards after catch per completion was the 11th-highest in the NFL, meaning the majority of his passing yards came after the pass-catcher already had the ball in his hands.
Finally, we know that Brissett doesn’t target downfield. Per Pro Football Focus, Brissett attempted a deep pass (20+ yards downfield) on just 9.6% of his attempts. That was 29th in the NFL.
So when we talk about the Colts going 5-2 to begin the season, Brissett does deserves some credit. But to say he was playing “winning football” is really just saying he did enough to not lose the game by staying ultra-conservative. That type of mindset typically ends in failure rather than success.
The biggest reason the Colts started that way was because of the way the offensive line and running game were able to control the line of scrimmage while the defense stepped up when they needed to.
Brissett is an impeccable teammate and leader. He has intriguing tools for the position. But to say he was playing “winning football” in the first half of the season is really giving him more credit than he probably deserved.
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