For the first time since Peyton Manning donned a horseshoe, the Indianapolis Colts have a former NFL MVP at quarterback.
Whether or not the newly-acquired Matt Ryan will fix the franchise’s “good-not-great” woes is up for debate.
General manager Chris Ballard managed to upgrade from Carson Wentz AND pick up draft assets in the process when he sent a third-round pick to the Atlanta Falcons in exchange for the 2016 MVP. He’ll fill the void Wentz left behind when he was shipped to the Washington Commanders in exchange for two third-round picks and a second-round pick swap last week. In the process, Indianapolis will only absorb a $9 million cap hit while the Falcons choke down more than $40 million in Ryan’s dead cap space — an NFL record! — in what promises to be a rebuilding year.
Atlanta unquestionably got worse in this year, seemingly seeing Tom Brady’s shadow looming over the division and opting to hit reset rather than flounder to six or seven wins. Indianapolis got better, because it swapped out Wentz — the guy who lost to the woeful Jaguars with a playoff berth on the line last season — with Ryan, whose postseason passer rating (100.8) is six points higher than his regular season mark (94.2).
But did the Colts improve enough to be a threat in a loaded AFC? For several years they’ve looked like a team with a contending roster in need of a plug-and-play quarterback. The last four guys tabbed to fill that spot as QB1 all failed. How does a soon-to-be 37-year-old Ryan stack up?
Fortunately for the Colts, history suggests he’ll impress in his debut season at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Veteran quarterbacks have improved in their first season with Chris Ballard’s Colts
There’s a trend that reaches across all four different Week 1 starters who’ve played for Indianapolis under Ballard’s stewardship. They’ve all only lasted one year, from Andrew Luck’s abrupt retirement to Wentz being set adrift to our nation’s capital. But in the one season they spent as a Colt, they played noticeably more efficient football.
If we start with Luck’s comeback 2018 season (Ballard’s first as the roster architect), we see across the board improvements in completion rate, net yards per attempt (which includes sacks and turnovers), and passer rating in each quarterback’s standalone season as Indy’s starter.
Compared to their career averages, each of these players had higher completion rates (3.2 points better), passed for more yards per game (only 5.4, but skewed in both directions thanks to Jacoby Brissett’s relative lack of experience and Wentz’s low-impact 2021), had higher touchdown rates, lower interception rates, and recorded a passer rating roughly 6.3 points higher than their typical year.
If that bump applies to Ryan, here’s roughly what we can expect from him in 2022:
68 percent completion rate, 275 yards per game, 5.2 percent touchdown rate, 1.7 percent interception rate, 7.7 adjusted yards per attempt, and a 100.5 passer rating
Put that together and you’re looking at a 4,600-yard, 32-touchdown, 10 interception season and a top 10 passer rating. That’s a great return for a third round pick!
Of course, there’s no guarantee that will happen — especially when the bulk of the quarterbacks in this sample size were in their late-20s and Ryan is about to enter his late 30s. Let’s take a closer look of what happened with Philip Rivers to see if that can better parse the fate of Indianapolis’s newest starting QB.
Rivers upped his efficiency and completion rate in his age 39 season in 2020 by throwing shorter passes in Indiana than he had typically as a Charger. His air yards per attempt (AY/A) dropped from 8.5 in his final season in Los Angeles to 7.2 in his Colts debut. That’s not uncommon for this offense under head coach Frank Reich; Wentz’s AY/A fell from 8.8 as an Eagle in 2020 to 7.2 in 2021.
Rivers also had his deep attempts dialed back dramatically, in no small part thanks to a limited receiving corps. He attempted 73 passes of 20+ yards in 2019. That number fell to just 47 in Indianapolis. Wentz threw downfield more often, but went from attempting 4.4 deep balls per game as an Eagle to 3.3 as a Colt.
Ryan could see similar usage, though his lack of big throws was already apparent for the wideout-strapped Falcons last season; his 7.1 AY/A in 2021 were significantly lower than 2020’s 8.5. He threw 28 fewer deep balls last season despite playing one more regular season game.
The Colts’ new arrival could buck that trend, but he doesn’t really have the personnel to do so right now. T.Y. Hilton is a free agent and waning as a deep threat. Michael Pittman Jr. is a nice target with WR1 upside but not yet a true downfield target. Parris Campbell can’t stay healthy and the team’s current TE1 is Mo Alie-Cox. This is the kind of lineup that forces short passes and screens out of the backfield.
Barring a late dip into the free agent market or a splurge at the 2022 Draft (where Ballard does not have a first-round pick thanks to last year’s Wentz deal), that’s unlikely to change. That’s a bummer for the team’s passing attack and it feels like a bit of a waste for Ryan given his history. It also allows him to have a positive impact while allowing his game to age with him.
We’ve seen waning arm strength take away the downfield prowess of veterans like Drew Brees and Ben Roethlisberger in recent years, forcing their offenses to adjust around them. Indianapolis already has an old man offense ready to go. Anything Ryan can provide beyond that downfield is a bonus.
Let’s go a little deeper on Rivers’ single season in Indianapolis. His adjusted expected points added per play (adj. EPA/play), which measures a singular player’s total impact on the game, rose by 10 percent in his lone year as a Colt compared to the prior three seasons, growing from .206 to .226 — the latter number seventh-best among QBs that fall. However, his completion rate over expected (CPOE), which measures the a QBs actual completion rate vs. what a typical QB could expect to complete depending on down, distance, pass type, etc, dropped from 2.8 percent as a Charger to only 0.8 percent in Indy.
Ryan wasn’t as effective in his last three seasons as a Falcon, recording an adj. EPA/play of .167 despite a CPOE similar to Rivers’ at 2.5 percent. What does that tell us? That Rivers was, potentially, better equipped to make the jump to the midwest despite being older and that he was able to play consistently even without the chunk yardage deep throws that helped him in Los Angeles. (Wentz, for the record, improved slightly in terms of adj. EPA/play from 2018-20 to 2021 but had a -2.0 CPOE that ranked between Justin Fields and Roethlisberger at the tail end of the NFL’s rankings last season).
That brings us to the elephant in the room; overall success. The only guy in this group to lead Indianapolis to a playoff win was Luck, who retired the following preseason. Rivers was the only other quarterback to reach the postseason, where he needed 49 passes to throw for 309 yards and ultimately couldn’t lead a game-winning drive in the final 2:30 of regulation against the Bills.
Ryan could be better. He’s 4-3 in his last seven playoff games and has a 17:3 touchdown-to-interception ratio in that stretch. That last appearance happened more than four years ago, however. There’s room for him to have fallen off.
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The trendline of Indianapolis’ stopgap quarterbacks suggests Ryan will have the best numbers of any Colts QB over the past five seasons but ultimately less of an overall impact than Rivers before him. That’s not ideal, but it’s better than Wentz, whose hollow counting stats failed to capture how disappointing he was in an offense that only needed a steady hand at the helm to make it to the postseason.
Ryan is a more deserving captain of that ship. He’ll inherit an offense ready made to handle the twilight of his career. If Ballard can find a way to upgrade the receiving corps around him, he has the chance to make this trade look like a monumental coup for the Colts. If not, it’ll be another year of football purgatory in Indiana.
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