Tanier: Colts aren't even close to worst team ever

Unless Indy continues to get throttled, it won't surpass recent Lions, Rams teams

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Colts receiver Reggie Wayne is one of the few elite players on Indianapolis' roster.

ANALYSIS

updated 7:50 p.m. ET Nov. 29, 2011

Mike Tanier

As 0-11 teams go, the Colts aren?t half bad.

They still have All-Pro talent like Reggie Wayne, Dwight Freeney, and Robert Mathis on the roster. For every 62-7 loss on their r?sum?, there?s a close game that could have gone either way, like their 23-20 loss to the Steelers or Sunday?s 27-19 loss to the Panthers, which was not decided until the final seconds.

Put all of the winless teams in NFL history into a tournament, and this year?s Colts might even win. A battle with the 2008 Lions would be a pick ?em. They would smoke the 1976 Buccaneers, who lost their first five games by a combined 120-26 score and were shut out five times in 14 games. They would beat up the 1982 Colts, who scored just 10 offensive touchdowns in nine games en route to an 0-8-1 record. They would rip the leather helmets off the 1928-29 Dayton Triangles, who scored ? this is not a typo, folks ? 16 total points in two seasons.

Of course, the Colts don?t have to be as bad as the Dayton Triangles to rank as the league's worst team, the worst team of the decade or the worst team anyone under 40 can remember. Getting to the bottom of just how low the Colts have sunk can be tricky business. Far from being the worst team in history, the Colts aren?t even the worst team of the last 20 years.

They are more like the sixth worst, give or take.

The bottom of the barrel
Using traditional statistics to evaluate awful teams is even harder than using them to evaluate good teams. Terrible teams are often on the receiving end of blowouts, so they spend a lot of fourth quarters facing backup quarterbacks and prevent defenses. The effect can usually be seen in statistics like passing yards allowed, in which the Colts rank a respectable 18th this season. The Colts' pass defense is actually dreadful, but lots of opponents have coasted through the ends of games against them.

So to rank the worst of the worst, we will use DVOA, the Football Outsiders metric that evaluates every play of every season and adjusts for down-and-distance situations, opponent strength, and other variables. The Colts rank dead last in DVOA this year, with a negative-43.1 percent rating. That means that they are 43.1 percent below the NFL average, which is terrible.

Their futility can be broken down by run defense (7.1 percent below average, 29th in the NFL), pass defense (36.2 percent below average), run offense (2.8 percent above average, hooray!), pass offense (21.6 percent below average, 30th), and special teams (7.0 percent below average, worst in the league).

The DVOA breakdowns provide some illumination about how the Colts got into this predicament. There are more than just Curtis Painter, who has been no worse than quarterbacks like Blaine Gabbert and John Skelton who somehow managed to eke out wins. Despite relatively low yardage totals, opposing quarterbacks have an efficiency rating of 105.1 against the Colts, an amazing figure when you realize the Colts have faced three rookies. Special teams, a long-time problem that was concealed by the presence of His Peytonness, have gone in the tank this year: Colts return men average an amazingly low 2.2 yards per punt return.

So this is a true team effort. But it is not quite historically terrible. DVOA can also be used to compare teams from different years. Football Outsiders may not have play-by-play data for the 1928 Dayton Triangles (if you find any in your attic, please email me!), but we have data that goes all the way back to 1992, and five teams have posted lower DVOA averages than the 2011 Colts.

Here?s a countdown of the worst of the worst. For a second opinion, I also provided Estimated Wins and Losses, as calculated by the folks at ProFootballReference based on a team?s points for and against.

5. 2009 Rams (1-15, DVOA -45.1 percent, Estimated W-L 1.6-14.4). These guys lost games by scores of 28-0, 35-0, 42-6 and 47-7. Someone named Keith Null started four games at quarterback. The Rams? only win was against the Lions, who we will meet in a moment.

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Smart changes in New Orleans

Tanier: The Saints are winning with the help of a lot of players who were not around, or who had minor roles, during the team?s Super Bowl run.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45476044/ns/sports-nfl/

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