Monday Matchup: Colts at Bucs

Colts (0-3) at Buccaneers (2-1), 8:30 p.m. Eastern, ESPN
Line: Buccaneers by 10

The sad spectacle of the Colts’ effort to replace Peyton Manning with the aged and the unprepared has overshadowed the fact that their special teams are much worse than their offense.

Punt returner Blair White has one return, for 2 yards, and three fair catches. The Colts’ punt coverage unit, meanwhile, has allowed a 79-yard touchdown, and 43- and 37-yard returns. The kickoff and kick coverage units are almost as inept. Even the normally reliable Adam Vinatieri missed a 37-yard field goal in the season opener; the kick may not have mattered much in the 34-7 loss to the Texans, but the Colts could have used the morale boost.

The Colts’ special teams have been bad for years, but it rarely mattered because Manning executed 80-yard drives as easily as he executed 70-yard drives, and allowing long returns is no big deal when your offense can score at any time. Now that the Colts must scratch out wins, every 43-yard return is a major problem.

Special-teams problems are easier to solve than quarterback problems, but the Colts have not done much to address them, perhaps because they are too busy trying to assemble a game plan that Curtis Painter can execute without self-injury.

The Buccaneers are not great offensively, defensively, or on special teams, but they are just good enough to turn a field position edge into a margin of victory. Pick: Buccaneers 

How Many Wins Is Peyton Manning Worth?

Before the season, the N.F.L. statistical community pulled out its protractors — do they still use protractors? — to determine how damaging the absence of Peyton Manning might be.

It’s no longer a math exercise, with Manning most likely out for the season. (Even if he’s ready to return late in the season, the Colts may be out of the playoff hunt by then, so why risk re-injury by rushing him back? If the Colts really nosedive, they also may have a shot at drafting Andrew Luck as Manning’s eventual replacement, another reason not to hurry Manning back.)

In light of the Colts’ opening week debacle, let’s review some of what the analysts wrote:

Brian Burke of Advanced NFL Stats:

Since 2000 (as far back as my data goes), Manning played in 176 regular-season games and accumulated a total of 43.0 WPA, for an average of 3.8 WPA per season. This equates to 0.24 WPA per game, which means that Manning (and his passing offense) would give an otherwise perfectly average team a 74% chance of winning a game. In other words, he would take an 8-win team and make them an 11.8-win team.

In terms of points, Manning totaled 1,617 Expected Points Added (EPA) over those 176 games since 2000. That’s a 9.1 net point advantage per game. This means that Manning and his passing offense generated just over 9 points per game more than an average NFL passing game would have. It appears the odds makers agree, dropping the point spread in the upcoming Colts-Texans game by about that amount when Manning was declared doubtful.

Jason Lisk, The Big Lead:

The average Hall of Fame QB–guys like Marino, Fouts, Kelly, Montana and Young, were worth about 2.6 wins over their backups over the course of a 16 game schedule. I think Manning is worth a little more than that, and working off the average projection (the over/under was 9.5 to 10 on season wins before this news) would make them about a 7 win team.

I was on the under for the Colts even before this news, so I’m going to say about 3 wins off my expectation for them this year makes them about a 6-10 team as my official prediction. I don’t see them challenging for the #1 pick, and I think they will still be equivalent or better than Jacksonville or Tennessee.

Chase Stuart, Pro-Football-Reference.com:

I’m less optimistic than most. I’m not going out on a limb if I tell you that the Colts are going to implode, but I think that’s what’s going to happen. If Manning is gone for 16 games, I would probably take the “under” even at 6 wins.

The Colts aren’t now going to try to win with defense, because the defense isn’t built that way. Indianapolis won’t try to win by running, because the offense isn’t built that way. The Colts are going to try to plug and play, essentially keeping the high-octane, aerial attack that tries to get leads early, but by deploying Kerry Collins in lieu of Peyton Manning. That is a recipe for disaster.

In 2009, the Colts set a record for the largest disparity between passing and rushing first downs. Last year, they actually passed for 12 more first downs than they did the year before. Indianapolis is built around a lethal passing attack; Kerry Collins is going to kill the passing attack. Building a team around an almost 39-year-old recently retired quarterback who has two weeks of training is a train wreck waiting to happen. I’d be shocked if he doesn’t miss at least a few games this season, and the Colts will be even worse when he’s out.

The Colts won’t pass effectively. They won’t run effectively. When those things happen, the defense will be more exposed than ever. And after an ugly start, I think the most talented veterans on the team will lose their motivation. The Colts could very well bottom out to 3-13. It’s not about how good Peyton Manning is, or how valuable he is; it’s about how the team was built around him.

Extra point How many wins do you think Peyton Manning is worth?

Remembering Bubba Smith, the Football Player

A few thoughts about Bubba Smith, who died yesterday at 66. He may be best remembered today as an actor and television pitchman. But he made his name on the football field, first at Michigan State, then as a Baltimore Colt. Andy Barall writes about pro football history for The Fifth Down.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there wasn’t a more imposing sight in football than Charles Aaron Smith, better known as Bubba. Before a terrible knee injury in 1972, Smith was one of the N.F.L.’s best all-around 4-3 defensive ends. When he wanted to, he could dominate.

Smith was a two-time all-American for the powerhouse Michigan State teams of the mid-60s. The Baltimore Colts, with a pick acquired in a trade with the expansion New Orleans Saints, made him the first overall selection of the 1967 draft. Three of his college teammates, Clint Jones, George Webster and Gene Washington, were also among the first eight picks that year.

Smith was officially listed at 6-7 and 265 pounds, but he probably played at much closer to 300, especially early in his career. He was an unusual combination of size, speed, power and quickness. Having such long arms didn’t hurt either, particularly when the quarterback tried to throw to his right.

Because offenses usually lined up with the tight end on his side, Smith, at left defensive end, had to play the run first. On passing downs, he wasn’t just a bull rusher. He was fast enough to beat the offensive tackle wide to the outside and had good enough lateral movement to beat him with a quick move to the inside. Once that tackle was slightly off-balance, it was usually all over. The offense frequently had to keep its fullback in to give the tackle help. That allowed the linebackers to get greater depth in pass coverage.

By his second year, 1968, Smith joined end Ordell Braase and tackles Billy Ray Smith and Fred Miller to form one of the N.F.L.’s best defensive lines. That season, Baltimore allowed the fewest points in the league, 144, on the way to a 13-1 finish. In Smith’s five years in Baltimore, the Colts compiled a 53-13-4 regular-season record. He was named first-team All-Pro in 1971 and was elected to the Pro Bowl after the 1970 and 1971 seasons.

In 1972, during a preseason game, Smith was pursuing across the field when he became entangled with the yard markers along the sideline. In those years, when the action got too close, the chain crew would retreat and leave the sticks upright, still affixed to the ground. As a result of Smith’s injury, I believe, the league changed the procedure, requiring the crew, before they backed away, to remove the sticks and to drop them flat onto the ground.

The Colts’ team doctors described Smith’s knee injury as one of the worst they had  seen. He was forced to watch most of that season from the sideline in a wheelchair, and he wasn’t the same player again. During his long rehabilitation, Smith was traded to the Raiders for tight end Raymond Chester. He played two years in Oakland and then  two years in Houston before retiring after the 1976 season.

Smith, like many of his teammates, never got over the Colts’ shocking defeat to the Jets in Super Bowl 3. In 2007 he told NFL Films: “Until this day, they’ll have that game on and I turn away right away.” (America’s Game, 1970 Baltimore Colts)

Even their Super Bowl victory over the Cowboys two years later didn’t provide much in the way of redemption. Linebacker Mike Curtis hides his Super Bowl ring in the jacket pocket of one of his suits. Center Bill Curry recalls the win as bittersweet: “It’s the most mixed sense of achievement I’ve experienced in my career… I didn’t feel like we went down there and took care of business… We turned the ball over 7 times.” (NFL Films: America’s Game, 1970 Baltimore Colts)

Smith remembered it like this:

Now, when he (Jim O’Brien) kicks the (winning) field goal, I got depressed. I knew I was supposed to be feeling good. Finally did it. World Champions. I wasn’t feeling that way. I couldn’t really feel as happy as I wanted to feel because I was supposed to look at my other ring from Super Bowl 3 and say, Well, I got two.’ And I couldn’t do it. (NFL Films: America’s Game, 1970 Baltimore Colts)

Super Bowl 5 was the Colts’ last championship in Baltimore. In 1984, during a late-night snowstorm, they packed up the trucks and moved away. Memorial Stadium fell silent forever. The Baltimore Colts were no more.

Today, the colors are the same and the horseshoe remains on the helmet, but much of the history has been lost. Unitas. Berry. Moore. Mackey. Marchetti. Their team is gone. Bubba Smith is an important part of that heritage. As he told NFL Films in 2007: “I came to grips with it a long time ago that we wouldn’t be remembered as the Baltimore Colts. I even went to Indianapolis and they said ‘you’re the ex-Indianapolis Colt.’ I said, “No, I’m an ex-Baltimore Colt.’ “