Top Flight

I want to follow up on this morning’s post by noting how the Saints defense has performed against the best quarterbacks they’ve played.

The Saints faced off against five top flight QBs this season.  That is defined as passers with ratings above 90 for the season.  On the whole, 12 different QBs accomplished that feat.  Six of them faced the Saints, although McNabb did not play in the game.

It is easy to see that the Saints D has been great against the best quarterbacks in the league.  The combined rating of these 5 was just 72.9 against the Saints.  That’s only slightly higher than their overall defensive passer rating against number of 68.6.

We can say a lot of things about the Saints, but they certainly had no trouble with the top quarterbacks in the game.

If you want to compare the Colts’ performance against similar QBs here are the numbers:

That’s good for a rating of 85.6 compared with their overall defensive passer rating of 80.6.

Observations:

• Both teams saw their DPR increase slightly.  The Saints were 4.3 points worse against elite passers; the Colts were 5 points worse.  Both are comparable.
• It’s interesting that the Colts and Saints faced the same number of pass attempts from elite passers, despite the Saints playing five such games to the Colts’ four.
• Surprisingly, the Colts picked off more passes and allowed more touchdowns.  I wouldn’t have guessed either of those.
• The Colts played three games against QBs that just missed the cut for inclusion.  Ultimately, however, Joe Flacco and Kyle Orton don’t deserve to be called elite QBs anyway, so I think the list settled in nicely.  All the QBs on this list clearly deserve to be there.