A year ago, Daniel Jones was being described as one of the NFL’s steadier quarterbacks. This week, the Colts’ quarterback picture looked nothing like that.
Jones sits 30th among 32 starting quarterbacks in efficiency for the season, and his Week 7 showing against the Vikings only dragged that number further into the mud. The Colts leaned on the run just enough to stay afloat, but the passing game never really found daylight.
Indianapolis finished with a 31st-ranked Drive Success Rate at 65.2%, and the lone touchdown came on the ground. The air attack, by contrast, was a mess.
The matchup got ugly fast because Minnesota brought heat. The Vikings entered with the league’s No.
1 Pass Rush Win Rate, and it showed. Jones was under pressure constantly, got blitzed often, and ended up rushing his throws instead of letting plays develop.
That pressure helped drive a rough stat line across the board: 27th in adjusted completion percentage, 31st in completion percentage over expectation, and last in adjusted yards per attempt.
The ball simply didn’t travel anywhere. Jones’ passes were short almost by necessity, and those completions didn’t turn into much after the catch.
He finished 26th in average depth of target, 19th in air yards per completion, 30th in yards after catch, 31st in yards after catch over expectation, and 32nd in yards per completion. The end result was brutal: dead last in net yards per dropback and net yards per play at 2.6.
There were a few decent stretches mixed in, mostly in the first half and then in a short burst during the second and third quarters. But every positive sequence seemed to get erased by a negative one.
Jones was sacked four times, scrambled once, and threw the ball away twice. The sacks were especially damaging, including two straight early in the third quarter.
Then came the fourth-quarter interception, which basically ended any chance of a comeback.
That one play fit the broader story. Jones finished with just a 50.0% success rate and averaged -0.15 EPA per play, a reminder that being somewhat consistent isn’t much comfort when the bad snaps hurt so much more than the good ones help. He was 16th in quarterback success rate but 30th in EPA per play, and that gap says everything about how this game unfolded.
The passing chart was narrow from start to finish. Jones didn’t try a single pass over 20 yards, and after averaging 11.5 air yards per target in each of the previous two weeks, he dropped all the way to 5.2 this time.
His completions came at just 5.1 yards downfield on average. For the season, he’s now at 6.0 yards per attempt with the eighth-shortest passes among starting quarterbacks.
Keenan Allen led the team with 31 receiving yards on three targets. Tyler Warren has missed two weeks and still leads the Colts in receptions.
Beyond that, there wasn’t much of a footprint in the passing game. Not much depth, not much value.
Jones’ accuracy was also off. He completed 59.1% of his throws, which was 11% worse than expected based on how short those attempts were. That continues a season-long slide in completion over expectation, and the deeper throws have been his biggest problem all year.
He did get the ball out faster this week, averaging 2.57 seconds to throw after posting 2.93 the week before. That was quicker than league average, but a lot of it came from having to get rid of the ball before the rush arrived. Across the season, his time to throw has still been about what you’d expect given the depth of his targets.
Jones was more effective on throws within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage, but outside of that range the struggles piled up. And with no attempts beyond 20 yards, the Colts never really threatened the Vikings vertically.
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