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Both Manning and Brees Share the Same Weakness
Posted by rkelly8686Anyone who’s paid close attention to the offensive alignment of the Colts during the Manning-era knows exactly where the receivers will line up on a given play. For years it was always Marvin Harrison on the right (now Pierre Garcon) and Reggie Wayne on the left. In fact it’s almost mind-boggling when you look at the split statistics of Wayne and Harrison: 74.4% of Wayne’s 676 career receptions have come left of the hashmarks and 73.3% of Harrison’s 1102 career receptions came right of the hashmarks. Since the two were never aligned side-by-side, then on nearly every play at least one of them was left on single-man coverage and Manning could exploit that matchup. Now that Harrison is presumably retired, Wayne is left as the focal point of the Colts’ passing attack and he is double-teamed much more than in the past and that has affected Peyton Manning’s numbers.
The chart above shows Peyton Manning’s 2009 pass distribution as related to touchdown and interception percentage. I chose to use these stats instead of raw TDs and INTs due to there being a varying degree of passing attempts among the three directions. The first thing that jumps out to me in this chart is how close Manning’s TD% is to his INT% when throwing to the left side (i.e. Reggie Wayne). It was nearly a 1:1 ratio for the ’09 season as Manning threw 12 TDs compared to 11 INTs as opposed to the other two areas in which Peyton threw for 21 TDs compared to 4 INTs.
The double coverage that Wayne gets is one reason why Peyton’s numbers dip when throwing left, but another reason is the fact that since Peyton is right-handed, he is throwing across his body whenever he throws left. That is something that pretty much every right-handed QB struggles with and it is the same for lefties when they have to throw right. The other Super Bowl QB, Drew Brees, is another righty who struggled throwing left as compared to every other direction. Only 4 of his 34 TDs came when throwing left but the difference between the Saints and the Colts is that New Orleans doesn’t designate its receivers as a LWR and a RWR. You could see Colston, Meachem, or Henderson line up in either one of those positions as well as in the slot. Thus, Brees can theoretically avoid throwing in that direction since it’s his weakness and instead go to his right where he is more comfortable throwing towards.
There have only been 33 left-handed quarterbacks in NFL history so there is not that great of a sample size to study pass direction. But there have been a few southpaws that have received enough playing time recently since the NFL started tracking this stat, namely Michael Vick, Chris Simms, and Drew Brees’ backup, Mark Brunell. In the graph below you can see the split statistics among these three lefties and the first thing I noticed is that unlike Brees and Manning, these QBs’ TDs come predominantly from the left side as opposed to the right side. It’s just a natural tendency for QBs to prefer to throw to their strong side. The defensive players all know that, but will they be able to stop it? We’ll find out on Sunday.
Tags: Colts, Drew Brees, Indianapolis Colts, Michael Vick, New Orleans Saints, Peyton Manning, Saints, Super Bowl
