On Thursday, October 8, the entire football world groaned as they remembered there was a game on that night and it was the Indianapolis Colts against the Houston Texans. This game was already an early contender for what might be the worst match-up of the season. The Colts came into the game 2-2, with both wins coming by miracles against bad competition (the Titans and Jaguars). They were starting 40-year-old Matt Hasselbeck in place of the injured Andrew Luck, and Hasselbeck didn’t even practice all week due to illness. Together with Frank Gore, Andre Johnson, and Adam Vinatieri, the Colts were essentially a retirement home playing football.
They came to town to face a very rough Houston Texans team. J.J. Watt has mostly been quiet this season (at least on the field), Ryan Mallett and Brian Hoyer are having the world’s worst quarterback controversy. Arian Foster was coming back, though, and if the Texans were going to pull something off, this was the time to do it. They did not. They lost 27-20. The game was terrible.
The Texans screwed up first, driving down the field only to have a Mallett pass bounce off of Foster’s hands into the arms of a defender. The Colts then scored 13 points over the next quarter. Foster briefly left for a concussion test, and Mallett exited the game for a few plays after a vicious hit. Mallett would not return to the game as the Texans left Brian Hoyer in, and Mallett spent the rest of the match-up pouting around the sidelines with an angry look on his face.
Then, right before the half ended, Hoyer threw a Hail Mary and the Colts, despite having six players surrounding rookie Jaelen Strong, did nothing to defend him as he pulled in the touchdown. It was Strong’s first NFL reception.
The Colts came out swinging in the second half and scored a quick TD, but the Texans weren’t done. They fought back, and then the Colts defense took a big wet fart on Jaelen Strong again, leaving him wide open in the end zone for his second NFL reception and his second touchdown. But the Colts would respond by marching down the field on Houston penalties, including two in the end zone by Kareem Jackson, one of which negated an interception. The Colts went ahead by 10, the score now 27-17. The Texans would respond with six minutes left, kicking a 49-yard field goal. The Colts failed on offense, and the Texans now had three minutes to send this puppy into overtime. About one minute later, Brian Hoyer threw a terrible interception. The Colts got a first down, and the game was over.
Going into this game, I decided to try and come up with a way to measure the level of crap at which both particular teams would play. My system was simple: Assign a number to any failure a team could have (such as a turnover or go three and out) and add them up at the end. Different failures were assigned different values based on the severity. This metric will be called the TURD rating.
So, how did this game work out? While it’s expected that the Texans would have more poop smeared on them because they lost, the game was close in score and the Texans almost tied it up. Would both teams TURD ratings reflect that?
The Colts rating was 88.
The Texans rating was 125.
The TURD rating makes it much more clear just how poorly the Texans performed. Keep in mind, for TURD, it doesn’t matter if a failure is negated by a penalty, both are counted. So, when Matt Hasselbeck threw a pick in the end zone and had it negated by Kareem Jackson, both the INT and the penalty were counted, because both were terrible. The Texans were undone by more severe penalties, not so much the turnovers.
The Texans are 1-4 while looking like a team that could be 0-5. The Colts are now 3-2 and are on top of the division despite looking absolutely terrible. We’ll have to see if they can keep it up.
