Anyone who frequents Coltzilla — and is rather perceptive — will notice two additions to the Coltzilla navigation bar. We have added two new pages, “Stats” and “Draft Room.” You will have noticed the flood of draft profiles recently, and with the draft still fast approaching, those posts will continue to come out regularly as writers here work to cover as many of the prospects we have marked as potential grabs for the Colts. You can view all those profiles through the link to the splash page and sort by position.

The Coltzilla stat page is rather near and dear to my heart, though. While I do some of the profiles for prospects and players, I have spent most of my time working on the “Game Stat” series over this past year. Those of you who remember those posts will also remember that they grew over the year, and that has been a major factor in the delay in getting this data finalized. Now, though, enough of the information has been collected that we can start bringing all of the statistics for the 2010 season to our readers. This section will be a work in progress, so while there is a lot of information there, more will be added over the coming weeks and months. After the jump, I’ll talk a little about the vision for “Game Stats” and some of the work that will be done to improve the data.

If I can be honest here, “Game Stats” takes quite a lot out of me. Each individual game takes at least 8 hours to review, plus another hour or so to do basic analysis, and add the data to the seasonal stats. Not only that but I am acutely aware that there remain a number of things I do not collect in my first go around with the film review, and that even at the best of times I am as fallible as the next person. This has been something I’ve wanted to do for over a year now, though, and so this initial product will be rather gratifying to me if it proves useful to other fans.

As I said before, the data will continue to grow over the next few weeks and months as I eventually find the time needed to collect and compile even more information, or in some cases simply perform the analysis necessary to post. So, as always, if you are interested in any of the statistics but do not see the data up, feel free to email me at and I if I have the data I will gladly email the results to you, and if I don’t have it or am still working on getting it I will let you know that and follow up when I do get it done.

So far, here is what is recorded in Game Stats v1.0….

*  Snap data for offense and defense for every non-Special Teams play including play number, down, “To Go” information, and field position.

*  Formations for both offense and defense including a complete accounting for all offensive players on the field for each snap, and basic formation on personnel on the field for the defense.

*  Play types for each offensive and defensive play including play makers, play result, direction on running plays, defensive blitz information, and total gains on each play.

*  Line performance data for both the Colt offensive and defensive lines, with particular regard to impact on the quarterback by defensive linemen and individual performances by offensive linemen.

*  Detailed information on receiver data including targets, and the ultimate result of those targets including receptions, drops, interceptions, and yards, touchdowns, and first downs gained.

One of the first goals that I have in the first update will be to make the individual game charts publicly available for review. There will no doubt be a post or announcement on that exact update, but keep your eyes open for these updates. What follows is a list of information that I will be attempting to add to “Game Stats” over the next few months, and will likely be among major updates to data and analysis.

*  Opposing formation data, including specific types of defenses faced by the offense on each play and each offensive formation encountered by the defense

*  A complete accounting for each defensive player on the field on every defensive snap for the Colts (expanding upon simply the counting stat previous collected)

*  Data on RB blocking in the backfield and WR blocking in the open field including the rate, success, and failure of blocks.

*  Continued statistics on receivers including yards after the catch, coverage type, number of covering players, yards after initial hit, pass direction, and an accounting of deep and medium passes attempted towards receivers.

*  Further defensive scheme information including breakdowns on man and zone coverages

*  Special Team data, including punting, kicking, and returning statistics.

*  Blitzing data on the offense

*  Penalty information for all 3 phases of the game, both for and against the Colts.

Some of this data will come in chunks as game reviews are kept down to collecting just a part of the data each time to prevent making the reviews take another 8 hours each. Each major update, though, will be accompanied by a post detailing the additions made. Also, while it is not available at this time, updates will be made so that all tables will be interactive and player data will be linked to their profiles, which will all be updated and added as the next major project here at CZ following the draft.

On a personal note, I would like to thank readers for their support of Coltzilla as contributors work to upgrade the site and provide content through the off-season and regular season. I know that some of the stuff we do here isn’t timely yet, but that is something we are working to rectify. Coltzilla is still rather young, but we are working to improve not only the volume of our content, but also the quality. While I cannot speak for the other writers, I can say it has meant quite a lot to me having people stay with the site despite the growing pains. And also, I would like to thank Brett Mock, the managing editor and founder of Coltzilla, who has provided us with an excellent forum to provide content and information to readers worldwide.

So without further babbling on my part, thanks once again for your support and as always, feel free to comment or email me if you have any questions concerning the game stats, player profiles, or draft profiles.