Indianapolis Colts at Denver Broncos: Next Day Analysis

The Indianapolis Colts had their chances to pull off a road upset, but failed to capitalize and made mistakes at the worst possible moments.

The Colts had plenty of opportunities to come away with a win, but Andrew Luck wasn’t at his best and as he goes, so goes the team. He sailed a number of passes, didn’t have the pinpoint accuracy of Week 1, and had a couple untimely turnovers that doomed a rally. It is the third year in a row that the Colts start out the season 0-2.

First some minor positives.

The good news is that even with players dropping like flies on defense the Colts only gave up 20 points on the road (14 were defensive scores). You can’t really expect much more than that from cornerbacks consisting of “who” and “that guy’s an NFL player?” At this point there really aren’t any bright points on this side of the ball.

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The Colts have zero playmakers on defense. Robert Mathis has been about a half-step away from a strip-sack four or five times this season, and a foot injury might be slowing him, but he’s also at the end of his career. Mike Adams has been Mr. Right Place, Right Time the past two years but with no one else causing fumbles or forcing tighter coverage he can’t make a play. The last two times Darius Butler has picked off a pass, he’s gotten hurt in the process.

This Colts defense is really old, really slow, and fails at the fundamentals (like tackling). But the fact that they gave up just 20 points is incredible. We keep saying that they’ll get injured player back (assuming they don’t lose guys faster than they can replace them), but the guys failing the hardest are the linebackers and they’re all healthy.

A coach can only scheme so much, at some point he has to have talent and that falls on GM Ryan Grigson. They have a linebacking corps that can’t drop into coverage, can’t tackle, and can’t rush the passer. And if you’re asking yourself, isn’t that basically the job description, you’d be correct!

The only good part of this is that the defense played well enough to win this week, but that doesn’t mean they will in the future. There is no consistency with this side of the ball and with injury what you get week-to-week is a mystery.

Now to the bad.

Luck came back down to Earth real fast this week. Yes, the defense they faced was much better and yes, his receiver struggled to get open but Luck was still bad. He held the ball for too long, didn’t check down often enough, and made the kind of mistakes that were supposed to be behind him. On the interception to Aqib Talib, Luck stared down Phillip Dorsett and was baited by Talib. A pump fake would have helped an awful lot or checking down to his running back. The touchdown was all Talib, Luck didn’t throw him an open lane TD return, he had to weave through traffic and earned those six points.

Luck was bad, but you can’t blame him for the game sealing strip-sack. Joe Reitz got worked over by possibly the best pure pass rusher in the NFL right now. It was eerily like watching Dwight Freeney or Robert Mathis during the mid-2000s. Small lead, game on the line, end it with a strip-sack. The way Luck was playing following that pick-six, it was very likely he would have taken the Colts on a game winning drive.

Had Luck done so, the narrative wouldn’t be “turnover machine” it would be “superhero” (or Luck bails out Colts again). His narrative unfairly hinged on how his right tackle handled the Super Bowl MVP, but that has more to do with how we treat QBs than anything else (too much of the success, too much of the blame).

Next: Secondary wasn't the problem for the Colts

Luck never seemed comfortable in the pocket on Sunday. Which might be understandable against the team that ended your season less than a year ago. How Luck plays at home against the Chargers next week will tell us a lot about what the rest of the year holds.

Last week we blamed the loss on coach Chuck Pagano for a number of reasons (game planning, faith in defense, clock management) but this one falls on the quarterback. An average game from Luck would have been enough to come home with a win, but that didn’t happen. Consistency is key for Luck heading forward.

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