1 – Peyton makes this game of football look stupidly easy. You watch quarterbacks around the league (or Curtis Painter for that matter) struggle week in and week out to find open players, always looking rushed and skittish as 11 guys hell bent on crushing them if the change were to arise circle like sharks. Then you watch Peyton in the pocket looking chilled and relaxed as if this were a stroll in the park.
After a sluggish looking opening drive Manning hit 7 of 7 passes on his second, and final, drive of the afternoon. It must be a blast to be a Colts WR as you know that no matter what progression you are on a certain play there is every chance you will get the ball if you run your route properly. If the first preseason game is anything to go by then in Manning’s eyes the Super Bowl hangover doesn’t exist.
2 – Coach Caldwell should be in Jerraud Powers face at practice today. On a play that should have been a touchdown, and with an escort in front of him to guide him to the end-zone, Powers for no apparent reason decided to step out of bounds in ’49ers territory. I know it is just a preseason game and that it doesn’t could for anything, but on those kind of plays you HAVE to keep going until you are tackled.
I may have a slightly different view of a play like this because coming from a rugby background I think that defenders on these kinds of plays could certainly use the lateral pass more than they do to get extra yards. In this case however all Powers had to do was stay in bounds and he probably would have scored. Will be interesting to see what he does if he manages to pick off a pass in Thursday’s game.
3 – Pat Angerer is going to add something to this defensive unit. The Colts first team defense was outstanding in their quarter of work against the ‘9ers forcing a couple of turnovers and generally looking beastly as they manhandled the San Fran offense. Having said that Angerer came in with the second team and immediately registered a couple of sack, which kind of ironically matched his entire career total at Iowa. Yes, he came unblocked on both plays, and yes it was the human sack machine David Carr that he was hitting, but still two sacks is nothing to scoff at.
His all around play in the game was just as impressive as he racked up eight total tackles and was buzzing around the field all game. It was his humble attitude after the game however that will please the coaches as he downplayed his achievements and talked about how much work he still has to do to be NFL ready.
He might not be first string material yet, but by the time this season has finished he will have made a big time impact on the Colts season.