The Colts know that they have to have a better defense this season. A big part of this is the run defense. Based on what I saw, it still needs work.
The Colts had their first padded practice of training camp on Sunday evening. I was able to attend and I saw several interesting things. One of those being the development of the run defense and how ineffective they were at stopping the run.
Now the Colts offense looked good running the ball. That could have been because the re-worked offensive line has looked better. But the defense was gashed up and down the field by the running backs. It was slightly concerning to see. They didn’t look particularly good.
One player did look good stopping the run though, and that was Antonio Morrison. He did a good job coming downhill and hitting the gaps where the running back could run through. But the rest of the defense didn’t do the same.
Now that was only one practice and one particular scrimmage. But the early returns were not encouraging. They did not do a good job stopping the run last season, so they need to improve that this year. Some of their offseason acquisitions were aimed at that too.
The defense still has plenty of time to fix these issues. They have all the rest of training camp and all of the preseason as well. You can never really know how the team will do until you play another team, so expectations should be tempered one way or the other.
Even though what I saw wasn’t the best, I still walked away encouraged. The team has time to grow together, and I expect them to be much better on defense than they were a year ago.