What to Look For During Scrimmages With Ravens
By Ryan Stano
The Colts have joint practices with the Ravens today and tomorrow ahead of their Monday night matchup. What are some things to watch for during practice?
The Colts will host joint practice with the Ravens the next two days. Joint practices can help both teams if done properly. It gives the teams someone to hit other than their teammates, and also gives them a chance to gameplan a little bit and see how they match up.
One of the things to keep a close eye on is how the defense fares against the Baltimore offense. The defense hasn’t been very good so far, so it will be interesting to see how they have changed their play since getting torn up against Seattle.
Another thing to watch is the team discipline. Joint practices have the reputation for breeding fights between teams. The Colts have made it clear that they don’t tolerate nonsense. I wouldn’t expect anything to happen, but it is still something to keep an eye on.
Since these teams play an actual game on Monday night, don’t expect either team to show much of their offense. It will be very vanilla during the scrimmages, and possibly during the game as well. No one wants to give other teams tape to watch this early in the preseason.
How head coach Frank Reich structures the scrimmages will be interesting as well. This is his first training camp as a head coach, so he has had to learn what he thinks is best to do for the team. How he goes about organizing the scrimmages with the other coaches will be interesting.
All in all, the joint practices should be good for both teams. Hopefully the Colts can take what they learn in the practice and use it to improve.