Colts need to cut down on penalties

A big area of improvement for the Colts in 2019 needs to be penalties. That starts with having more discipline, which the coaches will emphasize.

The Colts are typically pretty disciplined when it comes to not committing penalties. In years past they have done a good job executing and being smart. Last season was not one of those seasons however, as the Colts finished with the fourth most penalties in football.

A lot of those penalties were on the defensive end, especially offsides. Offside penalties can kill defenses. In the Colts’ case, a good amount of those penalties continued drives for their opponents. You can’t bail out offenses by going offsides on third down.

But by far the worst offenders of committing penalties was the offensive line. They got called for the most holding penalties in the league. A lot of those penalties happened early in the year when they were missing a lot of their starters and had backups out there.

The offensive line should be able to clean up those penalties this season, as they did so late last year. But they certainly can’t commit as many as they did last season. Having too many holds can kill drives and destroy momentum that has been built.

Overall, the Colts’ coaching staff should do a good job of reinforcing good, smart play. There should be a significant reduction in the amount of penalties that they commit this upcoming year. If there is, they should win more games by a wider margin of victory.