Colts vs. Bills: Special teams grades

We come to the final unit of the team in our analysis of last night’s game against the Bills. The special teams actually performed fairly well.

The special teams got a lot of work in yesterday’s game. They actually did fairly well for the most part. It would have been nice to of not needed them as much, but they did. Here are the grades for each aspect of the special teams from last night’s 24-16 loss.

Adam Vinatieri has a knee issue, so he didn’t play at all last night. That left the kicking duties to undrafted rookie Cole Hedlund. He did a great job, going 3/3 on his field goal attempts. He hit two of those from 44 yards. If it wasn’t for Hedlund, the Colts wouldn’t have scored in the first half.

The kickoff coverage was pretty good as well, except for the last one. They allowed Buffalo to start their second to last drive on the 35, which led to a 65 yard score from their running back. But the special teams did a good job on kick coverage for most of the night. They also blocked a kick.

Rigoberto Sanchez got a lot of work in this game, especially in the first half. In all he had 6 punts in this game. He did a good job of punting for the most part, and the punt coverage was pretty good as well. The thing holding down this grade is the punt return wasn’t great, with Pascal only getting 14 yards on one return.

Overall, this was the most solid unit on display last night. Hopefully when the regular season starts, they won’t be needed as much as they were last night.