Colts overlook Raiders, get beat at home

The Colts looked like they were overlooking the Raiders, and they were punished for it, losing 31-24. Their defense is a serious problem.

This was one that was supposed to be easy. Even though they were without two of their best players in T.Y. Hilton and Darius Leonard, this still should have been a relatively easy game against a bad Raiders team. It was not because of how bad the defense was.

The Colts defense is bad. Let’s just get that out of the way. They were gashed up the middle and on the outside on runs all game long. They let the Raiders jump out to a quick 14-0 lead in this game. There was no pressure on the quarterback, poor tackling, and bad coverage.

Eric Ebron seems to have transformed back into the player he was in Detroit. He had three drops just in the first half. He has become unreliable this season. It seems like he has more drops than catches. Jacoby Brissett didn’t get much help from his pass catchers in this one.

Too many Colts were hampered with injuries. Marlon Mack hurt his ankle in this one, Parris Campbell had an ab injury, and Chester Rogers got blown up in the fourth quarter. It’s really hard to win games with that many players out.

Frank Reich did not have his team prepared for this one. The offense looked out of sync, the defense couldn’t tackle, and they had no juice. I warned about overlooking this team, and they just didn’t focus. It was a complete failure by the coaching staff.

The Colts also made an odd decision at the end of the game to not attempt an onside kick. They were down 31-24 with just over a minute left and opted to trust their defense with three timeouts. It didn’t make sense to do that with how bad the defense was playing.

If this defense continues to play like this, it won’t matter what the offense does. They just won’t win games. A defensive effort like this next week might yield 60 points to the Chiefs.  It’s very hard to watch from Matt Eberflus’ unit.

Getting healthy will help, but there needs to be some big changes on defense. They need to fix something before this season spirals out of control.