Colts vs. Texans: Week 12 defense grades

It was a disappointing night for the Colts yesterday as they lost in Houston 20-17. The defense had some bad moments in the game too.

The Colts defense has been pretty good over the last month or so. They were pretty good last night too except for a few big plays. Unfortunately, those big plays translated into Houston points. Here is how each unit played in the game.

Part of the reason those big plays happened is because the Colts couldn’t get any pressure with their front four. They only had one sack from the defensive line, and it was from rookie Ben Banogu. Justin Houston ended his sack streak last night.

The lack of pressure allowed Deshaun Watson to dance around the pocket and wait until someone broke open. It was quite maddening. But the line did do a good job in the running game for the first three quarters. They got a little loose on that in the fourth quarter though.

Darius Leonard punched the ball out late but the referees screwed up and ruled Watson down. Other than that, he only had 6 tackles. Anthony Walker had perhaps his best game as he led the team with 8. Bobby Okereke dropped a sure pick in the 4th quarter.

That dropped pick ended up looming large in this one. Had he secured it, there was a chance he could have scored. At any rate, this unit played fairly well. They kept the Texans under 100 yards rushing which was good as well.

Kenny Moore got a pick that led to a touchdown. But there were four big plays that the secondary allowed. Unfortunately, two of those resulted in touchdowns. On the first touchdown, Malik Hooker blew a coverage and left DeAndre Hopkins wide open in the end zone for an easy touchdown.

On the other touchdown. Pierre Desir got burned on man-to-man coverage by Hopkins down the sideline. The other two big plays were passes to Will Fuller on man-to-man coverages as well. Every time the Colts were in man-to-man, they got burned. It was a mistake to run anything but zone coverage.

The defense wasn’t the reason the Colts lost the game. But the secondary needs to shore up those mistakes to keep big plays from happening.