You might need more than all the fingers on both hands to list the culprits responsible for the Indianapolis Colts inexplicable home loss to the previously winless Tennessee Titans on Sunday. Oddly enough, Lou Anarumo’s defense would not be at the top of your list.
That by no means absolves the Colts’ defense of the latest disaster. They failed in multiple ways. But before we start enumerating the defensive futility, let’s offer a touch of perspective. I wouldn’t exactly call this optimistic or encouraging, but at least we can say this for a change. The Colts did not lose this game because of their defense. At least not primarily because of their defense.
I mean, how often does a team lose an NFL game when they only allow 11 first downs? 186 total yards? The Colts' offense more than doubled both those figures. Lou Anarumo’s defense gave up 4.1 yards per play. Only one team in the league – defending Super Bowl champion Seattle – allows so few yards per play. On paper, this was a game the Colts could not lose.
Indianapolis Colts' defense isn’t the worst unit on the field, but it is still nowhere near good enough
Now for the bad news. The Colts' defense, particularly in the second half, could not make the plays necessary to win the game. They didn’t exactly crumble, but they were certainly underwhelming.
This version of the Titans is among the worst offenses the NFL has seen in the last five years. Cam Ward may be a good quarterback one day, but he is far from it today. Tennessee entered the game last in points and total yards. They don’t run the ball very well. They are far worse when it comes to the pass.
Still, they put up 26 points when their previous high had been 20, and they were averaging under 12. The fact that one touchdown came on a blocked punt does shift the onus away from the defense a little bit, but even so, on a day when the defense should have carried the club, they once again failed.
Anarumo’s charges came out flying. They were pitching a shutout in the first half … their first time doing that in five years. But in the second half, they allowed Tennessee to essentially double their yards and their first downs. And even if we remove that special teams touchdown, they surrendered 19 points to a Tennessee team that looked like they did not belong in the NFL in the first half.
The Titans averaged 3.6 yards per play in the first half. That is stifling defense. That same team averaged 5.5 yards per play in the second half. That is mediocre defense coming against the worst offense in the league. Indianapolis simply got beaten down by a team with far less talent in the second half.
Ward had been sacked ten times in his first five games. The Colts' pass rush got to him … let me check my math here … zero times on the day. They generated one turnover. That isn’t too bad. Tennessee does protect the ball fairly well.
But here’s the worst team stat. The Colts did not have a single tackle-for-loss. Opposing defenses had been averaging more than four TFLs against Tennessee this season.
That truly sums up this defense under Lou Anarumo. They aren’t exactly the worst in the league. They simply aren’t very good either. They do nothing that scares an offense. They do not make big plays when they have to.
Indianapolis lost this game because of back-to-back atrocious plays on second-half punts. They lost because their supposedly strong offensive line was helpless to stop a rejuvenated Titans defense in the second half. Their quarterback played another bad game, and their head coach seemed to want to show off his passing game when various conditions decidedly favored the run.
But they also lost because their defense is a below-average unit that cannot help them win. Losing Sauce Gardner certainly hurt. His replacement, Cam Taylor-Britt, was beaten on Tennessee’s first touchdown and then committed a crippling pass interference penalty when the Titans were pinned deep.
Taylor-Britt is one of the many refugees GM Chris Ballard has brought in from Anarumo’s previous team, the Cincinnati Bengals.
Newsflash: that strategy did not work and Chris Ballard was fired on Monday.
Then again, nothing else is really working for the Colts' defense. In addition to the zero sacks, they were credited with one lone QB hit. (The Titans had 11!) Their secondary was credited with one pass breakup. (The Titans had 7!) Kicker Spencer Shrader had the same number of tackles as top draft pick CJ Allen.
So no, you can’t really say the Colts lost this one because of their defense. But you can say, just as you have been able to say throughout Lou Anarumo’s entire tenure in Indy, that the defense did virtually nothing to help the team win.
In a game they should have dominated, against the worst offense in football, they once again delivered an uninspired performance. By this point, it’s hard to see how that is going to change until a lot of new players and coaches are on the scene.
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