The Indianapolis Colts' new defensive coordinator, Lou Anarumo, got a lot of credit for developing the Bengals' phenomenal edge rusher Trey Hendrickson. For the Colts to win in 2025, he’ll have to do it again for Indianapolis. Or perhaps I should say, he needs to do it, period.
It doesn't exactly take a defensive wizard to see why the Colts moved on from Gus Bradley after last season. The days of him cranking out Top 10 defenses are long gone. He gets credit as the architect of the Legion of Boom in Seattle, but the team’s defense was even better after he left.
His Chargers defense in 2017-2018 was also in the top 10 in points allowed, but it declined in each of his four seasons. He hasn’t fielded a top-20 defense in five years. So, goodbye Gus.
Lou Anarumo better find his own Trey Hendrickson on the Indianapolis Colts
Enter Lou Anarumo. What strikes me about his record is that his defenses have only ranked in the Top 10 once in his seven seasons as a defensive coordinator. That was in 2022, his fourth year as the Bengals' DC. I can’t give Anarumo credit for Hendrickson, as the sack machine didn’t come to Cincinnati until 2021, his fifth year in the league. So let’s take a closer look at Hendrickson, shall we?
Hendrickson had 13.5 sacks and 33 pressures for the Saints in 2020, after he was moved from linebacker to the defensive line. He improved to 14 sacks and 45 pressures in 2022, but dropped back to eight sacks and 35 pressures in 2023. I’m not sure how Anarumo gets the credit for Hendrickson at all. I know this much: he'd better find his version and actually help the guy improve.
Fortunately, the Colts have a few options available on their roster. Fifth-year defensive end Kwity Paye has been solid, but hardly spectacular. He had eight and a half, then eight sacks the past two years, with 17 and 22 pressures.
Not that Pro Football Focus (subscription required) is always the best source, but they ranked Paye 71st among DEs last year. Hmmmm…32 teams, 64 starting ends…you do the math. Paye needs to step up.
The more likely candidate to make a big jump is last year’s first-round pick, Laiatu Latu. He didn’t exactly set the league on fire with four sacks and 23 pressures, but he wasn’t bad, either. PFF ranked him 37th overall among ends. His tackling hurt his grade; PFF shows him missing 25 percent of his attempts, which is in “yikes!” territory.
Pro Football Reference is more charitable as it shows him missing 13.5 percent of his tackles. Either way, he needs to clean that up. In fact, the entire team does, as the Colts missed 157 tackles, by far the worst in the league.
The real question is, can Anarumo help Latu make that big jump? It certainly won’t hurt to have the extremely nasty, yet somehow underrated, DeForest Buckner in the lineup again. Expect to see more blitzing, too. On average, Anarumo ran 32 more blitzes than Bradley over the past three seasons.
That’s not crazy like the Vikings, who ran more than twice as many, but it could certainly make a big difference for the Colts' pass rush this year. Let’s hope he can get the job done.