The Indianapolis Colts saw their unbeaten streak end with several major miscues. More than anything, it was their own mental errors that cost them their fourth straight win.
In one respect, the Colts played well enough to beat the Rams. That's despite letting Matthew Stafford go off for 375 yards passing and three touchdowns. Lou Anarumo's defense looked suspect for the second week in a row. They've only beaten two bad teams, and lucked out with their win over the Broncos. That lucky horseshoe turned on them today.
To be clear, it wasn't a matter of bad luck hitting the Colts today, just that the bounces didn't go their way for once. Quite literally in one case. We'll get to that, trust me. But that defense was atrocious. Is Stafford an elite quarterback? He certainly has been for most of his career, and can still turn in performances like this.
Colts poor discipline cost them terribly in Week 4 loss
But good defenses don't give up 13 catches for 170 yards to any receiver. And they don't put 10 men on the field with the game on the line to give up a game-winning 88-yard touchdown to a guy with one four-yard catch on the season. But as poorly as the defense played, the Colts should still have won this game handily. And handily is the key term here.
Anarumo's defense failed pretty spectacularly. But even with that late (an inexcusable) score, they only gave up 27 points. If not for two equally spectacularly boneheaded plays by one Indianapolis receiver, the Colts would have had 34 points on the board. And I'm not talking about, "If this guy had only caught the ball, they would have had a first down and could have scored on the next play."
No, Indy had six on the scoreboard twice, and it was taken off both times because of the same player.
We see this happen at least a few times a year. A running back or receiver makes a spectacular play, and as he crosses the goal line, he drops the ball. Or to be precise, he drops it just before he gets into the end zone. That's what Adonai Mitchell did when he decided it was more important to celebrate himself than to let his apparent 76-yard touchdown catch in the third quarter speak for itself.
Sadly, Mitchell extended the ball with one hand as he was about to cross the goal line. That's the key issue here; he was about to score. He lost the ball at the one-yard line and fumbled it out of the end zone. Instead of a 17-13 Indianapolis lead, the score remained 13-10, Los Angeles. Maybe if he had Michael Pittman's 9 1/4 inch hands instead of his 9-inch spread, he could have held on.
Even more egregious to me was his completely unnecessary holding call in the fourth quarter. To his credit, he was blocking for a Jonathan Taylor run, which turned into a 53-yard touchdown run. That put the Colts up 27-20. Except that for the second time, a huge mental error by Mitchell took six points off the board.
Mitchell hooked Rams cornerback Darious Williams around the neck, then pulled him to the ground as Taylor flew past them. Maybe Williams would have made the tackle. Or maybe if Mitchell had just blocked him, instead of trying out his latest MMA takedown technique, Taylor would have scored anyway.
To me, the biggest error was keeping Mitchell in the game after his fumbled touchdown. Yeah, Alec Pierce was out. So what? Mitchell had caught just half of his eight targets coming into the game. He isn't exactly the second coming of Marvin Harrison, after all. Why Shane Steichen didn't park him on the pine for the rest of the game is beyond me.
First, he put his own celebration above the team win. Celebrate all you want once the refs signal you scored. Or, you know, be like Barry Sanders and act like you expected to be there. You don't stay in the game when you're not team-first.
Second, you have to know the guy's going to be pressing to redeem himself. I'm all for giving players a shot at redemption after a bad play, but this was entirely due to his ego. Steichen deserves as much blame for that penalty as does Mitchell.
Overall, the Colts played well enough to win. But they weren't good enough to overcome their own miscues. That's the mark of a truly good team. They managed to pull it off against Denver, mainly because the Broncos made their own bundle of mistakes. But they can't play sloppy football and get away with it. They are who the fans thought they were: a decent team, but far from a great one.