Bill Belichick just roasted Gus Bradley and the Colts defense
Indianapolis Colts defensive coordinator Gus Bradley has been taking a lot of heat after the team's 0-2 start, which has shown massive issues in their defense above anything else. The run defense in particular has been rife with issues, which were evident in Week 1 and became embarrassing by Week 2.
After the Colts loss to the Green Bay Packers, 8-time Super Bowl winning coach Bill Belichick appeared on the Pat McAfee Show... and he had some harsh criticism for Bradley.
During the interview, Belichick had some less-than-flattering remarks about Bradley's defense.
"It's been a couple of weeks the Colts have had a hard time stopping the run," he said. "They stay in the same front for the most part. They don't really make a lot of defensive adjustments. They kind of do what they do. Gus Bradley believes in execution and doing the same thing over and over again, but I think, in some respects, that simplifies things for the offense, and so they just didn't do a good job at all in the running game, and I think everybody kind of knew that that was the kind of game it was going to be."
The Packers were able to rack up over 230 rushing yards in the first half alone, while Bradley seemed clueless about what to do. As Belichick pointed out, Bradley does not seem to realize that he can't just execute the defense the exact same way week after week and still be successful, particularly when that defense hasn't performed well to begin with. Any sane person would see how the run defense struggled in Week 1 against the Houston Texans and make adjustments; instead, knowing the Packers had their starting quarterback out and would be focusing on the run, Bradley just... continued on doing the same thing they failed at doing against the Texans. They just failed against the Packers in a more spectacular fashion.
The goal of a defensive coordinator should never be to make things easy for the opposing team's offense. But like Belichick said, when you aren't willing to change anything or make adjustments, it's near-impossible for the offense to be anything but ready to run over the defense.
In Week 3, the Colts are set to take on a struggling Bears offense, which should hopefully give Bradley's defense a chance to prove itself. But they're also going to be playing without their most valuable player - DeForest Buckner - and will it make any difference that the Bears are struggling if Bradley just continues blithely along, refusing to see the disaster in front of him and adjusting accordingly? Colts fans can only hope Bradley learned his lesson in Week 2, and that we will see a new and extremely improved defense in Week 3 against the Bears.