The Indianapolis Colts lost 38-27 on Sunday after blowing a 17-7 first quarter lead, that they secured by capitalizing on some miscues from the New Orleans Saints. Eventually, the Saints dominated the offensive side of the ball and the youth and inexperienced showed in the Colts secondary yet again. The Saints carved up the young and underprepared Colts defense for 511 total yards.
With a score like 38-27, Indy obviously did some things right, but a whole lot of wrong as well. Let’s get into the good, the bad, and the ugly from Indy’s third-straight loss.
The good from Colts Week 8 loss to Saints
The ground game
We are beginning to see the old Jonathan Taylor come back to life, at least in the first half of this game we did. Why he was essentially taken out of the second half game plan, we may never truly know. The split continued to be even between Zack Moss and Taylor, even with Moss not at 100 percent. This is the strength of this football team and why it was eliminated in the third quarter is puzzling. Put the game in the hands of your best player and that player is Jonathan Taylor.
Turnovers
After the last two weeks with four turnovers each (all committed by Gardner Minshew) we finally saw some ball protection. It started with the offensive line protection which was satisfactory. Minshew did throw a costly interception in the endzone that could have flipped the momentum on that drive but the Colts had zero fumbles lost and really made ball security a priority this week. The minimal turnovers kept them in the game.