The good, bad, and ugly from another debilitating Colts home loss

The ugly from Colts Week 8 loss to Saints

Gus Bradley’s gameplan

As we have discussed already how the Colts got carved up through the air and on the ground. The total number was 511 yards for the New Orleans offense on Sunday. That is abysmal and embarrassing. The run game has been discussed already but the passing game highlights are nothing for The Colts to be impressed about.

Outside of the Derek Carr strip sack, he completely controlled the game and really spread the ball out amongst the pass catchers, as eight different players got into the action with receptions. The defense had no answer for any of the key players in this offense, especially for speedy receiver Rashid Shaheed, as he finished with three catches for 153 yards. The other concerning aspect of the defense was the inability to garner any type of pass rush on Derek Carr. The Colts only had one sack and could not capitalize on the impact that it had on the game.

Colts secondary

This is becoming a trend with this football team. They don’t seem to have an answer for it either. There is a multitude of blame to go around. Obviously, the coaching staff bares most of the blame here and this coaching staff has shown that they are not afraid to bench you or even cut you for poor performance. We saw it on the offensive end with Deon Jackson and we saw Darrell Baker Jr. get benched after some early season mistakes. It’s now fair to put some blame on Chris Ballard for this continued regression, after he didn’t address the veteran depth of this group.

This game was so critical for the direction of the season and the secondary simply got burned, multiple times, plain and simple. This staff and front office sometimes believe in their players too much. They don’t have the depth to win these close football games when one guy is faltering. While we expected some growing pains, we did not expect regression. It’s time for Ballard to step in and either make a trade to get some leadership in this position or build some veteran depth to help these young players grow because whatever Gus Bradley is doing is not working right now and if they cannot get it fixed, it’s worth wondering if Bradley will be back next season or if the Colts move in another direction.

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