The Indianapolis Colts aren’t as good as we think they are. Yet I don’t want the Broncos to be playing them in the playoffs.
Confusing? That’s because the Colts are a highly confusing football team.
The Colts have misled us this season by picking up five wins against their soft AFC South division, with a sixth win likely to come next week.
They have deceived us by putting 49 points on the Redskins, by puting 40 points on the Giants and by shutting out the Bengals.
The last three weeks, however, have opened our eyes to the team they really are. A good-bad team – they beat the bad teams they play and struggle against the good teams.
Both the Broncos and Patriots, the AFC’s two highest seeds, defeated them convincingly in prime time.
The Steelers, a potential first-round playoff opponent scored 51 points against the Colts. They needed a two-minute drive and big pass interference call to defeat the Browns three weeks ago. They couldn’t put Houston, led by a third-string quarterback, to bed last week. And then this week, well let’s not even go there.
Then why am I scared? Because the Colts have the potential to put all the pieces together. The offense is the number one total offense and number one passing offense in the league.
Andrew Luck has the ability to put the team on his shoulders and carry them to a Super Bowl. Defensive backs Vontae Davis and Mike Adams have the potential to shut down the Broncos wide receivers. Remember, you only need to get hot for four weeks to win a Super Bowl.
I’m not saying the Colts are a bad football team, just that they are an average team with the potential to catch fire. More advanced stats reveal the team’s mediocrity, which cannot be seen by simply looking at yard totals.
Indianapolis is ranked 13th in both offensive and defensive efficiency. The running game is ranked 17th in the league in yards per match, averaging 110.5 yards. The defence is 15th in total yards per game, giving up 351 yards.
The fact that the offense is ranked number one in yards per game is largely a result of their soft schedule. Entering the season, based on last year’s standings, the Colts were facing the easiest schedule in the entire league.
While the schedule hasn’t been as easy as first predicted, it has still turned out to be the 24th easiest schedule in the league based on current win-loss records.
Dallas’ shellacking of the Colts on Monday highlighted a number of major concerns for Indianapolis on both sides of the ball. On the defensive side, the Colts were playing man defence in the secondary while sending five, six, seven players to pressure quarterback Tony Romo.
They were required to send so many players to the line of scrimmage and spread themselves so thin in the secondary because the Cowboys possess the best running back in the league, DeMarcus Murray. The problem for the Colts is that the Cowboys offensive line is so good that they were unable to put any real pressure on Romo during the first half.
The lack of pressure placed on Romo, he was sacked just once and that came in the third quarter, meant that he was able to stand in the pocket and pick apart the Colts’ man defence.
Tony Romo will back his receivers almost every time he sees them in one on one situations, all he has to do is put the ball in the right places and they will do the rest. Both Jason Witten and Dez Bryant are so large and dominant that they are almost impossible to defend one on one.
On the other side of the football, the Cowboys found themselves in exactly the opposite situation to the Colts. Indianapolis had to crowd the line of scrimmage out of fear of the Dallas running game.
Dallas had no such issues, with the Colts nonexistent running game posing absolutely no threat to the Cowboys they only lined up to defend the throw. Dallas very rarely sent more than four defenders towards Andrew Luck and dropped the rest back into coverage. Luck simply had nowhere to throw the ball too.
Compounding things for Andrew Luck was the absence of TY Hilton, who was inactive due to a hamstring injury and is a week-to-week proposition. Fellow receiver Reggie Wayne was also a non-factor and even when the Colts receivers were getting open Luck was either missing them or they were dropping the football.
The Colts lead the league in drops and have to cut it out if they are to go deep into the playoffs. It’s not costly dropping a certain touchdown pass when you’re wide open and up 20 points against Washington. It is absolutely costly to this against New England, Denver, Pittsburgh or whomever it is they may face in January.
Where to now for the Colts? Clearly they have their flaws but all is not yet lost. However, they face a serious issue in Pittsburgh, New England and Denver.
All three teams are very similar to Dallas in the respect that they have strong running games, or in New England’s case the ability to procure a running back out of nowhere for the sole purpose of running through Indianapolis. Additionally, they have outstanding quarterbacks who go to town the moment they see man coverage in the secondary.
The saving grace for the Colts is Andrew Luck. They need him to be on song and able to hit his receivers for an entire match if they are to be successful in the playoffs. Any playoff match they win will have to be high scoring.
They need TY Hilton healthy and back to his explosive best and they need Reggie Wayne to play a much more prominent role in the offense. And some semblance of a running game would be good too.
Twitter: @fromthesheds
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