Tim Jennings= Goat

that was a rant aimed moreso at the Colts philosophy and not really to be directed at you willyduer.

All offseason the team has been preaching on and on about being more aggressive and taking chances on the defensive side of the ball so we can stop teams on 3rd down and get the ball back on offense. Why not actually put that plan into action?

I think it’s situational. As bad as the constant 5-8 yard runs were, at least they weren’t getting beaten for big huge plays, which is always a risk when you take chances. Mostly though there didn’t seem to be that many opportunities in that game though. You can get as creative as you want, but when they’re ramming the ball up the middle every play, it mostly comes down to whether you win battles at the LOS or you lose them. In fact, I remember one instance of a run blitz around the weak side by 2 players – Bullitt and Brackett I believe, or maybe Hagler – that was a total failure because the play just went the other way and they only had to block 6 guys instead of 8.

I think we’ll see MUCH more creative blitzing and chance-taking against the Cardinals.

I know Jennings gave a similar cushion to Hayden, but Jennings doesn’t have the reaction time that Hayden has. Jennings is below average as we all know. So, after about the 5th time in a row that Miami ran a 5-7 yard out route and got the first down over on Jennings’ side, why not give him safety help over the top and see if he can jump the route?

I was surprised by this as well, but they actually completed several of those on the other side too. I think 3 against Jennings, 2 against Hayden, and 1 against Lacey was the total tally, with the other annoying conversions being while they were in zones, not man. Anyway, with Bullitt cheating into the box a lot, that left Bethea back deep alone, meaning he couldn’t just help over the top of one side. And if he did, they would’ve just run the same route on the opposite side of the field.

Basically, they were so successful with the run that even on 3rd and 5-8 we had to respect it, which meant fewer chances could be taken by the secondary since only one safety was back.

Furthermore, why didn’t we see any safety or LB blitzes once the game started wearing on and Freeney and Mathis were sucking oxygen over on the sideline at every opportunity? Isn’t that another thing we have been hearing out of the defense during training camp as it relates to Coyer’s scheme? They were obviously gassed, but Coyer or Caldwell (whoever was making those defensive decisions) continued to sit back and let Miami run plays all day. It took another remarkable performance by Manning to allow everyone to make excuses for it.

See above note about the blitzes from LBs. There were some, but no more in this game than in Dungy/Meeks years. They weren’t effective at all, which is likely why more weren’t called.

I personally have always wondered why the DL relies so heavily on a rotation, while the same three LBs play every snap. On a long drive like that, you’d think that there’d be a benefit to rotating the LBs too. Wheeler did play one play (and we saw Keiaho once GB got hurt), but that’s it. Of course, LBs are fitter than D Linemen….

My problem is not that we gave up so many yards, but that we made no adjustments while Miami was running the same 3 plays all game

They made some, but nothing too major. And even having 8 in the box didn’t help all that much.

Still, I would definitely have supported more varied fronts, even if it was just that annoying constant faking a blitz that teams do to Peyton over and over. Something like that could let them disguise some coverages and allow them to maybe do something like sneak a safety over to help Jennings, allowing him to try to jump a route without too much downside if he fails. I’m all for still preventing the big play, but sometimes risking a 15 yard play instead of 5 is worth it if the upside is a 20% chance of a takeaway.

Meanwhile, our defensive players are on the field 45 minutes in a single game and now Brackett is injured because of it. Injuries happen to this team and one of the biggest reasons why has got to be because we are on the field so much longer than we should be…. The problem here is that this team gets snake bitten by injuries every single year. As we continue to accept giving up 7 and 8 minute drives, those injuries are going to continue to be a problem.

This is a great insight and one that is often overlooked.

Polian made the point that given the circumstances, the D was actually in decent shape at the ends of those drives and the end of the game. And he’s right. But here’s a different way to look at this: What is a big reason that they’re converting a lot of third downs? Because they’re 3rd and shorts due to an extra yard or two per carry on 1st and 2nd. What’s a big reason for that? Getting stood up tall and/or blown off the ball by the interior line. What could be a cause of that? Not being all that strong.

This is something I’ve seen a lot of, and obviously it’s a natural consequence of being smaller and faster: Our team does not have the strongest players. Even when the OL was playing at their peak a few years ago, they weren’t a bullying, overpowering bunch. Saturday’s famous pancake was kind of an anomaly. Obviously there’s more to it than gym lifts, but Pollak actually came in fresh from the draft stronger than any existing lineman in a lot of lifts. (We’re seeing how this doesn’t help him though, as athleticism and positioning still trumps a gym lift, of course.) The same is true of the DL. They get pushed back a lot, even this year with the bigger bodies.

So what we have is a team that’s not as strong as many others, which also seems to be vulnerable to injury year after year… Yes, there are hundreds of factors that lead to this, tradeoffs between strength and speed, etc… but perhaps there’s someone else who could have a finger pointed at him?

I like his skillset and I like it when he is on the field.

I didn’t even know who he was at Iowa.

Just like Polamalu. His limited play against Tennessee in week 1 was downright awesome to watch.

There was a series of posts around cut-time detailing how Polian doesn’t give a care about draft position. And he doesn’t. He cares about talent, cost, and age, preferably high talent, low cost, and low age.

Even when everyone is healthy, he plays (well, playED, now that Powers is here) the edge in nickel and Marlin slides inside.

Not totally sure what the rationale behind that is, other than that Marlin is more versatile, having played some safety as well as just being all around good in run support.

If Marlin was 100% though we still would’ve seen plenty of Jennings, since Hayden went out. Though they really didn’t play very much nickel at all til the 4th corner. Something like 2 plays total in the first 5 drives.

they’re not too far away. Chicago either, in 3 years.

My favorite road venue so far was Houston. Easy to get along with the people, nice stadium, and a Colts victory.

they started every drive either tied or trailing if I remember right. That’s probably going to cause a pass heavy approach.

by the fac t that the colts either went 3 and out, or averaged 300miles per pass play? I’m sure they would have run the ball more, but every caught ball was averaging over 20 yards. Its hard to sustain a drive when you’re in the end zone in 3-4 plays.

My complain with run v pass and pass v run on Monday, and this has been a reoccurring theme in general, is it seems (and I stress SEEMS) that the Colts audible into runs a lot when it seems there is a blitz coming where they are running to. I don’t know if it just appears that way, if its dumby audibles, or what, but I can remember thinking more than once ‘run it here’, and they passed when it was a clear cover 2 shell and thinking ‘play action pass here!1111111111111’ when they were crowding the LOS, and they ran into a trainwreck of humanage.

Also, I think when the score was 20-13 and the Colts got to the 20, they were going to make a concerted effort to prolong that drive (it seemed like they had gone to shorter passes after they crossed midfield), and then stupid Donald Brown goes and rips off that long (for the Colts) TD run.

It was just a weird weird game. I would ignore the entire thing except the W, which is the only official stat that matters.