The immortal Fooch, head writer at SB Nation San Francisco 49ers blog (Niners Nation) is doing a series which breaks down all the opponents the 49ers will face during the 2009 regular season. One of those opponents is the Colts, and Fooch does a pretty good job breaking down what the Colts have done this off-season.
One item that surprised me a bit was Fooch citing Football Outsiders' ranking of the Colts defense in 2008: 10th. That's amazing, considering how banged up and pulverized the defense was, to be ranked 10th is a small miracle.
Fooch also offers some of his own take on how the game may go:
In what should come as no surprise, neither ProfessorBigelow nor I predicted a 49ers win over the Colts in our early schedule discussion. While the 49ers offense might be able to score on their defense, one has to wonder if it would be sufficient to keep up with the offensive attack Indy will be bringing to the table. While I don't foresee a 49ers win, I'd like to open this up more to what would need to happen for the 49ers to spring what would be a monster upset? And hell freezing over does not count as an answer.
Speculation like this is very premature. We haven't gotten into pre-season yet and we don't know what the injury situation will be for both teams when they meet. However, the article is good for summarizing what the Colts were in 2008, what they've done to improve in 2009, and how they match-up with a young but flawed team in SF.