FanPost

Growing Pains

It happens. Sooner or later, our string of 3 very hard fought games would come to an end. We all knew it. We just didnt know when.

Of course there were several alarming things. Poor defense, poor decisions, poor performances. When looking at this game, its hard any positives. But there were a couple things.

It seems that the Colts braintrust is now a full go on the no huddle offense. I think that will play dividends in the future. When it worked today, which wasn't often, the offense looked fluid. We did gain 21 first downs on 65 plays... thats roughly a third, which on a 3 down system is what you want. Interestingly, we also only had one less first down than the Jets. Unfortunately its how many of those drives ended that will be remembered... punts, turnovers, field goals, etc.

Another good thing was a better involvement by everyone on offense. Last week we saw virtually only Luck and Wayne. This week more spread out. We need to get the TE's involved and it seems the quick no huddle offense will allow that.

Now the rest is execution. I don't want to linger on this so I'll just say it once - if Luck throws around 65%, we are a playoff caliber team. Until then... well we'll have to grow some more.

When you pass as much as we do, we need manageable throws and catches. Lots of blown scenarios today.

I can't for the life of me explain Reggie's game today. One of his worse ones following a career week last week. I love him so this aint bashing... its just unfortunate when your most trusted vet comes up inconsistent.

Our defense continues to get hurt. We need some major work. Being unable to stop the run against a team that is afraid to throw.... you just cant explain it. Of course Redding's injury hurt a lot. As did playing without Mathis.

This was bound to happen. Theres a reason why Brees record of consecutive games with a TD mean so much... because youre inevitably going to have a bad game, especially when asked to do so much for your team. We can lose sight of that, especially with the way people are performing nowadays - it seems a new passing record is broken every season... a new rookie has the best rookie season ever... etc etc.

But that doesnt really matter. What is most important is consistency. That is what is most important. Manning wasnt the best his rookie season - he sucked. We sucked. And during his era, he didnt always have the best season ever. But he was remarkably consistent... we won the first 7 games of the season for like 6 straight years. No matter the sitation, we always fought and rarely got blown out. And as a reward we won a SB and Manning had 4 MVPs.

Consistency is not achieved your rookie season. But the construction starts then. I think with the no huddle offense and faster play, we may be headed the right track. But it'll take time.

Keep you head up everyone!

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of Stampede Blue's writers or editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of Stampede Blue's writers or editors.