Six Colts ruled out for Sunday’s game vs. Chiefs, including four starters

The Indianapolis Colts today ruled out six players for Sunday’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs: tight end Dwayne Allen (ankle), defensive lineman Henry Anderson (knee), defensive lineman Kendall Langford (knee), outside linebacker Curt Maggitt (ankle), guard Jack Mewhort (tricep), and wide receiver Chester Rogers (foot and hamstring).

That means the Colts know six of their seven gameday actives already, and four of them are starters. The team will be down their starting tight end, two starting defensive linemen, and their starting left guard.

Along the defensive line, the one bright spot is that Zach Kerr will return, and he’s been having a tremendous season before missing a bit of time with an injury. So he’ll fill in at one of the spots, and it’s likely that guys like Hassan Ridgeway, Art Jones, and T.Y. McGill will also see increased reps. At guard, the Colts will roll with the same lineup they used on the offensive line last week with Mewhort out, as they’ll put Joe Haeg at left guard, Denzelle Good at right guard, and Joe Reitz at right tackle to go along with Anthony Castonzo at left tackle and Ryan Kelly at center. And at tight end, Jack Doyle has proven to be a very capable replacement and the offense likely won’t miss too much with Allen out since they have Doyle and Erik Swoope to fill in.

The absence of Chester Rogers could be significant in that the Colts won’t have their number four receiver and punt returner, but the receiver position should be fine due to the fact that the Colts are getting Donte Moncrief and Phillip Dorsett back from injury to join T.Y. Hilton at the position.

One other thing to note pertains to Kendall Langford, who will miss the first game of his NFL career, snapping a streak of 135 straight games played to open his career. That’s incredibly impressive, but he’s still dealing with the knee injury that he suffered in training camp. So Chuck Pagano said today that the Colts are going to shut him down for a little bit to let him get back to 100%, though it’s unclear how long that will be. For the meantime, though, the Colts will be without both Kendall Langford and Henry Anderson on Sunday - which, with a very weak linebacker group playing behind that line, could mean good news for Spencer Ware.