Colts rule Henry Anderson out for Sunday’s game vs. Lions

This should come as no surprise, but it’s now official: Henry Anderson won’t play for the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday when they open the season against the Detroit Lions.

The Colts have been saying for a while that Anderson probably wouldn’t be ready for week one, but head coach Chuck Pagano today confirmed it, saying that he won’t play any games with the media and that Anderson won’t play.

Again, it’s not a surprise. Anderson suffered a torn ACL in week nine last year and missed the rest of the season and the offseason program. He was out for the entirety of training camp and didn’t play at all in the preseason, though he came off of the PUP list a few weeks ago. That’s a great sign for his status, but getting cleared to return to practice is a far cry from being ready to play in a game. Anderson needs to continue to work to get back to 100% and get up to speed before they just throw him out on the game field, so while he’s very close in his return, he won’t play this week.

It’s uncertain when he’ll be back, but it won’t be this Sunday. That makes the injury status of Kendall Langford all the more important, and Chuck Pagano once again reiterated today what he said on Monday: that he’d be “shocked” if Langford doesn’t play. While that’s very encouraging, it doesn’t neccessarily guarantee that Langford will go. Remember, last year Chuck Pagano said he was “supremely confident” that Andrew Luck would play and said that he would bet on Luck, and this year Pagano said he’d be “shocked” if Langford doesn’t play and said that he would be on Langford. Luck missed two games after Pagano said that, so while it sounds very, very possible (and perhaps even likely) that Langford will be back, nothing is guaranteed yet. So we’ll just wait and see, but because Henry Anderson is officially out it’s going to be even more crucial to get Kendall Langford back.