Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - Indianapolis Colts Suffer Embarrassing Loss to Cincinnati Bengals as Playoff Hopes Hang in Balance

Starting point is 00:00:00 What a stinker. The Colts just slogged through their clunkiest performance of the season as their margin for error thins, and the playoffs now hang in the balance. Let's get to it. You are Locked On Colts, your daily Indianapolis Colts podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. All right. All right.

Starting point is 00:00:37 What's up, everyone? Thanks for tuning in and making us your first post-game hate listen of the day. This is your daily podcast covering your Indianapolis Colts, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. And today's show is brought to you by PrizePix, which is the easiest and most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports. Go to prizepix.com slash locked on NFL and use code all over case locked on NFL for a first deposit match up to $100. So what's up, everyone? How we doing? How

Starting point is 00:01:06 you been the last few hours? Not going well for the Colts here at PayCore Stadium. I'm out here at Cincinnati right now. Colts on the wrong end of a 34 to 14 outcome here. It was not pretty. There really was no one area where they excelled. Offense, defense, special teams all did their part to mail this one in. Not to say it was for a lack of effort, but it just did not go well. They got outplayed, outmatched, outcoached, just all of it. It was just probably the biggest clunker so far of the Shane Steichen era. I mean, yes, it is one loss,

Starting point is 00:01:46 but this one came at a really poor time against an opponent that it could come back to bite them because now the Colts are seven and six. The Bengals are now seven and six. The Bengals now hold a tiebreaker over them. The Browns have a tiebreaker over them. The Jaguars aren't doing well. They have tiebreakers over them.

Starting point is 00:02:04 So the Colts are in this log jam of the AFC playoff race. And a lot of these teams they're going up against hold head-to-head tie breakers against them. The Colts face Pittsburgh on Saturday. Similar records there. So these games are ones they're not going to be able to afford to lose. And the Colts really had an advantageous final five game stretch. So while the sky isn't falling, it's not the end of the world. Like I said at the top, the margin for error now is razor thin. So just looking at this game specifically, some of the main themes, biggest things that stood out, self-inflicted wounds. Now, obviously in a 20 point loss, there's a lot you can point at, and there's usually going to be self-inflicted wounds. Now, obviously, in a 20-point loss, there's a lot you can point at,

Starting point is 00:02:49 and there's usually going to be self-inflicted wounds. Just starting, Matt Gay missed an extra point, missed a 38-yard field goal. That's a guy who's been relatively automatic to this point. Two turnovers. They had an interception. They had what basically amounted to a muffed punt with Amir Speed bumping into Isaiah McKenzie and causing him to lose control of that. So two turnovers, two missed kicks, just really not productive offensively on third down or the red zone either. There was a coaching blunder as well. Now, at the time, it wasn't considered a blunder by the coaching staff.

Starting point is 00:03:24 Maybe when they reevaluate, they'd maybe like that one back. Shane Steichen declined a 15-yard penalty on a blindside block in the red zone for the Colts offense. Or for the Colts defense, that would have made it second and 18. But instead, declining the penalty made it third and seven. The Bengals would go on to score a touchdown on that drive just a little bit later penalties was a big thing as well as much as the Colts couldn't get out of their own way they got no favors from the officiating either nine penalties three of them were false starts on the offense just not great there were some that really were ticky tack or could have gone either way. Some of them by the Colts kept Bengals drives alive, came second, third downs, gave Cincinnati new sets of downs, allowed them to score.

Starting point is 00:04:17 You look at one drive early on a Taven. Taven Bryan got called for a leverage penalty on a Bengals field goal. That gave them a new set of downs. Later in that drive, Jalen Jones was called for a holding penalty that gave the Bengals another new set of downs. And then Cincinnati turned that into a touchdown. Jalen Jones was called for a defensive pass interference along the right sideline covering Jamar Chase. And that one was really a rough call as well. Just observing things around the stadium today, just things I've seen and heard. Some of these calls maybe weren't so favored.

Starting point is 00:04:58 A lot of times people are, they'll just say, we got to clean that up, we got to do our part. But I don't think anyone really loved the officiating today, I'll be honest with you. There was another one. Quentin Nelson got called for a holding penalty, which wiped a 10-yard Zach Moss touchdown run off the board when it was already not looking great for the Colts late in the game.

Starting point is 00:05:22 So, obviously, that did not work out in their favor, really hurt them there so you guys can probably name off five other calls that you didn't like in this one and actually i encourage you to go ahead like it's mentioned at the top vent let it out let me know your thoughts on this game and uh how you feel about it uh offensively uh they were really conservative it's it's like they their game plan was protecting a lead that they never had. Lots of early down runs right into the teeth of the defense. Again, the Bengals, like most defenses this year, have come out in base. They're prepared to stop the run. They were shading some things over the top and trying to take Alec Pierce out of it.

Starting point is 00:06:05 Alec Pierce saw plenty of double coverage in this one, but in general, the Bengals were ready to stop the run. They knew they couldn't stop the run very well in general and that the Colts would try to do it with Zach Moss, and they were able to stifle it. Just really ugly stuff. That, of course, put the Colts in a disadvantage and down in distance on second and third downs.

Starting point is 00:06:26 They were going in with second and third and longs. Really not great. And in those situations on third downs, they were, you know, Gardner Minshew, whether it was by design or by his decision, throwing in front of the sticks passes that were not going to move the chains at all or didn't even give it a chance to. Just a real unproductive dink and dunk type of situation there. And then by my count, I think they only took one shot downfield. That was one to Alec Pierce, where the throw was probably, I guess, a little late or just underthrown.

Starting point is 00:07:01 Pierce had to adjust and just couldn't come down with it. But after having a really productive downfield passing attack last week, the Bengals were ready for it this week and the Colts just didn't even really try. So that was kind of disappointing to see. And then another thing I harped all week and going in this one, Jake Browning the Bengals quarterback, a backup to Joe Burrow, looked really good Monday night, was throwing in rhythm. I thought he got rid of the ball really well. So the Colts being so on fire with their pass rush,

Starting point is 00:07:32 second in the league with 42 sacks coming into this, 21 sacks in the last four games. It seemed like a no-brainer. Just keep it up. You don't have to get five, six sacks, but just get pressure on Brown and disrupt him. Don't let him be in a rhythm the whole game. No sacks today. Only hit the guy three times, and that was when they were facing the backup quarterback and his backup. It was Browning out there. He left for a little bit of time and was replaced by A.J. McCarron, so the Colts were not able to get any sacks against Cincinnati's QB2 and QB3, only hit them three times. So I just think that's inexcusable. The Cincinnati offensive line, really not good at protecting their quarterbacks.

Starting point is 00:08:15 Among the starting five, I think there's only one of them this year who has given up any fewer than like three sacks. Like they all have contributed to a really clunky pass protection throughout the season. And the Colts were not able to overcome that and have their own productive game. Again, not even, doesn't even have to be sacks. Just get pressure, be disruptive, get a few more hits. But they were not able to do that. So moving on beyond those main themes, we'll look at some other things that went on with the offense. Why root for your team on an empty stomach? Order on DoorDash and save on football watch party favorites. Hopefully you guys did that today and some good food was maybe

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Starting point is 00:10:17 covering the top sports stories of the day with the local experts of Locked On, plus the national shows that cover every league. Go to Locked On Sports today on YouTube and subscribe to the first ever national sports 24-7 streaming channel. Because, I mean, Colts fans, the Pacers are doing some exciting things. College basketball is kicking up. So if the Colts aren't your only thing that you like to pay attention to, Locked On Sports today will have some good stuff for you. All right, so offense. Let's finish this postmortem on the offensive side of the ball. So they were out gained by the Bengals offense, 385 yards to 272. In the first half, it was really,

Starting point is 00:10:57 really even more lopsided. It seemed, you know, the Colts scored two touchdowns in a 25-second span, one offensively to Mo Alleycox on a fourth down, and then the other was a pick six by the defense. So once again, the defense has had to score points for the offense. Outside of those two scores, the offense was just – they had some productive drives in the first half, I thought, that just kind of ran into the ground, just didn't turn up. You know, turnovers and just not being productive when you get across the 50 is just a theme for them.

Starting point is 00:11:36 Like I mentioned in this one, let's see, they were 3 of 11 on third down and 1 of 3 in the red zone. So that tells you all you need to know. Again, reoccurring things for the Colts offense. That's just really plagued them all year. Yeah, 14 to 14 going into halftime, and then they got outscored 20 to zero in the second half. So they just ran out of whatever juice they did have in the first half.

Starting point is 00:12:00 Just wasn't a good time. Gardner Minshew, for what it's worth, I thought he's had worse games. I thought he played well enough for the Colts to win in this one if other things around him were going okay. Maybe if the run game was a little more productive. Fewer drops, ton of drops in this one. Obviously, the defense had its issues as well, and we'll get to that in the next segment.

Starting point is 00:12:22 But, yeah, Minshew is fine 26 to 39 67 percent completions 240 yards uh one touchdown one pick uh one big thing I think we're all probably going to point at um you know as we just relive this game is there was a wheel wrap by Josh Downs when he did that in motion thing around the backfield and came back around up the right sideline. And he probably would have been easily in for a 50 yard touchdown, but Minshew didn't even look his way. So sometimes it's not about the mistakes you make or what you did do. It's what you didn't do. And that one, that one, when they turn on film will be one that Minshew really probably had a missed opportunity on that one. Behind him, again, for quarterbacks, backup quarterbacks especially, how many in the league are prolific players?

Starting point is 00:13:12 It's really, really, really beneficial to have a strong run game. For the Colts today, 18 carries for 46 yards. That's just not going to cut it. Zach Moss was really bottled up. He tried to get out and make a couple things happen. He did pick up and manufacture some of his own yards, but still 13 carries for 28 yards. That's 2.2 average. In the passing game, it was a really rough day for him. I think I counted at least three drops for him.

Starting point is 00:13:40 He had four receptions for 28 yards. Otherwise, Bernard Ryman, this was probably the worst game I've seen him play other than his first couple games in the league. I thought this was easily his roughest game of the season. He opened up the game giving up a sack to Trey Hendrickson. Hendrickson beat him again late in the game for another sack. I think he had two penalties against him. He had a false start.

Starting point is 00:14:07 He had a holding penalty that was declined because the defense picked it off on the play. And then he was called for tripping later in the game, which is a 15-yard penalty, I think. So giving up a couple sacks, having three penalties against you, two of them, which were accepted uh really rough i'm not worried about him this was not a great matchup to begin with i mean you want to see it probably be a little more even contested even with the sacks it probably it wouldn't have been that bad optically but he had those three uh three penalties he was called for so that'll get cleaned up again i'm not really worried about him uh just looking at some receiving numbers, you know, Michael Pittman continues to be on a tear, eight receptions for 95 yards.

Starting point is 00:14:50 He's knocking on the door of a hundred receptions in a thousand yards. It's getting very close. Will Mallory was pretty productive today. Five catches for 46 yards. Josh Downs caught all three of his targets for 32 yards. This one, I'm kind of starting to have a little bit of a bone to pick with because he's only had two, three catches for the last few weeks. And I know he was dealing with a knee injury.

Starting point is 00:15:14 It's getting later in the season. Perhaps there's a rookie wall thing. I don't know. But I would get him the ball more, especially in these shorter yards, you know, second and third, third and three. You know in these shorter yards, you know, second and third, third and three, you know, these, these shorter conversions, you know, they'll, they'll spread the ball out a little bit. They'll go in shotgun. I think I would look for Josh Downs a little more. I think we've all seen he's plenty capable of making plays. He's still doing it with the

Starting point is 00:15:39 limited opportunities he's getting. I would target the guy at least five, six times a game. I don't think three receptions is enough, and that's kind of been a theme lately. Alec Pierce also had two catches for 22 yards. Like I mentioned before, he was targeted on the deep downfield shot, wasn't able to come down with it. But those two catches, I thought were nice, made good conversions on those tough contested catches. So he's, again, what we saw maybe like four weeks ago when it was just kind of slants over the middle and he was coming down with them. That's kind of how this game was.

Starting point is 00:16:17 Obviously didn't have the fireworks of last week where he had the two downfield shots. But with the opportunities he was given, I thought it was pretty good by Pierce. It was kind of on the downfield shots, but with the opportunities he was given, I thought it was pretty good by Pierce. It was kind of on the downfield shot, you know, it probably wasn't the greatest throw, but I thought Pierce's footwork when he went up to get the ball kind of didn't go well and that put him in a bad position to go and get it.

Starting point is 00:16:40 But in general, you know, this is, he's going to have these types of games. We've obviously seen that throughout the year. So coming up in a second, let's talk about the defensive side of the ball. Some things did stick out positively, but we also got to talk about the pressure once again. Prize picks is the most fun that I've had winning up to 25 times my money this football season. Just select two or more players, pick more or less on their projected stats, and then place your entry. With the basketball season here, you can now pick combo projections across football and basketball from the Specials League. It's a really cool thing that they're doing. They've created it specifically for stat projections. Think of you're going to

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Starting point is 00:18:15 An offense that struggles to run the ball did very well against the Colts. It happened once again. And the rough one for this is Grover Stewart returned today in this matchup and the Bengals were still pretty good on the ground. 32 carries for 111 yards. That's not, that's obviously not like a really big average, but you know, they were in control for most of the game. They were able to run the ball semi-productively when they wanted to. They, you know, the Colts had some tackles for loss here and there. They had their nice moments.

Starting point is 00:18:49 If this was a normal game where the Colts were closer in the scoreboard, it probably wouldn't have gone this way. But when you combine that with the fact that the Bengals also killed the Colts in the screen game, which a lot of offenses use as an extension of the run game, just not a good game. Really, really big blunders in tackling. I think we all saw a handful of missed tackles from guys. Poor angles on runs down the sideline.

Starting point is 00:19:19 Just really ugly stuff. Chase Brown kind of got things popping off with a 54-yard screen pass for a touchdown. Kenny Moore got blocked in the back on that one. That wasn't called. Zaire Franklin took an odd angle. I saw he tried to kind of wiggle between two offensive players, but Brown was going so fast that I don't know that he accounted for that but it resulted in a poor angle uh and then rodney thomas at the end you know about the 10 5 10 yard line just kind of falling down at brown's feet essentially so not a great display of tackling joe mixon had his own 45 yard screen pass as well the bengals were able to dial up like three or four screen passes that were really productive against the colts i mean kenny moore had a a big tackle for loss on one but other than that the bengals were really able to use that to to do just about whatever they wanted they used it in great situations

Starting point is 00:20:17 uh it countered the colts would be pass rush a bit i know teams do that a lot of time to let the defensive front get upfield or into the backfield so that those defenders are then missing when the offense goes to dump the ball off. And they did that beautifully today. Darrell Baker initially in the game started off pretty strong. He saved a touchdown, a would-be touchdown, to Jamar Chase from like 10 or 15 yards out. I was in the back corner, and Baker got a hand up there and was able to block it away. Really, one catch for 14 yards in the first half for Jamar Chase. And, you know, Daryl Baker and Jalen Jones were out there.

Starting point is 00:20:59 You know, they got that assignment, and I thought they did really well in the first half. T. Higgins did scramble Daryl Baker Jr. mightily in the second half for a 46-yarder. He just put a little kind of double shift on him, and Baker just lost track of where he was, and Higgins came down with a big one. Ronnie Harrison, for the second time this season, comes up with an interception. This time he picked the ball off of Bengals tight end Tanner Hudson's outstretched hand, just picked it right off there

Starting point is 00:21:30 and ran it in for a 36-yard touchdown. For the Colts, thank God he did, or it would have been an even more lopsided affair. Sorry, I'm losing my voice today. But, yeah, he also had four tackles on top of that. It's hard to gauge without watching him specifically how he's doing, but he's made a couple big plays in these few weeks since he's been called up from the Colts. I mean, he's part of a linebacking corps that's giving up these screen passes

Starting point is 00:21:59 and is doing poorly against the run game. But for being a practice squad call up i mean he seems to be uh overstepping the the expectations there uh kenny moore stood out to me as well three tackles had that one for loss like i mentioned on the screen pass uh he did get called initially uh for an unnecessary roughness or you know hitting a defenseless receiver or hitting a player too hard type of penalty. They didn't pick it up, luckily, because what was that guy going to be able to do? I mean, he has to make a play, and he did.

Starting point is 00:22:35 Luckily, the referees kind of finally came to their senses on at least one instance and picked that one up. Kenny also had a pass breakup. And then Tyquan Lewis, for a rotational player that isn't out there a ton, he flashed me quite a bit. I know he had one tackle for loss, one quarterback hit. The quarterback hit that he did have was against Jake Browning down when the Bengals were near their own goal line. Unfortunately, there was a receiver there to make the play because Browning just kind of hung it up. And it could have been a huge play for the Colts defense.

Starting point is 00:23:10 But just unfortunately, there was a Bengals player there. So there was some good for the defense. It wasn't totally bad. Um, this is one of those games again, just got to flush this one and look on again. They got a game Saturday against the Steelers coming into town. Uh, it's going to be a weird practice week as well. I don't know how many practices they'll actually get into this one versus walkthroughs because they've been doing walkthroughs on Wednesdays anyways. So stay tuned. I mean, I know Zach will be in here. He'll have his takes on this game. We'll be looking ahead to the Steelers mighty soon.

Starting point is 00:23:38 I think you guys want to be doing that as well because I don't think we want to dwell on this one for too long. Remember after this to check out Locked On Sports today, the first ever national sports 27, 24-7 streaming channel on YouTube. If you don't already follow at Locked On Colts, at Jake Arthur NFL, and at Zach Hicks 2 on Twitter, also be sure to subscribe on YouTube and wherever you listen to podcasts. We would also love your ratings and reviews as well.

Starting point is 00:24:03 And with that, we will see you guys on Tuesday morning.

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Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - Indianapolis Colts Suffer Embarrassing Loss to Cincinnati Bengals as Playoff Hopes Hang in Balance

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