Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - Indianapolis Colts: What Needs to Change with Gus Bradley in 2024?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Gus Bradley has done some outstanding things for the Colts defense, but some things are going to have to change going into next season. 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, what's up? Thanks for tuning in and making us your first listen of the day. This is your daily podcast covering your Indianapolis Colts, part to the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. And today's show is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs, which helps you find the qualified candidates that you want to talk to faster.

Starting point is 00:00:54 Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash locked on NFL. That's linkedin.com slash locked on NFL to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. What's up, everyone? Welcome to the show. Welcome to Narnia. It is not, it is not good outside. Zach, I don't know what the Mid-Atlantic is like right now, but the Midwest, we're going through it.

Starting point is 00:01:20 It sucks outside. So again, welcome to Narnia. Yeah, we got a couple inches of snow outside too, some ice and some wind. So I think it's the whole country is getting hit by it right now. So yeah, no, welcome to Narnia is a good way to describe it. But we're gonna have some fun today, guys. We're gonna talk about the wonderful topic that is Gus Bradley. I know that the opinions are all over the place on Colts defensive coordinator Gus Bradley. I know some of y'all want him fired as of right now, like you just want him you want want to kick him to the curb and go get some flash to your name. I know some of you guys think you did a better job than what the stats say last year. So today we're going to tackle the entire topic that is Gus Bradley. But starting off with some good, I mean, Jake, you got some stats in here that show that Gus Bradley's defense wasn't all bad last year.

Starting point is 00:02:02 Again, I know some people will say that it was all bad, but some stats here actually do point to some positive progression for this defense in 2023 under Gus Bradley. Yeah, for sure. First, I wanted to just kind of mention where certain places had the defense overall, like just as a whole, because you can get in a lot of different things in rushing and passing and things like that. But overall, defensively, they ranked 24th in the league. That's obviously not where you want to be. DVOA, which a lot of people take a lot of stock in, they were 20th there at 2.6%.

Starting point is 00:02:37 Their pro football focus overall defensive grade was 22nd with a 71. And then scoring overall, which was 22nd with a 71. And then scoring overall, which is, again, a hard metric, 28th overall at 24.4 points per game. So those things overall were really not great. You're starting the good segment with these. Come on, Jake. Well, I had to get that stuff up front. I'm about to get into the good. But I was just about to say, it was not all bad.

Starting point is 00:03:07 There were some really good things to take away. There's a lot of context that goes into those poor rankings. But you look at Saks. The Colts had their best season rushing the passers since coming to Indianapolis in 84. They finished with 51 Saks, which was fifth in the league. Again, an Indianapolis-era best. Pro Football Focus had their pass rush ranking at ninth overall with 79.4 grade. Again, really good for the Colts. They've been working towards those marks for years.

Starting point is 00:03:36 Chris Ballard has been kind of hammering that his whole time he's been here. On third downs, they ranked 10th, which is pretty good. Uh, that that's a 37.1%. You look at the pass rush and that's kind of a direct correlation, uh, kind of getting after the quarterback on third and longs where they have to pass the ball that obviously kind of gets them off the field more often than not. Uh, and then opponent pass rating, which I thought I was kind of surprised by this one. It ranks 14th, which is like it's middle of the pack, but it's still top half of the league. 88.2 opponent passer rating average.

Starting point is 00:04:12 If you look at that just for one game, I think you can kind of toss it away. But when you look at it stretched over a whole season, I was pleasantly surprised by that number because you look at a lot of the opposing quarterbacks, they're passing for 250 300 350 yards and it just seems like they're getting gashed constantly but when you kind of contextualize everything and boil it down to an overall body of work that opposing quarterbacks had to be in the upper half of the league I thought was promising yeah yeah and to go more context with that and kind of maybe go a little bit away from stats and talk about just my overall thoughts on what this defense did this past season. I do think there were some positive signs. I mean, starting with the pass rush, you saw growth from Quidi Pei, you saw growth from Dayo Dengbo, you saw a really productive season from Samson Aboukam. And then DeForest Buckner, I mean, he was, he should have been an All-Pro this year. And maybe not an All- pro, but it should have at least been a pro bowler this year.

Starting point is 00:05:07 Very, very fantastic season from him. I thought the pass rush was great all year long. I know there were some games where, you know, you're not seeing the sacks production and the overall pressures were down. But we got to keep in mind that because the secondary was just not good whatsoever this season, the pass rush really wasn't able to showcase what they really could do. I mean, they were fifth in pass rush win rate as a team, according to ESPN's win rate status or win rate stats on the year. So they were fifth overall across their entire defensive line with their edge rush duo or their edge rush trio basically being in that top six or seven of the league in pass rush win rate. I mean, Samson Ibukan was consistently a top 10 all year by that stat.

Starting point is 00:05:48 So I do think they're winning their pressures. They were creating opportunities when they could. It's just at the end of the day, if quarterbacks are getting the ball out in 2.5 seconds, like what are you going to do? It's hard to get sacks. It's hard to get pressures and keep those numbers up. But really, really positive sign from the defensive line overall. I thought the run defense was good when Grover Stewart was in there,

Starting point is 00:06:08 which it was a fluke that he wasn't in there for six weeks this year, which kind of brings down the overall numbers. But run defense, overall a big win for this team when Grover Stewart played. And then when we're looking at pass coverage and what they were doing in the secondary, again, not exactly what you want to see overall in terms of production from the back end, but when they had Julian Blackman in there, when they had Kenny Moore in there, I thought you saw a fairly diverse set of coverages that you never really see from

Starting point is 00:06:36 Gus Bradley. We got to see some cover four. We got to see some cover two. Gus Bradley hit his all-time high in cover six usage this year as well. And while he still led the NFL in cover three calls, it wasn't by this astronomically high number that he always is. I mean, last year he was well above 50 something percent. I know I saw recently that he still led the NFL in cover three calls this year, but he was one of four teams that were over 200 calls in cover three and teams like Carolina, Seattle, and San Fran were all right behind him. I mean, and one thing we got to keep in mind with cover three too, is that's the number one coverage call for every team in the NFL. So

Starting point is 00:07:14 it's not like Gus is the only one to cover calling cover three. He just calls it a little bit more than other teams, but I do think he did a good job, you know, generally of mixing his coverages to try to adjust to this young secondary. And we actually saw some production from it early in the season while Julian Blackman and Kenny Moore in there. They had a lot of turnovers forced throughout the year until those final games without those two playmakers. They were able to keep EPA per play and overall production from passing offenses, you know, in the top 10 ish range, again, the Stroud week at the very end of the season. So I think overall, you know, when you look at what Gus Bradley had to deal with in the secondary, what he had to deal with, you know, Daryl Baker Jr. starting for most of the season, Jalen Jones starting for most of the season, Shaquille Leonard was a guy that you

Starting point is 00:07:58 were expecting to come back and be Shaquille Leonard, and he wasn't. So losing all of those, or just starting those guys and then losing Shaquille Leonard, you know, to have a season where the Colts defense wasn't this abject disaster, I think is partially a win. Again, I don't want to praise a defense for being in the bottom half and a lot of key metrics, but also I do want to look at this as a whole and say, look, they were starting undrafted free agents at corner and seventh round picks at corner because of injuries and what have it. But they were able to do some things to give the Colts enough chances to win games. So again, I'm not here saying that Gus Bradley's perfect and he was the single reason why the Colts were able to stay in a lot of games. But I do think it's negligent to say that the defense was so, so awful that the Colts had to overcome everything. Like they did do some good things this year, like rushing the passer,

Starting point is 00:08:47 like keeping the big plays to a minimum. Once they did the scheme change in week nine and, and really brought more cover for and cover to type stuff, like being able to adjust to a lot of young corners. I do think there were some things worth praising Gus Bradley for before we get into this next segment, where we talk about some of the issues and some of the things that just need to change going forward for the Colts. Yeah, and not to stretch this segment too long, but another huge part of coaching is player development as

Starting point is 00:09:15 well. I mean, people always look at statistics and like the direct product on the field, but, you know, last year in his first season with the team and everyone's, you know, getting acclimated to the system, you did see a regression from a lot of guys, at least until midway point when they kind of started to click. I can't really think of many people who regressed this year. Now, a couple did, but I think we saw a lot more progression. And the fact that you were able to get guys like Juju Brantz on the field after missing so much of the offseason, and suddenly he's your top outside corner and playing like it.

Starting point is 00:09:50 I thought that was really positive. Jalen Jones was a constant throughout the entire offseason, end of the season. Had a really strong first chunk of the season. Nick Cross continued his ascension. Shoot, you saw EJJ speed second year in the system uh absolutely growing into a player they were comfortable letting Shaquille Leonard walk uh because of so a lot of it you know the on field product you finally achieve a pass rush

Starting point is 00:10:19 that you've been really looking for for years and your players are all getting better under you. I think that's a huge feather in the cap for Bradley. But coming up, we're going to kind of talk about some of the stuff that did not go so well. At the start of the new year, every small business owner is asking himself the same question. And that's what's the one move I can make that's going to take my business to the next level. LinkedIn Jobs knows that your success all depends on the team that you surround yourself with. And that's why they've created the tools to help find the right professionals for your team faster and for free. LinkedIn isn't just another job board. They do have a vast network of more than a billion professionals though. And that makes it the best

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Starting point is 00:12:27 Follow Nevermore Union Station on Instagram or NevermoreUnionStation.com. Escape and explore the extraordinary at Nevermore. All right, guys, so we're talking Gus Bradley. And look, I know that I have been a Gus Bradley defender for most of the season because kind of what I said in the last segment, talking Daryl Baker Jr. starting most of the season, Jalen defender for most of the season because kind of what I said in the last segment talking Daryl Baker Jr. starting most of the season Jalen Jones starting most of the season you're not going to be able to come out here in press coverage or man coverage with those guys on the outside especially when you don't have you know you don't have an Earl Thomas at safety

Starting point is 00:12:56 that can cover up for them Julian Blackman's a solid player but on the other side you got Ronnie Thomas making mistakes you know Nick Cross is still going through some learning things. So again, I think you got to put some things in the context in terms of why they struggled on the back end. But at the end of the day, there were some issues with this defense that I had some big problems with. And you're going to read out some stats here in a second, Jake. But the number one thing I wanted to point out was the tackling. What happened to the tackling this season for the colts defense because look we kind of touched on this late in the season with some of our podcast episodes and especially after that final game against houston is you can play cover two zone and cover four zone

Starting point is 00:13:37 even cover three you know you can sit back in your zone coverages and you can allow them to catch balls in the flat as long as you're taking away explosives. That's perfectly fine. But if you're not coming up and making tackles, there's no point in running these defenses. You might as well be playing man because if you can't come up and tackle the flat, you know, if every single flat pass turns into a 10-yard gain, a 20-yard gain, there's no point in playing zone coverage. So you have one of the stats on here. Pro Football Focus had the tackling grade for Indy's defense at 29th in the NFL

Starting point is 00:14:06 with a 36.7 grade on the year, which is just dreadful by their grades. That's not good enough. You can't be missing tackles and be a zone defense. So I don't know if that's a coaching thing or a player thing or what, but as a coaching staff, you have to take responsibility for like, if these guys can't tackle we can't play zone like it's it's as simple as that uh but really what can you play when the guys can't tackle i know i'm kind of you know going all over the place here but um at the end of the day you know if you want to sit back and play softer zones to a take away the deep ball you have to be able to come up and make

Starting point is 00:14:42 tackles and whether the players or the coaching staff was not good enough for that, you know, they were not able to make enough tackles this year to be a productive defense with their style of play. Yeah. No matter the scheme, no matter the coverage, whatever, nothing works unless you are tackling because otherwise everything just gets exasperated and becomes a much bigger deal than it needed to be in the first place. But, you know, you mentioned tackling, Let's just start off with the ground game. The Colts were 24th against the run, allowing 123.8 yards per game. PFF had their run grade as 22nd with a 60.4. And again, tackling, which tackling isn't just the run game it's a passing game as well

Starting point is 00:15:25 uh but 29 that's just that's not going to do it i did want to add in there though this was probably one of the bigger discrepancies in the league the colts are actually a top 10 team in yards per carry allowed though their 4.1 mark is tied for 10th but their overall rushing rate is all the way down at 24th. So there were the we saw at times when the run game wasn't totally terrible. Obviously, that six game stretch without Grover Stewart in the middle really kind of damned their numbers a bit, too, because they were over 150 yards per game. But so the the run game wasn't what you're used to seeing from the Colts. In the red zone, they ranked in the back half. They were tied for 16th, allowing 55.8% touchdowns in the red zone. Takeaways now, they started to get better this year than they were last year,

Starting point is 00:16:21 but their 24 takeaways this year, again, was tied 16th. And then the passing game, I mentioned this earlier. This is one area where I think everyone noticed like, okay, everyone and their mom's going to throw on the Colts. You know, the CJ Stroud throwing against the Colts was going to be obvious, but you began losing faith in facing opponents like Aiden O'Connell, for example. And the Colts were 16th against the pass. Their coverage grade, according to PFF, was 21st.

Starting point is 00:16:47 And then yards per attempt, they were tied for 29th at 7.3 yards per attempt allowed. So there's some big areas they were really struggling. And I think if you take away that pass rush, it makes things a lot worse. Yeah, I think my biggest issue is when you look at the overall defense from this past season. Obviously, when you're looking at it from a coordinator perspective, you know, the lack of pre-snap rotations and disguising what you're going to do. Like, look, you can be a 50-something percent cover three team, but you have to at least show some too high looks pre-snap. You have to show some things. You have to rotate some things.

Starting point is 00:17:18 Because if you're giving quarterbacks the same pre-snap and post-snap read, that's making life a lot easier for these superstar quarterbacks that you're facing. And look, the Colts didn't face many superstar quarterbacks. They faced CJ Stroud twice. They faced Lamar Jackson. They played against Stafford early in the season as well. But outside of that, they played against a lot of backup quarterbacks, a lot of quarterbacks who are not top tier players, and they still had some struggles with these overall things. They need to do a better job next year of working in some pre-snap reads and some, or pre-snap motions and, and just mixing things up on the back end with their coverages. Look at what Spagnuolo is doing with the Chiefs and seeing how a lot of his success as a defensive coordinator is moving things around pre and post snap to muddy the reads for quarterbacks.

Starting point is 00:18:03 I think that's the biggest overall thing I have with a Gus Bradley defense. You have to do those type of things in order to really confuse quarterbacks and change things up. And then overall, again, like I'm not fully on board with saying the Colts run this archaic type defense. We're going to talk about that in our last in our last segment. But I do think there are times where Gus Bradley leans too much on hey this is what we do we're going to perfect what we do and even if offenses know what we're doing as long as we're

Starting point is 00:18:31 good enough in our system they can't move the ball on us that's not good enough nowadays these quarterbacks are so proficient in football nowadays I mean we just saw with Jim Schwartz in the playoffs with the Cleveland Browns he's a similar mindset with a different type of scheme where we know what we do and see if you can beat us. Well, when you go against a really good quarterback who's on a heater, it doesn't matter how good you are on your scheme. You have to change things up because they're going to rip apart your scheme that they already know what you're going to do. You have to be versatile on the back end. We saw Gus Bradley get better with it, but I would have liked to see some games where, you know, against CJ Stroud, against Matt Stafford, take away the middle of the field.

Starting point is 00:19:08 That's where they want to go with the ball every single time they get back there. Start pinching the middle of the field, play some cover one robber and get some guys over the middle. I know that they were hampered by, by overall players and stuff on the back end, but you've got to be a little more aggressive with it and what you're trying to take away and try to take away what an offense is trying to do. You know, as a defense, you can't dictate everything. Sometimes you have to react to what the offense is doing and then take away what they want

Starting point is 00:19:31 to do rather than just dictating everything to yourself. So that's one of the issues. And the other one was just the blown coverages. I don't know what, I mean, look, I know they changed to a lot of cover four stuff and cover two stuff this year, but that's not like it's a new concept to a lot of these players. There were just way too many games, especially in the red zone, too. Like guys were running wide open, just completely wide open. A lot of it was Jalen Jones and Rodney Thomas.

Starting point is 00:19:57 But Juju Brents had a couple as well where it's like, why are these guys so open? Like there has to be some kind of communication from these, from these players. And it just happened too much to where you have to put some blame on the coaching staff. Like, like, yes,

Starting point is 00:20:11 there's a lot of young players in the secondary and young players are going to make mistakes. Young players are going to have communication issues, but when it's happening week after week after week, what are you telling these guys in the film room? Like, is it just going over their head or, or what, what's going on here? So I do think as a coaching staff and as players, obviously that's an area that Colts need to get better next year. Like if your whole scheme is

Starting point is 00:20:34 built around sitting back and taking away the deep ball, you can't allow some deep passes to be completed when you're having these coverage mistakes. Or if you're going to be a bend, don't break defense. You can't break in the red zone because you these coverage mistakes, or if you're going to be a bend, don't break defense, you can't break in the red zone because you have coverage issues, you know, because you have coverage breakdowns and coverage lapses because of communication. Like you have to be able to not break in the red zone.

Starting point is 00:20:55 And when you're allowing guys to run wide open in the red zone, you're breaking. So I do think that's a huge thing. The Colts defense needs to clean up going into next year. Yeah. And that's exactly right. I mean, we saw these young guys. That is to be expected, the bumps in the road, the learning curves and everything.

Starting point is 00:21:12 But it is on coaching. Like you mentioned, you can't throw guys out there without them being prepared. And whether it's confusing, whether it's man or zone, or whether there's safety help up top top or who's supposed to take over the assignment like those things have to get ironed out because I just don't feel like those things really used to happen a lot but we saw a lot this season and so obviously that's the difference between allowing 50 yard touchdowns with regularity or you know that that's not supposed to happen like that's not supposed to be something that happens all the time or not all

Starting point is 00:21:45 the time, but you know, with consistency and it's just a defense that used to prevent a lot of that stuff. So yeah, that's going to lead us into our next segment where we're going to talk about. So what needs to change and what do the Colts need to focus on this off season in order to improve these areas? The NFL regular season is wrapping up, but there's still time to get in on the action with FanDuel, America's number one sports book. Right now, new customers get $150 in bonus bets guaranteed when you place a $5 bet. That's $150 in bonus bets, win or lose. The app is super easy to use, and there's so many different ways to bet, like live same-game parlays. You can find those bets in the new Explore tab,

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Starting point is 00:23:42 It's never been more important to be prepared than today. Go to jacemedical.com and use code LOCKEDON to get $20 off of your order. All right, Locked On Colts listeners, we're continuing our conversation on Colts Defense Coordinator Gus Bradley. And if we did this episode a week or two ago, we would have talked about in this final segment whether Gus Bradley needs to be fired, needs to be replaced, or we would continue with him. But with Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen basically confirming that Gus will be back this next season, I think the big topic of conversation now is what needs to change for this defense in terms of personnel and coaching for them to take a next step, a next positive step going into next year. So one thing I really wanted to discuss before we dive into what the Colts need

Starting point is 00:24:28 are just addressing some misconceptions about defense overall. So mini rant here from Zach Hicks. You guys know and love that here on Locked On Colts podcast. But when it comes to coverages, again, I've touched on this a couple times on this show. Gus Bradley does, to a degree, run a bit of an antiquated style of defense where he relies a little bit more on cover three than most teams do, but it's not cover three in the sense of everyone gets to their zone and just stands there. It's not what you see on Madden with the spot zone drops. It is cover three match.

Starting point is 00:25:04 They are matching routes. They're doing a new style of defense, not a new style, but like a style of defense that every other team is doing. They're matching routes, the combination of zone and man, and they're doing what most teams are doing. They're just doing cover three at a higher rate than other teams. So when I see that the Colts like people saying, oh, it's an outdated defense. They're running the, you know, the Legion of Boom Seahawks defense. It's not at all true. It's not that defense at all. It is, you know, a mixture of that defense and today's defenses that we're seeing from like the Jets and the 49ers. It's kind of a mixture of those two things, but it's not like they're running a copy and paste version of the 2012 Seahawks Legion of Boom that is not really a thing nowadays. So I

Starting point is 00:25:45 did want to touch on that. And then also with the blitzing, I know a lot of people like to appeal to the false god of blitzing and thinking that whenever we're not getting enough pressure, it's just blitz and everything's perfect. But again, when you have Daryl Baker Jr. and Jalen Jones as your top corners covering up, you know, Nico Collins, who was a superstar receiver this year, covering up even guys like Calvin Ridley and DeAndre Hopkins. That's risky to put them on an island one on one and just have the jump balls and the quick inside releases with no help. So it's tough to blitz with guys like that. So when people say like, oh, the easy answer is play a more modern defense and blitz more.

Starting point is 00:26:22 Those aren't just quick fixes to what we're looking at here. I think at the end of the day, they need better personnel. And there are areas that Gus Bradley needs to get better in. Like he needs to get better at the, at the pre-snap adjustments at moving things around pre and post-snap to confuse quarterbacks. He can stand to improve more on how much cover three he runs, you know, get some more quarters in there still rely a little bit more on cover six.

Starting point is 00:26:45 They were actually one of the better cover six teams in football this year. They only ran it less than 100 times, but it was really effective when they did run it. But I do think at the end of the day, the biggest thing is just personnel. I mean, they had the defensive line. They had the pass rushers to be productive. They got two linebackers that are good and run defense. You probably need another coverage linebacker. But in the secondary, they just need better personnel.

Starting point is 00:27:06 They need Juju Brents to stay healthy. They need another corner they can rely on. They need safeties that can make plays and be reliable communicators. I don't know if they have that right now. So free agency in the draft is going to be big. But I don't think this is such an easy answer to where, oh, blitz more and play more man coverage and play more press. And now everything's fixed, Jake. So that's kind of what I wanted to rant on here. I don't think that it's really a case of an antiquated defense too much. I just think it's,

Starting point is 00:27:34 you know, the coverage needs to be tweaked a little bit. The coaching needs to be tweaked a little bit, but overall the personnel needs to be better. They need to tackle better. They need better corners and better safeties. And I think we'll see a big improvement from this defense next year. Yeah, that's kind of what I came away with. You know, when I look at past defenses, there were things schematically where I just like pulled my hair out and said, why'd you do this? I don't like, I don't see a lot of that with, with this. And I think you look at personnel as a big part of it. Like you see breakdowns on the field between players or just kind i don't want to say being stuck because everyone's earned their way to the nfl but like

Starting point is 00:28:10 when you when you're down to like your fifth and sixth corners and stuff what do you expect and so you you just have to kind of enrich the pool essentially and like you mentioned whether that's day two picks with some guys in the secondary maybe even day one who knows what they want to do they're kind of in an advantageous spot to finally be able to go best player available again um i'm very interested to see what they do though because i know they like the guys they have they like dallas flowers they're going to count on him to come back they like juju brents, but he has shown that he isn't always available. Jalen Jones has his limitations.

Starting point is 00:28:50 Nick Cross, you know, got on the field some. But, I mean, at some point, you're just going to have to, like, add even more to it and let the best man win because injuries are always going to happen. And when you're stuck with your third, fourth, fifth, sixth corners, how good are they, or were they better than they were the year before? I think you're just going to have to add guys like that. And you mentioned linebackers as well and things in coverage. Look at what Bobby Okereke did for the Giants this season. That was the Colts' best coverage linebacker.

Starting point is 00:29:19 And meanwhile, the Colts' linebackers did have a very good year. You're right where there was just always something missing in the middle of the defense ever since Shaquille Leonard stopped being Shaquille Leonard. You've kind of been missing that from your, your linebackers in the middle. So I think that'd be a good place to start. You just need, you need more playmakers.

Starting point is 00:29:43 I can't think anymore. Playmakers. Like, yeah, like like that's that's what it is at the end like julian blackman kenny moore played some good football this year and they made some plays on the ball but they don't have that playmaker like who is that goat like that that just bona fide playmaker you know the offense is driving down the field uh they need a touchdown to beat you who's going to make that the field uh they need a touchdown to beat you who's going to make that play for your defense who's going to make it on this team for years it was Shaquille Leonard they had Shaquille Leonard and I know this is a very tough thing

Starting point is 00:30:13 to ask of someone to go get like go get me a top tier defensive player who's going to make plays on the ball but that's what defenses need nowadays you need that guy who is your closer on on defense and they don't have that right now so I do think they need to find some way to bring it in whether it's a draft pick or a free agent or I don't know relying on Kenny Moore to keep doing and Julian Black and whatever it's going to be but I do think that is a big thing missing but but overall I do think again this scheme can work in the NFL they just need more personnel adjustments especially on the back end I do think there are some changes that Gus Bradley can make. I don't think he's a terrible coordinator by any means.

Starting point is 00:30:49 I think he did an admirable job this year, but there needs to be a next positive step next year with hopefully an upgrade in personnel. If that upgrade doesn't come in terms of, you know, coaching next year and you don't see the positive step, then we can talk about firing him next season. But as of right now, Gus Bradley will be back.

Starting point is 00:31:07 Hopefully they can give him some more personnel in that secondary and we can see some positive adjustments from this Colts defense in 2024. Before we go today, guys, remember to check out the Locked On Sports Today YouTube channel, which is the first ever national sports 24-7 streaming channel on YouTube. If you guys don't already, make sure you're following at LockedOnColts, at JakeArthurNFL, and at ZachKicks2AllOnX. Also, subscribe to us on YouTube, wherever you list your podcasts. We love your guys' ratings and reviews, and we'll check you guys back here bright and

Starting point is 00:31:35 early tomorrow morning.

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