Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS -11/07- Indianapolis Colts Surprise Packers, Improve to 4-5 Behind Complete Team Win at Lambeau

Episode Date: November 7, 2016

Despite a couple of early Andrew Luck interceptions, the #IndianapolisColts explode out to big lead and hold onto it with good defense (save for the prevent garbage in the fourth quarter), two rushing touchdowns and a great second half from Luck. The 31-26 victory in Lambeau brings the Colts to 4-5 as they head into the bye week, and into second place in the AFC South. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more about our healthy benefits at fepblue.org slash getmore. No, I'm not for sale. You are lockeded On Colts, your daily Indianapolis Colts podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back to Locked On Colts, ladies and gentlemen. We are here on your Monday, November 7th on Locked On Colts. And what do you know? The Colts end up pulling one out against the Green Bay Packers in Lambeau, 31-26.

Wow. Talk about excitement right from the kickoff, ultimately, with Jordan Todman running that kickoff back all the way to the end zone, putting the Colts up 7-0 right off the jump. And then after allowing a field goal to the Packers, the Colts come back on their next possession. Luck gets hit in the pocket, throws an interception. It's still a pretty bad interception,

but you take the little bit that you get with it from him getting hit, and you think, okay, it's not so bad on his part. But either way, something needs to change. Luck's getting hit obviously too much. We all know this already. But then you go back on the Packers' next possession. They get back within field goal range, and Crosby misses it, goes wide left. Colts are still wildly in control almost for the – I mean, when you consider a 7-3 lead,

Colts end up getting another touchdown on a toss to Gore from seven yards out. Colts are up 14-3. And then when you go back and you think about it, the Lux already thrown an interception and the Colts are up 14-3 with over four and a half, almost four and a half minutes to go in the first quarter. This is going to be an amazing game. So Packers next possession, Gathers comes through, great coverage, knocks down a pass, and then Colts get it back. And then on third down, Luck again throws an interception. This time overthrows Doyle, moving out to his left from the pocket. It's a terrible throw. He had time before he got hit. He did get hit just a millisecond after he threw the ball, but it didn't affect his throw. This ball should have been way more towards the sideline, first of all. Second of all, it should have been significantly lower. I mean, he overthrew Doyle

by like five feet easy, just over the top of his head, five feet. And, you know, now the Colts have thrown a second interception. And I think you, like me, just assume now things are going to get bad, and I did. But it didn't happen like that right away. Rodgers ends up throwing a touchdown, his, it's 14-10, and we're all looking just aggravated as can be, thinking this is just, you know. We get all excited in the first quarter quarter and then we get burned by luck, throwing some terrible passes and this is just, isn't going to turn out right. So the end of the first quarter culture still at 14, 10, they got the lead. That's better than a lot of their games have been, but still you see that, uh, that lead just diminishing

right before your eyes. Colts end up getting another, or Colts end up getting a field goal out of their next drive. And then basically the Colts and Packers do nothing until just before the end of the first half. And Colts have the ball. They are maintaining it through the two-minute warning. Luck gets a big third-down conversion to Dorsett, throws down to T.Y. for a big gain of 17, and then the Colts are just kind of rolling a little bit, a couple incompletions here and there. Overall, on this last possession,

the Colts ended up getting six first downs in the last four or five minutes of the first half. Luck ends up getting a really big third down conversion on this little read option look that he did. I mean, we've seen that maybe once or twice this year. And then hits Doyle under pressure for another first down. Then he throws that touchdown to Moncrief. Perfect placement, by the way, on that touchdown to Moncrief. This is so crazy, too.

Luck's consistently over 63%, 64 percent on every game, and it's just amazing how some of these, like his interception throws and just a couple others, just look so bad. But, you know, who looked worse was Aaron Rodgers to this point. Rodgers was only 7 of 17 for 77 yards, lots of sevens in the first half. The Colts were doing a pretty good job holding them to some minimal rushing yards on the ground, except for Ty Montgomery had 47 yards on just four carries, so he was definitely eating it up. Gore, again, nice first half, 10 carries for 42 yards, ended up with 60 yards on 19 carries. I mean, 18 yards on nine carries in the second half.

That's, you know, one, that's predictability on the play calling, and two, that's bad run blocking. I mean, just a combination of two. But anyways, we'll go through the second half here in just a second, but the Colts were really doing a pretty good job in the first half. If you take those two interceptions away, who knows what the score could have been at halftime. I mean, it could have been a route already. So as the second half gets underway, Rodgers is just moving the Packers down the field, gets a few first downs, and then like all kinds of hell breaks

loose. There's a holding on Patrick Robinson. Then the Packers get called for a holding call. And then on the next play, Randall Cobb coughs up the ball there on the sideline in that play where they considered Vontae Davis to be out of bounds when he touched it. And then they weren't able to challenge it because there wasn't an immediate recovery. Now, I'll be honest with you. I've never heard of that. I know that there is always the clear recovery rule, but if unless, I mean, whistles blow, there's no recovery. They give them recovery. I've never heard of this immediate recovery garbage at all. So I can't help you with that. I have no answers for that. I've never heard of it. So don't ask me for the answers to that, because I don't have them for you. I wish I did, but I don't. I'm the answers to that because I don't have them for you.

I wish I did, but I don't. I'm almost assuming that that was a made-up explanation from the referees. But either way, it didn't really hurt the Colts too bad because a couple plays later, Butler intercepts Aaron Rodgers on third down. Big interception there for Butler, especially with only one good hand. And then Colts get the ball back but do nothing with it at all. Three and out. The Packers get the ball back, and then they end up getting a field goal.

So now it's 24-13, and we've got $1.46 left in the third quarter. Nothing really good comes out of this next possession from them either. Both the Colts and the Packers trade punts. And then we get the second touchdown from Gore with just over nine and a half minutes to go in the game. 31-13. This is a huge, huge cushion for the Colts with nine and a half minutes to go, especially when you have Aaron Rodgers on there. Now you can say 18 points isn't that big of a cushion with Aaron Rodgers.

It's nine and a half minutes. That's a huge cushion, okay? Yes, he proved that he can go a couple possessions and bring them back, but that's not from Aaron Rodgers. I mean, yes, he looked good, but you know what? You and I can both throw completions to people 10 yards downfield with nobody guarding them. That's exactly what Aaron Rodgers was doing for the most part.

The Colts go immediately after this into their prevent, play not to lose type crap defense, and especially on a night where the defense has played so well and made some big plays, they've stopped the run for the most part, except for Rodgers, really, who, when he got out of the pocket, got huge openings, you know, and would take off. But other than that, the Colts held them to, I think, under 75 yards on the ground, outside of Rodgers' six carries, I believe. So that's two back-to-back, as far as when you look at running back, rushing yards, that's two really good run defending weeks for the Colts.

They held the Chiefs combined, and this includes their running or their quarterbacks, to 88 yards rushing last week. This week, under 75 for the Packers. Now, I think that a lot of that is because they didn't run Montgomery enough. I'm not real sure why they did that. That's kind of some bad play calling on their part because he was just dicing up the Colts defense. He really was. So it's not like they did a great job. I think a combination of that and poor play calling on the Packers part contributed to that. But then with just over eight minutes to go, Packers are in the middle of this possession. They've gotten three first downs already, one by penalty, and Aaron Rodgers ends

up throwing a touchdown to Adams, brings it within 31-19, two-point tries broken up by Patrick Robinson, really nice defense by him. And then the Colts go three and out again, and again, you and I are both left staring at something in our house and thinking, here we go. Packers, shovel pass to Montgomery first down. Rogers to Nelson first down. Pass to Richard Rogers for nine yards. A pass to Rybkowski for three yards. Rogers for 20 on a scramble. A pass to Nelson for 14, and a touchdown pass to Randall Cobb. That is seven plays. There were five first downs in that drive, a touchdown. Now in the last two possessions here, the Colts have allowed Aaron Rodgers and the Packers to bring it all the way from 31 to 13 to 31 to 26. And in that time span, which was for the Packers, they had the ball for three minutes

and 55 seconds total. You simply can't give up that many points and that little of resistance in three minutes and 55 seconds and given up 13 points. That's just ridiculous. So now the Colts are only up by five with 329 to go as they take over in the last possession. I'll tell you a couple things I did like in this. I did like the final. I did like that the

final couple possessions that they allowed Luck to pass instead of run three times and punt. Granted, on their second to last one, they went straight to the air on first down with just over seven minutes to go on that possession there. It went to swoop for seven. Gore got tangled up in the backfield, obviously pretty quick. He went to Doyle for five, just short of the first down marker. I can't decide if that was a bad route or Luck didn't allow it to open up quick enough, but he probably was under pressure. That's escaping me for some reason.

But again, on the final possession, the Colts give it to Gore. He does nothing. Then on second down, another tipped ball, which there was a few from Luck in this. So there was still too much pressure, too much of the offensive line getting pushed back into Luck's face. And Luck, you know, those guys just give them credit for their timing, I guess, on Luck's passes. But then Luck escapes pressure on third down and hits Doyle for that first down. It was huge. I mean, that was big in itself just to bring it down. The Packers end up having to spend all three of their timeouts over the next couple plays. Then the Colts go back to Gore, back to T.Y. for five more yards, and then hit T.Y. on

that big 27-yard completion on third down. Then the two-minute warning, Colts kneel, game over, Colts win. Before I get to kind of an overview about this game, let me tell you guys about SeatGeek. It is by far the smartest and easiest way to find tickets for the football games that you want to see up close in person this season. Hopefully some of you guys bought some tickets to this game if you were local to Lambeau and you used our promo code. For those of you that haven't been able to use it yet, pay attention because I'm

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chow as well. SeatGeek will send you this $20 after you've made your first ticket purchase. Boom, right back in your pocket. That simple. Download the SeatGeek app and enter promo code LOCOLTS today. Now, things that stuck out to me in this game, obviously special teams. Jordan Todman, the big 99-yard return for touchdown. He had another huge kick return, took him all the way back to the Packers' 45-yard line. The Colts playing good run defense. The Colts playing pretty good pass defense for the most part, although, like I said, a lot of that was helped by Aaron Rodgers being inaccurate, not looking like himself for the majority of the time.

Some of the Packers' drops in the game, that looked familiar. Colts got away with quite a few pretty substantial gains with the Packers having some butterfingers Sunday. The Colts got three more sacks. That's a step in the right direction. They got some pressure. They ended up getting four QB hits on Rodgers. The Colts played a really good game outside of Andrew Luck's interceptions today and outside of this prevent crap defense that continually they put themselves in, and it just drives me nuts. It will make Aaron Rodgers look far better than what he was today, and it makes our defense look far worse than it was actually today. Something that I've been preaching on, and if

you follow me on Twitter, you saw me boast about it a little bit, but that's what Jordan Todman did in the return game, is what Jordan Todman can do when he gets the ball in his hands in some space. Okay. Why he has absolutely zero role in this offense as a third down back. I have no idea. Granted, I like Robert Turbin too. He does a pretty good job. You know, he's not called upon a lot, but he does a pretty good job when he's in, but Ferguson again, had an eight yard reception day. Congratulations. Everybody clap. Okay. Now get the ball to Todman. Why can't we get, why, why won't they just put him in? He's, I don't think he's seen a single snap this year on offense in the regular season at all. And I don't understand that. I don't understand how you can watch his kick returns and see how well he

moves and how agile he is and his, watch his speed and not be like, that would be nice to get in the open field on a, on a screen pass or, uh, some sort of a swing on a dump down or something like that. How can they not figure this out? It's not hard if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but he's no worse than Ferguson. And he's definitely quicker than Todman or than, uh, Turbin or Gore in, uh, as a receiver. It just doesn't make any sense to me. So first, I mean, I'll continue to harp on that until they do. It's not like they're listening to me, but they still need to do it. I mean, eventually it'll come to their heads, hey, maybe we should put him in there. That might make a little bit of sense just to see what he can give

us. Maybe he can give us a big play. But you just don't, you never know. Defensively, like I said, without re-watching the game at this moment, I can't really tell you who all really made the real impact in the running game or against the Packers running game, I guess. But I really think that it was just because the Packers had to go away from it, to be quite honest with you. They didn't do too bad when Montgomery wasn't carrying the ball. They did good against Jackson. And that was, you know, Montgomery only got four carries or, you know, a handful of carries. And he actually just carved up the Colts. So when you put those two together and you combine the fact that they absolutely had to go to the passing game late in the game, then it kind of brings down the run

defense just a little bit. But we got a sack from LeVar Edwards today. We got another sack from Walden. And just a multitude of things. I think that the Colts really are on their upswing right now, as much of an upswing as they could possibly have, considering that they're 4-5. They've got the Titans coming the week after the bye week. That could possibly and should most definitely put the Colts at 500. And then there's a couple of difficult games with Pittsburgh and Oakland and Minnesota.

You know, those are the biggest games on the schedule right now because the rest is AFC South and nothing great after that. So the Colts have a chance here, folks. I'm just saying it's just so hard to expect it because they're so Jekyll and Hyde from week to week. If they would have done anything sort of like this at all against Kansas City last week as far as finding some special teams help and playing pretty well on defense for the majority of the game,

this wouldn't have been an option. But you have to also – it's hard kind of balancing that, the thought process of all that, and then balancing the fact that Kansas City's playmakers were there and not a lot of them were there for the entire game for Green Bay. So you got to kind of smooth that out and then try to gain your thought process on that. But overall, the Colts win. The Colts keep us happy for two weeks in a row, guaranteed, because they can't possibly lose next week. So that's always a good thing. And then, you know, we just have a lot to think about between now and Tennessee in two weeks,

because Tennessee goes and plays Green Bay this coming Sunday. So we'll get to see kind of, you know, them, they lost a heartbreaker Sunday to San Diego. And, uh, that was, they were down, I think 16 and then come back and lost it late. I think on another pick six, you know, the Colts shouldn't have any problems really beating Tennessee, although they are still, you know, if you look widespread roster wise they're still a better overall talent wise roster I think than what the Colts have and the Colts you know they definitely don't have the running game that Tennessee does so there's a couple things to look forward to but overall like I said we have to just take this one and be proud of it and be happy about that the Colts, not in spite of luck, because luck had a really, really good second half,

but in spite of two interceptions, in spite of some terrible play calling defensively in the second half late, the Colts still won against a Green Bay team that is as dangerous as anybody, regardless of who they've got on the field, and in Lambeau. But it looks like the Packers have their own set of problems to deal with, but the Colts made it happen. The Colts did what they had to do to win and they got it. So, you know, the Colts are at least going to win four games this year. Uh, that's something that a lot of us, you know, up to this point, we're wondering if it was even

going to be possible over the past few weeks. So, uh, all I can say is that we have two weeks of positive vibes going forward and we'll do about everything we can do to hope that they can come back ready to play after the bye week and not come back stagnant. They've done that several times in recent years. And with that closing, I'll give you guys quick stat lines. Andrew Luck was 23 of 36 for 281, touchdown and two picks. Gore, as I mentioned before, was 19 carries for 60 yards. They only had 25 yards between Andrew Luck and Robert Turbin. T.Y. Hilton caught six balls for 82, Doyle five for 61, Moncrief three for 55 in a touchdown. Dorsett, 2 for 28, especially that big third down conversion late in the game. And nobody caught more than two outside of that.

Dwayne Allen caught a ball for 15 yards. It was nice to see. I thought they were going to kind of go away from Doyle in this game, and he finally started getting some looks. And that was, you know, a little wondering. I was wondering that a little bit but defensively uh Gethers had eight tackles Gethers had seven solo tackles in a past defense DeQuel Jackson had six TJ Green had five and and also got a hit on Rodgers uh David Perry got a sack Eric Walden and LeVar Edwards like I said got a a sack. And Colts had a fairly solid game out of the defense. So that's really nice to see, putting all that together and just hoping that that can find its way into the rest of the season because the Colts are going to need it.

And I'll tell you what, as of right now, the two games, two of the three games that the Colts are going to have the most trouble with that they should have the most trouble with, the Vikings and Pittsburgh, two of those three games. The other one's with Oakland, and Oakland looks pretty good right now. But Minnesota and Pittsburgh, not looking so hot right now. The Colts can beat just about anybody on their schedule, guys. It's all a matter of who comes to play and how they play and how they end up executing.

And if Pagano can just try a little bit and not to screw it up, that'd be great. So as long as we don't see the Colts, you know, I almost hope that the Colts don't have a two-score cushion anymore. If they don't, we shouldn't see any more of this prevent style play not to lose defense. It's just so aggravating. But anyways, no ranting because this isn't an angry Monday. This is a happy Monday. Okay, we're all excited. The Colts are now are four and five heading into the bye week.

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