Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS -11/22- Indianapolis Colts Fighting Short Week Preparing for Steelers; Luck Going Through Concussion Protocol

Episode Date: November 22, 2016

As if preparing for the #Steelers wasn't daunting enough on a short week, the #IndianapolisColts now have their franchise player, #AndrewLuck, going through the league's concussion protocol. Scott Tolzien isn't an upgrade over Matt Hasselbeck from last season regardless of any assumptions. The Colts are in greater danger of falling back under the .500 mark again as a result. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

That's for my crazy day. My packed commute. All those unread emails in my inbox. But I'm getting stronger, faster, and pushing myself further every day. I don't care if I'm not like everyone else. This punching bag is the best way to end my day. Fearless is knowing yoga isn't your style. That's the power of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Federal Employee Program.

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. I'm your host, Matt Dainley, and we are getting all set real quick here for a Indian Apples Colts Pittsburgh Steelers showdown this Thursday night, Thanksgiving night in Luke Soil Stadium and there's obviously a caveat now. I mean I'm sure you guys have heard the news that

Andrew Luck is going through the concussion protocol and that obviously presents a very difficult situation for the Colts themselves regardless of anything else. We all know what we saw last year without Andrew Luck and what we probably will see this week to be quite honest with you because especially on a short week that's not a whole lot of time for anything to get done. So welcome in and let's break this down real quick. Now I think the obvious possibility for Andrew's concussion was the drop back where he scrambled up the middle and ran towards the goal line, was tackled. He did have a helmet to helmet hit from one of the defenders and his head hit the turf. So that think, to me, that's the obvious assumption of when the actual hit that caused his symptoms

took place. I do recall actually talking and saying, I'm surprised that he doesn't even look bothered by it, like that it didn't even hurt. So obviously, Andrew Luck, you know, there's a lot of skepticism, of course, mainly from Titans fans, go figure, that he, how convenient that he's not, you know, that it was after the game that his symptoms, and I said, well, you can watch the game. I mean, you can clearly see that after the hit,

it didn't bother him in any way, shape, or form. And a lot of times, concussion situations are like that. Not all of them are like when Alex Smith was leveled and he got up and couldn't walk. Andrew Luck got up, called the next play, looked over, looked aware, didn't look like it was bothering him or anything else like that. Some of these concussion symptoms just linger. And I actually can attest to that from past situations myself. So, you know, you take it with a grain of salt, obviously, when you get a team that just got beat in a big game,

you know, they want to bring in some skepticism or whatever to the situation. But at any rate, without Andrew Luck, this is a completely different week for the Colts as they get prepared for the Steelers. Now, there's not a lot of things that you could step up and say that that's, you know, an area where the Colts now just have no chance to beat a team like Pittsburgh. But when you take out the franchise quarterback, the guy who's basically holding the team up on his shoulders for the most part, at least offensively at a bare minimum, then it's a pretty safe bet that the Colts are in a lot of trouble. And like I said, when you've got just a couple days here to get him completely through

the concussion protocol, not so often I just can't imagine that he's going to be able to go now. Conversely, when you look at reports saying that Scott Tolzien is all set to start and that they've already given him the green light, that's not true. But at the same time, like I said, it is also very unlikely. I guess one of my points is that there's no clear-cut decision that Scott Tolzien is going to be starting yet. However, being on a short week, it does seem likely. So, I mean, that's where you're going to get those reports.

People are taking a very easy assumption that Luck's not going to be prepared to play, and they're trying to say they're getting reports for that, and that's just simply untrue. So it's basically a situation of taking the obvious choice and the high percentages and then acting as though you've got an official report about it. So the Colts are going to be possibly without Andrew Luck going into this game. And this is a huge blow. It's obviously a huge blow. They're not going to be able to score. I mean, if you guys have seen Scott Tolzien this year in preseason, then you understand at least a little bit, but the Colts are not as good off as they were last year, even with Matt Hasselbeck, in my opinion. Tolzien's going to have to throw

between the numbers a lot. Anything outside the numbers is going to be an interception for the most part for him. He just doesn't have the arm strength, in my opinion, from what I saw, to throw those passes on time, nor does he have the anticipation, I guess, to do it. I guess it's a combination of the two things. Luck struggles with that as well, but Luck also has a far better sense of anticipation when it gets to outside the numbers.

And when you're throwing the ball that far laterally, then, you know, bad things can happen. So Tolzien's not going to go downfield very often either. He was always seen as a premier backup, so to speak, to Aaron Rodgers up there in Green Bay over the past several years. And he just, you know, very, very spotty starts and stuff like that allowed him to show that. So, is his potential there? Sure. I mean, anybody can have a really good game, but Tolzien's just not that kind of guy. I would almost be more in favor of Morris getting the start, but obviously that would require an actual roster move because he's on the practice squad and that's just not going to happen so it definitely gives us a bit of somber you know makes us a little somber heading into this week because if obviously

without Luck there is a very high probability that the Colts are going to lose this game. But when you also look at the injury report for the Colts outside of Andrew Luck, obviously Clayton Gathers also suffered his concussion. They assume that that was on the fourth and short stop of DeMarco Murray. That obviously makes sense because that was, I mean, it was quite a hit. There was a little bit of helmet to helmet there too. Either way, but it was a jarring thing to the neck, and sometimes that can cause it even if it's not a top of the head or back of the head type of hit. Vontae Davis also was out to Monday with an ankle injury. Arthur Jones had some knee and ankles. He was limited though, so he did practice. But aside from the rest day from

Robert Mathis, Rashaun Melvin he didn't practice has a back issue that's unfortunate but Patrick Robinson did full have a full practice with his recovering from his groin issue from last week so it's still a not a not a huge injury report but you do have two of the most important people on either side of the ball for the team, and that's obviously a bad sign. And that doesn't let the Colts really, there's a lot that has to go on this week for the Colts to be successful, that's for sure, if the two of those guys were not to play Luck and Gathers. Basically, you've got the guy who runs the show completely inside and out for the offense in Andrew Luck possibly going to

be sitting. And then you have arguably the best tackler in the back seven on defense missing the game as well, save for Dequell Jackson. So you have two guys that are vital to their side of the ball and the team being successful. And there's a pretty good shot that they're not going to play this week. The good thing about that is it's not a division game. So it doesn't give the Colts another loss in their division, which doesn't really add to the situation as far as making tiebreakers and all that really, really difficult. And the, the, the good or the negative part of that obviously is that you miss luck and you're playing a team that you were going to struggle to beat anyways with luck or with everybody healthy just because of roster deprivation and everything else. So this isn't a game where the Colts are going to be going in favored.

This isn't a game where the Colts are going to go in and assume that they can really make a huge impact in general. Now, the Colts are going to have to have some sort of a spice to their offense if they're going to put in Scott Tolzien. I'm not going to go down the Todman train again. You guys have heard me talk about that several times. But one way or another, the running game for the Colts, the backfield in general, is going to have to be spicy somehow. I mean, they're going to have to do something to throw off the scent of some really very good linebackers in Pittsburgh's defense.

So that's going to be necessary. That's also going to force Pittsburgh is going to end up playing a little more of a tighter coverage. They're going to rely more on being able to press on the outside there, and that's going to in turn force Tolzien to go over the top of those corners, which is obviously a scary situation if he's got to go over the top. So we just don't know what we're going to see this week, and it's a little different situation what we're going to see this week. And it's a little different situation than we're used to seeing. Obviously, Pagano and the Colts acted as though

they didn't really understand or know what play the concussion happened on. But I mean, I think as educated a guess as you could possibly assume was the play, like I said, where he was headed towards the end zone and came about a half yard short to a yard short and was hitting the head and then his head hit the turf. I mean, that just makes, it's just logical to assume that that's when it happened. I didn't see him take any sort of an impactful hit after that. So that, that makes total sense to me. But, you know,

if we look at it defensively, the Colts are heading into a real scary matchup here where depending on what stat you're looking at or what comparison you're looking at, if you're looking at the DVOA, the Steelers are a top seven, top eight offense. Naturally, when you have Roethlisberger and Antonio Brown and their running game, of course, they are going to, you know, Le'Veon Bell can make a lot of things happen in that backfield, both in the running game and in the receiving game. So the Colts are definitely at an advantage with this as we know that they struggle to cover out of the backfield. They struggle to cover tight ends. And on the other hand of that, the Steelers are very good at covering tight ends and running

back. So it just is a, it's a matchup nightmare almost for the Colts in general. And then you take, you know, obviously those two important players out of it. And that really adds to it. I guess one of the things that you kind of hope is that Robinson does come back, is in full effect and plays well. You also hope that Rashawn Melvin comes back and it can be healthy for the game because that adds the twist of allowing T.J. Green to play in that role of what Gethers does and he can play that role pretty well. The scary part is when you rely on T.J. Green to be in coverage outside of a trailing man or as closely, as pressed as he can possibly be, I suppose, just because you don't want him having too much time to think about what he's going to do in coverage,

and you want to be able to add Butler to that secondary in that regard to allow them to to to cover back there and allow TJ Green to kind of take the physicality out of their tight ends and their running backs so maybe that's something that he's going to end up to have to step into and let's hope that he can do that because that's a scary situation in itself. This is just plain and simple, a matchup nightmare. And like I said, the Steelers have been one of the biggest issues for the Colts over the past several years. Every time they play, it's just an ugly, ugly game. Even if the Colts are in it for the first couple quarters,

Pittsburgh just picks them apart one way or another. Todd Haley always seems to do a fantastic job in his play calling their defense isn't always so so great but you know this past weekend against Cleveland they had eight sacks and granted that is Cleveland but this is also the Colts offensive line that's allowing a lot of pressures and if you get a second you know a Scott Tolzien that's allowing a lot of pressures. And if you get a second, you know, a Scott Tulzean that's second guessing anything in that backfield, that's, you know, that's a lot of turnover possibilities. That's a lot of sack possibilities. And that's a lot of drive ending possibilities for the Colts offense. So their defense very opportunistic always has been.

The Colts always have difficulty with with them just in general as far as they you know they it really doesn't matter what they put on the field the rest of the season against the Colts they always seem to look like a juggernaut. Both both sides of the ball doesn't make a difference. Ben Roethlisberger could probably throw for 500 yards and five or six touchdowns with no problem. It just seems that that's the way things typically go against these guys. So other than that, that's about all I got for you guys today. It's, it's a touch and go week.

We're going to find out a lot more tomorrow. Hopefully that Andrew Luck and Gethers have gone through at least the initial stages of the protocol and they can kind of get an idea, you know, because all I can say is that I hope that the symptoms are what were giving issues to these guys. This is going to be a situation where you didn't see either one of them woozy necessarily. Both of them felt fine according to reports until well after the game and then kind of were like not feeling great. They consider those to be concussion symptoms and let's just hope that those symptoms have completely gone away and that they can kind of scoot their way through the concussion protocol.

But we also want them healthy. This is also a game that we don't want any serious chances taken on their health and stuff like that. I mean, we don't want them anyways. But when you look at the big picture, this is a game where the Colts were going to struggle anyways, no matter who was under center, no matter who was on the defensive side of the ball.

So it's one of those games that you just kind of hope you know if i'm gonna have to take an l here this might be the game to do it because there's a you know still several games to go they've still got several valid opponents and they've still got a real push that they have to make in order to win the afc south and they're going to struggle with this because i tell you that the Texans gave the Raiders about all that they could handle Monday night. So the Texans, you know, despite the fact that their offense is still somewhat stagnant and bad, the Colts have, it's a rivalry game no matter what, and they're going to have to play well. And they've also got the Raiders,

that team that just beat, you know, the Texans. So that's a team and they're going to have to play well. And they've also got the Raiders, that team that just beat the Texans. So that's a team that they're going to have to prepare for. Those are two huge games right there on the rest of their schedule, as well as the Vikings. And they've also got to beat Jacksonville, despite them being awful. It never ceases to make for a close game when you consider the two. So the Colts have a big situation ahead of them this week. This is obviously not the short week that we wanted or that we would have hoped for with Andrew Luck out and stuff like that, but that's the big news for the day, and that's the major issue going forward, obviously.

So thank you guys for listening. Please subscribe on iTunes or anywhere that you guys get the podcast. So thank you guys for listening. Please subscribe on iTunes or anywhere that you guys get the podcast. Always go and rate and review. Always come back. I appreciate you guys coming in five times a week. I know that you're looking for those nuggets of information and everything every single day of the week, and I'll give you as much as I can give you. But I really appreciate you guys listening and joining me here every day. So thank you guys for joining me. And I will talk to you all on Wednesday right here on Locked on Colts. You are Locked on Colts, your daily podcast on the Indianapolis Colts, part of the Locked

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