Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS -11/25- Indianapolis Colts Fall to 5-6; Tolzien Shines While Everyone Else Drops the Ball

Episode Date: November 25, 2016

Despite having Andrew Luck on the sideline, the #Colts had multiple opportunities to cut into the #Steelers lead. Scott Tolzien played as well as could be expected, yet everyone who should have carried their own weight wilted against a very beatable Pittsburgh team in Lucas Oil Stadium. It didn't matter who was throwing the ball if the receivers can't catch, and the defense can't cover. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Talkspace.com slash BOOM. B-O-O-M. No, I'm not for sale. You are Locked 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 again, we see exactly pretty much what we expected to see

for the most part as far as final score goes with the Colts hosting the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday night. Turkey day no less. So I hope that you guys got a full belly and were at least you know reserved in what your expectations were going to be with the Colts this game. And the Colts end up dropping it 28-7 to Pittsburgh. Colts had, I mean, long story short, Colts had a ton of opportunities, even with Scott Tolzien under center. He played a pretty good ball game as well. Better than I expected, of course, and I would assume better than most of you expected as well. He was solid. He didn't do anything great, but he stood tall, took a bunch of shots Thursday night, and that's more than you can expect from a lot of backup quarterbacks in the NFL, that's for sure.

So, man, what did we see tonight? Where to start? The first couple of possessions, there really wasn't a whole lot out of Tolzien. He had only about one solid throw outside the numbers to T.Y., but that's about it. I mean, in the beginning, he was getting the ball to Allen a lot in the middle of the field, pretty much exclusively. The defense was pretty bad in the early. Bell was basically tiptoeing in the backfield and getting just about whatever he wanted any time inside or outside didn't really make much of a difference. There was no edge being set at all for the Colts early in the backfield and you know getting just about whatever he wanted any time inside or outside

didn't really make much of a difference there was no edge being set at all for the Colts early in the game Perry was playing pretty well getting some pressure up the mid not necessarily pressure but he was getting he was beating his assignment up the middle for the most part Butler played well in a couple situations at safety. Vontae Davis was the real bummer, though, for me in the secondary. And this has been an ongoing thing with him against Antonio Brown. He just has not played well at all. Antonio Brown consistently shakes him and beats him deep. In fact, Vontae's been beat deep several times this year.

And even on what maybe should have been an interception from Butler there in the end zone, Vontae got shook out of his shoes on that play too. So, I mean, yes, Butler rotated over well and is a pretty good coverage guy for safety. And that's why I think they played him a lot tonight as well when you consider the injury to Gethers. But they played him in training camp back there a lot, you know, when Gethers was hurt initially. So he knows what he's doing back there, and he does a pretty good job. And that's very interesting to have him back there because he is a bit of a ball hawk. And it kind of suits him and this Colts defense pretty well, I think.

In general, Vontae got just murdered for a couple touchdowns. His lack of ball skills is just really kind of pathetic. I mean, you see this anytime he even gets a shot to intercept a ball. He just can't. He's got, you know, iron hands. And he doesn't track the ball well on, you know, turn. He just doesn't play the ball well. His ball skills are just kind of garbage. And that hurts, you know's a pretty good coverage guy but you're seeing his speed fall off the table the older he gets and the more injuries he gets to his lower bottle his lower body and that's just something that is going to end up coming with it they're going to have to you know they can't rely on Vontae to just follow the best receiver anymore,

especially a guy who can get deep on him because Vontae's deep skills are limited anymore. So, you know, anything from about anything in front of him, that's for sure. You know, he crosses the field well, still in coverage. But, you know, anything that anybody can beat him deep on, you know, Vontae's going to get beat. That's, I mean, just anybody with any speed's going to take him. Also, early in the game, we saw there was nothing really there in the running game at all.

Gore, I think, in the first half had 11 carries for 16 yards. I mean, there was just nothing there. We lost a few guys to injury. Kelly almost right away. Good got hurt pretty early in the game as well. He ended up coming back, but also ended up leaving later on in the game. Ultimately, the only excitement in the first was the fake punt that worked for a 35-yard pass from McAfee to Swoop. And that was just about it.

I mean, at that one point, I even put this on Twitter because I just thought it was insane that McAfee had 30% of the Colts' passing yards on just one play. And it just, you know, it wasn't looking really good real early. So, I mean, Moncrief ended up catching a touchdown from Tolzien. There was really good ball placement on that. You know, I thought Tolzien, like I said, had a pretty good game. That got the Colts within a touchdown. Vinatieri had missed a field goal earlier in the game. You know, he'd now missed field goals in back-to-back games after making 44 straight

start the season. So, I mean, there was situation, what was it? Eric Walden was in man coverage versus Virgil Green on a third and long. I mean, come on. What is that? I mean, you just can't afford to have that. Eric Walden's not going to cover a tight end. He's not going to cover anybody. There's no reason to be having him in that kind of a coverage. If anything, if you want to drop him, he has to drop into a zone. You can't have him in man, especially on a tight end, not to mention being the only receiver and the only coverage on that side of the field. That was just stupid. I mean, it just didn't make any sense at all. You know, like I said, Vontae got beat a few times for touchdowns, and I just don't understand.

I'm trying to figure out when Pagano and Monachino will give him some help over the top, because they're, you know, this, like I said, this is an ongoing thing. They started doing it in the second half there when actually when Vontae was out of the game, but they should have been doing it when he was in the game, because this is something that we've seen in past seasons. Antonio just murders him. And, you know, at one point we saw a nice play from Patrick Robinson where he nearly picked off Roethlisberger on a deep throw to Sammy Coates. It was really nice coverage in that part, but, you know,

that was few and far between where we saw any kind of good plays like that. I mean, Rashawn Melvin, for the most part, played really good tonight, and then, you know, he gets beat, and I think that was a little more of Mike Adams failing to rotate over in time. He didn't really have any assignment towards the middle of the field. There was really no reason for him to be that late, but he was. And, you know, just plenty of that stuff. I mean, there was just, you know,

there was nothing tonight that was Scott Tolzien's fault necessarily. I mean, his late interceptions were garbage. I mean, they were terrible throws. And you can, you know, that's just desperation. But, you know, I'm not holding that against him, regardless of what I think about his overall skill set. I mean, that just wasn't – that had no effect on the game whatsoever. Like I said, those are desperation throws trying to make something happen.

Although, you know, the last one was kind of ridiculous, trying to throw into triple coverage. I'm not real sure why he eyeballed Moncrief the entire way down the field on that when he knew that that was exactly what was going to happen deep. There was a couple good throws from Tolzien that were dropped, and I would say more than a couple actually. It was a really good toss to T.Y. down the sideline that he just blew past Cockrell, and T.Y. dropped it, and it probably would have been a touchdown. I don't know that there was anybody over there at all. And then a little bit later, Tolzien hit T.Y. in traffic, and he took a huge hit, which ended up putting him out for the game. But it was a really nice catch, and it really set the, you know, put the Colts in really good position. Colts couldn't

do anything with it, though, you know. Colts get a first and goal inside, what, the five or six-yard line and do nothing with it ultimately Pitt takes over inside of their own five I think inside the one yard line actually because Tolzien ended up getting down to the one another drop I mean just you know the the pass there on that play to Chester Rogers in this situation it was off target but I couldn't really tell if maybe Rogers should have sat down in that zone or if it was just a bad throw. Probably a little bit of both. I don't really know.

It didn't really make much of a difference. You know, in the second half, the Colts were looking pretty decent. They were holding the Steelers to nothing. I mean, the Steelers only scored one more touchdown the entire night, and the Colts did pretty good on defense. I mean, you can only ask for so much of this. You know, Colts take over at the 10-yard line. Tolzien ends up on their first drive converting several third-down opportunities, even converts a fourth and four.

You know, situations like this, I know that they feel that there's only so much you can do with Tolzien at quarterback and stuff like that. But they went for it on fourth down, I think, three times in the game, converted two of the three. And, I mean, it just blows my mind that when Luck's in the game, we're not seeing that kind of stuff. We're seeing Vinatieri on automatic, you know, for the most part. There's a couple where he's taken the fourth down opportunities

inside the five-yard line, but a couple times throughout the season. You know, talking three fourthfourth down opportunities in one game from the backup quarterback, that kind of just blows my mind. But their first drive was fantastic, and Tulzene was fantastic in that situation. Dorsett ended up dropping a touchdown. Moncrief dropped a ball inside the five-yard line. I mean, there was just so many things that just blew my mind in this game. The Colts ended up losing Ryan Kelly, Vontae Davis, T.Y. Hilton.

In the end, they ended up losing Mathis and Good, like I said. Now, when we look at kind of the end result of it all, I see a whole lot of woulda, coulda, shoulda type stuff. You know, if luck was in the game, we'd have won this. No, you wouldn't have because those guys wouldn't catch the ball regardless. Those were perfect passes from Tolzien. I was not in favor of Tolzien starting. You guys heard me last week or earlier this week talk about that. I was not in favor of him starting because he's just so limited. He doesn't offer that much.

But he had a fantastic game for him. I mean, what do you want me to say? I mean, it's not even about being wrong. It's just about what we saw. We saw him throw really good passes. He was on target and the Colts receivers dropped them plain and simple, you know, and they, and not only did they just drop passes, they dropped big passes they dropped touchdown potential touchdown passes we saw a missed field goal from Vinatieri we saw a drop from Moncrief like I said inside the five yard line if luck was in or uh this and that and if this happened that would have happened look the Steelers game plan is not to only throw 20 times with Roethlisberger if Luck's in the game. I can tell you that right off the jump. When you look at 23 carries from Le'Veon Bell, that's about what they wanted to give him, but they didn't even have

to run very many plays because they were scoring on everything. So when you get in a situation where you have Andrew Luck, who you consider a major threat to be in the game, you are going for the jugular if you are Pittsburgh. You are not sitting back, waiting back, and just allowing Scott Tolzien to go down the field hoping he makes a mistake because that's ultimately what you're doing. You're playing solid defense or at least solid underneath defense, kind of like the Colts do in late games, and you're just waiting for the quarterback to make a mistake.

Ultimately, in the end, he made a couple mistakes, but the bottom line is that that's what their game plan turns into when you have a backup in and not Andrew Luck. So I don't buy any of this stuff. I mean, he only threw seven passes in the second half. Roethlisberger did. I mean, that doesn't happen if Andrew Luck's in the game, okay? Not only that, but we have the Colts secondary just getting waxed

by Antonio Brown in situations, and they just were picking their spots. Pittsburgh was. They had no problem taking this Colts secondary down. The Colts were in dime a lot of times in first down situations against Pittsburgh in the shotgun formation with Roethlisberger and Bell right next to him. And, I mean, why pass the ball in that situation? You know, let Bell run the ball.

But when you look at the big picture, the bottom line is that the Steelers changed their game plan by the drive. There was a couple drives there, three, maybe four drives, where the Colts did really good on defense. But the Steelers are not scared of that because there's nobody on the other side of the field that stretches the field when luck's not in the game. I can guarantee you that there isn't anybody on that Pittsburgh sideline

that thought Scott Tolzien was going to beat anybody deep. He did in a couple times, a couple opportunities, but they just, I mean, what happened? We saw what happened. Colts can't handle opportunity. You know, Dorsett drops a ball. T.Y., who ended up catching a ball that one across the middle where he ended up getting hurt, like I said, I have no idea how he hung onto to that ball of course it did bounce around a little bit it stayed off the ground though I mean Tolzien ended up going 22 of 36 for 205 a touch and two picks we saw a little bit of Jordan Todman at the end now I know I've been on his train but listen and just relax a little bit on that if you were saying if you're gonna say man Todman was awesome look they were in absolute prevent defense there okay that I mean they're dying package where they have basically one defensive tackle and everybody else is dropping in coverage or just you know waiting

to smother the running game so Todman picked up a lot of yards on three carries 37 yards but those some of those yards are gimme yards. But what you do see out of Todman is you see how explosive he can be. I'm kind of surprised that they didn't just try to give him a screen pass in that situation, but like I said, the Pittsburgh defense were in a dime package, so nothing was going to really go anywhere. Gore only ended up with 28 yards on 15 carries. That's pathetic. And it's not on Gore. That's on that line. That line did terrible run blocking tonight. I mean, they couldn't do anything. You had Doyle and Allen in there in a ton of packages and they couldn't run block. And I don't mean the tight ends

specifically, but they had their heavy package in there many times and none of them could run block tonight. If you want to say that Kelly had that big of an impact, he might have, but Harrison's strong suit is clearly run blocking at center. So, I mean, you know, if you want to consider that to be maybe a reason, but I don't, you know, the Colts just couldn't run block as a unit tonight, plain and simple. Hilton ended up leading the Colts with three catches for 54 yards. Allen had five catches for 49. Moncrief six for 45 and a score. And that was, you know, pretty much it. Swoop only caught that one pass for McAfee for 35 yards.

He, you know, Swoop's becoming a little bit more of the – he's becoming a little more present in the game plan, you know, but he missed a ball. He was overshot a little bit. And, you know, I tell you what, if I was more impressed with anything from Tolzina, it was his accuracy outside the numbers. His first couple throws, it worried me because he was overthrowing people really bad and just thought this is not going to be good. But he impressed me. He did much better outside the numbers because that was his major downfall in camp. He just was not good.

He had to stay between the numbers where he could rely. And, you know, you have a little more arm strength inside the numbers because you're not throwing laterally as much. But he went downfield a little bit outside the numbers too, and for the most part was pretty accurate. You know, really a pretty good game from tolzine uh impressed uh yeah i was impressed because i didn't expect anything out of him so um i was pretty impressed and again the colts defense you know uh their pass rush more specifically much more specifically comes up completely empty with no sacks

very few pressures i think they had four or five pressures on the night and it just was nothing. I mean, they just didn't get anything out of it whatsoever. They, you know, Ben Roethlisberger could sit back there and do whatever he wanted to do, watch Netflix or, you know, then throw a ball. It didn't make a difference. You know, it just was very, very soft, you know, for the most part. And a lot of it was some of the edge guys were crashing way too laterally down the line of scrimmage, and Bell had no problem getting outside of the edge at all. And we didn't even see Eric Walden doing very well tonight at all

in the running game. And, you know, some of those guys got shook so bad. Edwin Jackson got shook a couple times. Just, you know, they just aren't being fundamental when it comes to the simple stuff. And that's a big problem because that's supposed to be where they're strongest. Or, well, let me put it this way. That's supposed to be Pagano's strength in coaching is his fundamental practice to the secondary and even linebackers for that matter as far as their coverage.

And we just didn't see much at all, if anything, real quality out of the coverage tonight. We saw more of physicality and athleticism in the good points, and we saw extremely poor fundamentals in the bad points. So it's kind of like relying on your athleticism at any point, and that's more or less what the Colts did for the vast majority of this game. Man, it burned them bad because relying on your athleticism against one of the biggest and most freak-ass set of athletes, when you look at Le'Veon Bell and Antonio Brown,

then you've got Sammy Coates on the other end and the Steelers really didn't have any wide receivers healthy other than that you know they had a couple guys that were doing their job but that's about it I mean the rest of the guys were even pretty injured Eli Rogers was effective a couple times had a couple catches for 36 yards but I mean other, other than that, Green there, tied in, caught two big balls for 67 yards. But other than that, it was just brown. I mean, five catches, 91 and three scores. That's pathetic, to say the least. It's just bad. 23 carries and 120 yards for Le'Veon Bell makes me sick for the most part because he wasn't,

we see our running backs dance in the backfield. They get tackled in the backfield. You have an elite athlete and a fantastic ball player like Le'Veon Bell who can tiptoe in the backfield, cut right now and make, you know, a six or seven yard gain without even breaking a sweat. And maybe it's a little mixture of his athleticism and his specialties against a really bad Colts defense. And ultimately, we saw everybody but Scott Tolzien for the most part fall apart against a Steelers team that's extremely beatable. I just think that this was a wasted opportunity, and it wasn't Scott Tolzien that wasted it. It was everybody else. The wide receivers, the coverage guys, I mean, everybody. The secondary, to the linebackers, to the defensive line, we didn't see anything from anybody.

I don't know that anybody heard Henry Anderson's name tonight. T.Y. McGill was in there. I didn't see anything from anybody. I don't know that anybody heard Henry Anderson's name tonight. T.Y. McGill was in there. I didn't see a whole lot from him. He was pretty decent. You know, Hassan Ridgway did a pretty good job. But ultimately, these are just very baseline performances, and nobody stood out. So this is just, look, spare yourselves trying to look silly by calling for jobs after a game when luck doesn't start,

but also at the same time, don't be silly enough to say that if luck was in the game, the Colts would have won because like I said, everybody but the quarterback tonight looked like crap. If that's what you want to do for your hot take on Twitter or tell your friends or whatever, just reel it back a bit when it comes down to it. Remember, the Colts had a Steelers team that they should have beaten in Lucas Oil tonight, and the entire team, except the guy who was not expected to do anything, was the ones who let the Colts down. And that's almost, I mean, that might be the biggest takeaway of the game, is that everybody but Tolzien probably should have just stayed home.

But what do we do? Colts come back December 5th, travel to the Jets. It's a game that the Colts absolutely desperately need to win to get back to.500 because they've got a series of games here on the back end of this schedule of theirs that they absolutely have to take advantage of if they want to make the playoffs. And right now it's not looking so great we hope that luck and uh gethers get themselves through the concussion protocol and can take steps to play in the next game because we need them but we need everybody else to get their heads out i mean this just was a terrible performance uh for the most

part with like i said against a very beatable Steelers team. This might be the first time that if everybody's playing on point and everybody's got their heads on, the Colts should have been in this game and should have had the opportunity to make a fourth quarter run at this game, and they didn't, and so that's disappointing,, kudos to Scott Tolzien. I'm proud of him. As Colts fans, you guys should be too, that he stepped up and, you know, took a ton of hits. And this is another reason, you know, when you sit there and say, you know, Andrew Luck takes too much time to throw the ball. Stop listening to the talking heads on TV, okay? That isn't the issue. The issue is that he is getting rocked every game.

Tolzien got rocked tonight. It had nothing to do with Tolzien holding the ball too long. It had everything to do with that offensive line just being terrible. We can be hopeful because of their youth and that we see some stretches where they protect really well, but ultimately, Philbin's not doing his job. When you look at the offensive line as a whole, his coaching job is not proving to have done anything. And that's unfortunate as well. So the Colts have a lot of areas they need to get significantly better on.

Not only that, but they have to get healthy again. All over again. They had the bye, they got healthy. Now the Colts have five, six guys right now that they have to depend on to get healthy again, you know, they like until December 5th and that's when they play next. They have a little mini bye here, get a little, a few extra days in, uh, of, uh, relaxation and hope they come back strong because the Jets offense is pretty pathetic itself and their only strength is their defense and their run defense is pretty darn good so we need luck there in the back just to be able to keep that

run defense you know honest so hopefully not another performance like this the rest of the year from the majority of the team that's I mean just very concerning in my opinion that they just dropped the ball in a game that they should have been the ones being the strong point. And if they all showed up, Colts are in this game regardless of who's the quarterback. So what are we going to do? But that's the end of our week here at Locked On Colts. Thank you guys. I hope that everybody enjoyed their Thanksgiving. I hope that you guys all ate well. I hope that you were able to see your family love and hug the ones that you love the most

and were able to spend time with them. Everybody get to hug and kiss your kids, your family, everybody, you know, husbands, wives, all of that. Thank you guys for listening. Make sure you guys get out and get a chance to subscribe to the podcast. Give us a rating and review on iTunes or Stitcher, anywhere you guys get this and

happy Thanksgiving to all of you I know I enjoyed my time with my family and I hope you guys did too but I will talk to you guys next week let's have ourselves a nice weekend to forget about that one watch the rest of the games on Sunday enjoy enjoy this weekend without any heart attacks on Sunday from the Colts. Put this one in the rear view mirror and I'll talk to you guys all on Monday right here on Locked on Colts. You are Locked on Colts, your daily podcast on the Indianapolis Colts, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Napa know-how.

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