Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS -11/29- Indianapolis Colts Updated PFF Grades

Episode Date: November 29, 2016

Since the Indianapolis #Colts last played, their PFF grades have changed quite a bit. Considering injuries, their performances and the performances of others at their respective positions, the Colts' grades appear to be taking a turn for the worse, while others may surprise you at how high they are. 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. I'm your host, Matt Dainley. And first of all, I want to apologize for not having a Tuesday show for you as early as expected. And as typical, come down with a bit of a 24-hour bug last night and just couldn't shake it. But I'm here now and trying to get you guys some more information as we get into this week and as it's a little more of an elongated

Thursday to Sunday game because we have this game following on the Monday Night Football. So this is a little added extra break even from a normal Thursday game hangover. So let's get started. I'm going to get you guys going with these pro football focus grades. A little bit's changed even though the Colts haven't played since Thursday. So I figured you guys would be interested in this. And some of this has changed, some of it for the better, some for the worse. But I think a lot of it is expected. So first and foremost, the quarterbacks, Andrew Luck, who had been pretty much second or third through the majority of the entire season, has fallen to fifth overall now behind Tom Brady, Matt Ryan, Drew Brees, and Russell Wilson somehow. So I'm not real sure about why that is. I would assume that

they have him graded better against the run significantly, but only slightly worse in passing situations, which again makes no sense to me. Not to mention if you, I guess they don't average your grade, they give you an overall grade, but either way you look at it, I don't see how Andrew Luck could possibly be worse than Andrew Wilson. Andrew Luck could possibly be worse or less effective than Russell Wilson. And not to mention Derek Carr is having a pretty special year. Not sure how he is below Andrew Luck, to be quite honest with you. I think those two at a minimum should be flip-flopped. I think Derek Carr is far a pretty special year. Not sure how he is below Andrew Luck, to be quite honest with you. I think those two, at a minimum, should be flip-flopped. I think Derek Carr is far better right now than Russell Wilson,

and I think that's something that needs to change. But it is what it is. There's not a whole lot we can do about it. But Andrew Luck is at fifth right now, and that's a solid grade at 88.7. It's pretty nice. Nobody expects him to be the top-rated passer because of the chances that he takes and the way that Andrew Luck goes about his everyday process in games. So, like I said, a little worse than pass, but not unexpected for sure.

We get to the running backs. Frank Gore is number 30 overall, and his overall grade is a 68.2. We've seen a lot of things from him, and then this past game on Thursday, we just didn't see him get hardly any positive yards at all. It was kind of a bad situation for him. You know, like I said at halftime, he got 11 carries for 16 yards. So that's obviously not where he wants to be. But he'll fluctuate up and down just because of the way that Indianapolis' offense is structured. So we get to the wide receivers. T.Y. Hilton tied with Jarvis Landry for 10th with an 84.3 grade. There's a handful of guys that are ahead of him that I think you could make a case

for being below him, but there's also a couple guys below him that you could make a case for being ahead of him. So he's right in there in the mix, and you could put him anywhere from eight to 12 or 13, and it's basically all the same grade, you know, just with a slight point tenths of difference. Then we have Dante Moncrief, who's down at 34th overall with a 78.1, and that's definitely the two highest points for the Colts there. Now the Colts' wide receiver core, as we've gone through, certainly need to catch the ball a lot better going forward, or this is going to be a disastrous last five final games of the season. We've seen,

you know, just a multitude of drops. It's just terrible. And it doesn't matter if it's Scott Tolzien or Andrew Luck, whoever is playing quarterback, they're not doing anything with that sort of a drop rate. It's just out of control right now. So as we get over to the tight ends, Jack Doyle is at 18th at 72.4, right behind Anthony Fasano and right above Kyle Rudolph. I like him there. I think that's a solid place. I mean, that's a solid representation of where he is, I think, amongst the lead, maybe a touch higher. But like I said, when you get any higher, it's just slight tenths of points and stuff of difference as far as where they're ranked and so on. When we get down to 55th is where Dwayne Allen sits at a 46.3. They kind of force-fed him the past couple games. I'm not sure I'm a fan of that. I know they feel that they need to get Dwayne Allen

more involved in the offense, but when you have a guy like Jack Doyle who is involved already in the offense and is making significant strides and is bettering the offense the more you target him it doesn't make sense to take targets away from that guy you don't pick and choose who's effective if Dwayne Allen's not being effective you don't give him the ball I mean it's just that simple you know you get it get it to him within the structure of the offense but you certainly don't force feed him into the offense because he just hasn't been that great this year and to be saying he hasn't been that great might be a bit of an extreme he hasn't hardly even been good so uh he's had a couple of good games where he's caught the ball pretty well

yeah i did catch the ball pretty well uh this past thursday but uh any way you look at it he's just not um you know a huge part of this offense and I don't think they need to force feed it. Get to the tackles. Anthony Costanzo has fallen to 23rd overall with an 80.7 grade. Now the Indianapolis Colts offensive line has been a bit of an issue as time has passed, and it's getting kind of worse, I would say, because they don't really feel the structure there in that offense about how guys are working together. Some guys are still missing assignments.

Some guys are still not understanding that delaying blitzes from opposing defenses are going to come, and they're just not handling it well. Joe Haag, he's at 49th overall with a 57.7. And Joe Reitz is at 43.6 with his grade at 66th overall. So we're not seeing a lot of great tackle play out of there. We do know that Costanzo and some of these guys are going to grow, but Costanzo has been a pretty solid guy with all things considered throughout the years. And if we didn't have him, this offensive line would be an utter just tire fire.

So we've got to take our criticism of him with a little bit of a grain of salt, I think, and understand where we'd be without him. Jack Muhort is 20th overall for guards right now with an 80.7. He's been pretty good although he's been susceptible to blowing assignments as well just as anybody has it's not you know certainly not picking anybody apart on this offensive line in particular but he's just not he's been great for the majority of the year and then you know the past couple weeks it seems like he's kind of fallen off a bit but I have no doubt that he'll continue to, you know, that he'll turn that around, I guess,

and, uh, and get better Denzel. Good. However, 76 overall with a 44.0. Um, I still think that they're crazy for not having him at tackle. I, you know, you have to at least put him back there because obviously it's not working at garden. Good. good. One of the guys who I've talked up since late last year has been very inconsistent in his guard play and is one of the guys that is forgetting assignments or just not following through with assignments. He's not effective right now, even probably 70 to 80 percent of the time, and that's a problem. so when we get over to centers Ryan Kelly is at 23rd I think that's real close to where he was at a couple weeks ago the last time we did pro football focus grades and he's at a 78.4 and he's doing you know really well

in pass block he's actually improved that even and he's at an 82 whereas he's a 66 in the run block, which, you know, is debatable, you know, as far as where they have him ranked in that situationally. I think his run block is pretty stinking good, and, you know, I just, his pass block is good too, but I think 66 is low if you compare it to other guys when you're looking at their grades as well. We get to the cornerback crew. Now, this is a real situation here. Once we start talking about the secondary, it's really a bad situation, in my opinion. Darius Butler is now the highest graded Colts cornerback at 29th overall with a 79.4. He's done pretty well. I mean, but you know, they're grading him, um, giving, I think I,

I'm going to say that I'm going to assume that they're giving him grades from his snaps at, uh, at safety for his cornerback grade, which should tell you why his grade has gone up. He looks like he's a guy that I think the Colts should concentrate putting at and leaving at safety if at all possible and of course health determines a lot of that so we look at Rashawn Melvin is all the way down to 55th but he's still second on the Colts and 72 point out of 72.3 and as if you were hurt here to mine and George's conversation last week talking about him being one of the biggest surprises on the Indianapolis Colts. He is. He's one of the most solid tacklers. He's a pretty good defender. He's

not great, but look, the Colts need all the help they can get, and he's doing about as good as can be. And then we get to a couple guys who have been, in my opinion, extremely disappointing this season, and that's Patrick Robinson at 90th overall with a 51.1 grade, and Vontae Davis at 99th with a 48.5. These two guys have got to pick it up. I mean, I'll talk more about this, whether it be on here, an article, or both, but Vontae Davis has really fallen off as far as his ability to cover deep. Everything that he can cover, it seems like he needs to cover in front of him or level or lateral, and that seems to be the extent of his coverage skills. Granted, he's been injured a little bit, nipped and so on and so forth, just little piddly injuries it appears, But he's a guy that the Colts really have to make sure is at the top of his game if

they're going to continue to keep him on this roster. Now, don't get me wrong. He still, skill-wise, is one of the best corners in football. But is that skill level falling off? That's something they really need to evaluate and evaluate accurately because if they don't, they're going to have an aging guy on their hands who can't cover deep, and that's a scary thought. We get over two safeties. Clayton Gethers is at 21st overall with an 81.3. He's been fantastic, although nice to have him

hopefully coming back this week from the concussion symptoms, and that'll make me very happy because the Colts badly are missing him in the secondary, that's for sure. Mike Adams is down at 30th with a 79.9. He's been quiet lately after having a couple of bad games, and I'd say that he has kind of leveled off. I wouldn't say that he's continued to be bad. He just hasn't had that great play or anything like that in the past few weeks. So let's not totally dismiss him. But our safety play overall hasn't been terrible. It's been inconsistent most definitely. They're struggling to roll coverage, and that's a major issue in this kind of a defense,

especially when your two corners, three corners are concentrating on press man responsibilities. Those safeties have to be able to be elusive and decisive when they're rolling their coverage because, as we know, there is very little specifics to a free or strong safety in this defense. And both of these guys have to be able to cover both sides. And as we've seen, TJ Green continues to struggle in his coverage responsibilities. In fact, he's all the way down to 86th with a 42.3. So we need him to be better. And we need a lot of that stuff to be better, especially in the secondary, because if it's not going to get better, the Colts are going to continue to lose and teams are going to

continue to throw deep. And that, you know, limited throws deep is not going to just destroy a safety bunch. But when you continue to throw deep over and over and over again, safeties can only do so much if the coverage at the line of scrimmage between zero and 15 yards is less than good. So next we move to the linebackers and DeQuell Jackson's all the way down at 77th with a 40.5 grade and he is the top of the Colts crew. And this is just something that we've continued to talk about over and over. Not looking at snaps, John Adash McNary is somewhere around 85th, 86th with a 41.4 grade in his limited snaps. And there's just a bunch of unlimited guys who just really aren't getting the snaps. So this is something that the Colts need to improve on also, among other things, which is an obvious situation that we see

week in and week out. Interior defensive lineman T.Y. McGill is at 42 overall with a 74.2 grade, and he just continues to do his job, which is eat up defenders and occasionally get into the backfield. And that's really what he's supposed to do. Next is 76 overall is Hassan Ridgeway at 46.1. These aren't great grades, but it is what it is. These are the top grades on the Colts. And these guys, not only do these guys need to get better, but other guys need to get better and improve this group. This needs to have improved depth, most definitely. And some of

these guys aren't going to be on the team next year because they're going to have to improve it through the draft and possibly through free agency. But like I said, it is what it is. At 109th, Zach Kerr, 41.7. And then we have basically everybody else with David Perry at 112th, Arthur Jones 116th, Kendall Lankford 117th. Those are 41.2, 39.6, and 38.8. A lot of poor grades for the defensive interior. It's not something, like I said, that we don't expect. It just seems that there are so many guys above them that don't necessarily get the attention of being very good, and it kind of makes you realize where the Colts are at in that category.

Akeem Ayer, top-edge defender for the Colts at a 71.4 grade, 59th overall. 59th is too low, 71.4, eh, not too bad. He's getting a lot more snaps than he has in the past, but he's not being used specifically as an edge rusher. And then we get all the way down here to LeVar Edwards at 97th, 43.5, and Eric Walden at 103rd with a 42.2. Then Robert Mathis, welcome to 108th, 40.5. These are things that just aren't very good for the Colts. You know, a lot of their defense is in the gutter in this regard. But, you know, it's not only these grades, and we understand they're subjective, but their play has been pretty bad as of late.

You know, they'll have a game where they run defend pretty well, and then they'll have a couple situations, a couple drives, where they pass defend pretty well, and then it all goes to hell after that, and they just get, you know, torn up, and it's just a bad situation. So the Colts' defense has a lot of improvement to do this year, and they don't have a lot of time to do it. So let's hope for the Colts that they can turn this thing around, especially as quickly as possible on Monday and, you know, really make an impact in New York against the

Jets. It would definitely do a lot of wonders for their confidence, that's for sure. So with that, I'm going to leave you guys here and I'm going to talk to you guys on Wednesday. And thank you for being patient for this Tuesday show. I apologize for it not coming out on time, but we'll do what I can do to try and stay healthy and not come up to this situation again. So thank you guys for joining me. As always, go and subscribe to the podcast Locked on Colts on Twitter and Facebook. If you guys want to follow me on Twitter, it's mdanley underscore NFL. Thank you guys, as always. You've been great.

And like I said, tell a friend, tell a family member about the podcast if you love it. Tell them why you love it and get them to become listeners. So I appreciate you guys reaching out still on social media and everything else. It's been great. And let's continue this ride. So I'll talk to you guys all Wednesday 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.