Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS -12/13- Indianapolis Colts Make Multiple Roster Moves, Send Three to IR

Episode Date: December 13, 2016

As the #Colts prepare for Week 15 matchup against the Minnesota Vikings, they again find themselves injured in several key positions and have a rough road ahead of them if they plan to make a legit push for a playoff spot that may no longer be available. 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 we are here for a Tuesday, December 13th on Locked On Colts, ladies and gentlemen, I'm your host, Matt Dainley, and we are here for a Tuesday, December 13th, a Lockdown Colts, and of course, you know, in at least the talent that you see on the field, to have such a bad performance and such a poor outing really drives you nuts as a fan,

really makes you really want to see a lot better out of your team. But we are here on a Tuesday, and we are going to put that behind us. And we've got some news to talk about, obviously, as the Colts head into their matchup with the Minnesota Vikings. The Colts obviously had some health issues at the end of this game. Not just at the end of the game, but during the game, obviously. And we saw Jack Muhor leave the game. He and Clayton Gethers, who missed the game due to a neck injury, and Kurt Majit, who left the game, are all going on injured reserve. Muhor's definitely been the biggest bright spot, I would say, on the Colts' offensive line this year. And to see him go to IR, I think it's kind of twofold here.

You look at one side of it and it's terrible because he has been the best lineman for the Colts and you don't want to see him go. You want to see him play. But man, that dude has, I think this is the third or fourth time he's gone down in a game. He's already, you know, escaped IR once this year. They thought he was going to IR real early in the season, and he come back the next game, I believe. So, like I said, bittersweet seeing him go. You feel bad for the guy because he just keeps getting drilled on that knee, and it's like, man, let let the guy rest you know and the

Colts are not in a prime position to make any runs you know that's a fact we know that now with three games left to go they're not mathematically eliminated quite yet but we feel that that's you know right around the corner but Clayton Gethers big big blow here. Another good defender. Two of the Colts' best tacklers in their defense will not be playing the rest of the season. Gethers because of his injury, and then you look at DeQuell Jackson because of his stupid suspension. So that takes out the Colts' two best tacklers. And then Kurt Majette, a young rookie,

he busted his knee up a dud during the game, left the game. So now he's, he's going to be gone too. So this obviously, at least for the offensive line brings about some issues. You see Denzel good, uh, whether he's going to come back, you know, and how he's going to come back from, uh, his, uh, stint in the protocol, uh, the concussion protocol, you never really know. Jonathan Harrison filled in for the most part. And, you know, Joe Haig's going to get bounced around. How they feel about Joe Reitz, where he'll stay at right tackle more than likely,

especially if Denzel Good does come back. But there's so many unknowns with this offensive line and how it's going to look the remainder of the season, so that's definitely something that we want to keep our eye on. Another injury, notable injury, was Dante Moncrief. Obviously, that's a hamstring. The Colts elevated our Devon Street to the 53-man roster as well. And with those guys going on injured reserve, that was necessary. So that'll be something to pay attention to with all that. And the Colts also signed Duke Williams in order to replace Gethers. He's played in 57 games with the Bills.

He's got quite a bit of experience. He was waived by the Bills last month and he played in nine of their games this year. Kind of interesting to see what's going on with all of that and how that will somewhat affect the way that the Colts go and in what route they go. An additional roster move, the Colts signed Charles James who has 33 games under his belt, and he is actually a former Texans cornerback. So I think that the Colts are kind of weighing Patrick Robinson's health as well. This is, you know, this is a beat-up Colts team. It's an unimpressive Colts team right now. There's, you know, this is an easy team to kind of, you know, just hope that they don't do anything detrimental to anybody's health, I think, at this point.

I think with one more loss, which is possible with the Colts going on the road twice out of the next three weeks, that they are going to drop one of these games. Vikings, Raiders, and then Jaguars, you know, I think that if they get beat by the Jaguars, we're in a lot of trouble, and it's just going to put a real sour taste in the offseason. And it's a long offseason, especially if you were to get beat by the Jaguars in week 17. But like I said, they go on the road twice through that span, and it starts this week against the Vikings and another team. Jacksonville played the Vikings pretty close. Whether you want to say the Vikings played closer to the level of the Jaguars or vice

versa, doesn't really make much of a difference because this has happened a few different times with other teams, and the Colts have done it a few times as well, obviously, with a great example of that being Sunday. You know, one of the things that a lot of people are talking about today and tomorrow and will be talking about for a long time is kind of the cluelessness of Pagano and his answers. I mean, and it's not cluelessness because he obviously is giving the answers. The problem is that it shouldn't have been the answer, if that makes any sense. And when I say that, I mean that it shouldn't have been the answer because that shouldn't have been the answer, if that makes any sense. And when I say that, I mean that it shouldn't have been the answer because that shouldn't have been the issue. For example, he was asked about why Dwayne Allen was basically left one-on-one

to block Javion Clowney, and he said that was the protection. And he is accurate. That was a protection, obviously, but it was stupid. It shouldn't have been the protection. There are a few different things that should have happened here. First and foremost, the Colts staff should have recognized that you don't want Dwayne Allen blocking Jadeveon Clowney one-on-one. Okay, first and foremost, that's a fact.

Second of all, you can put the blame on Luck to an extent here. He should have recognized that that, I mean, he's done this before. And when I say we should blame him for this is because he's smart enough to know better. And he has proven that he has. He changes protections consistently. He brings guys in motion to add a chip block he's done it in the past and he could have done that in this case as well and given Dwayne Allen maybe a little bit of help on a chip block before whichever route whether it was Hilton coming in motion or or Dorsett maybe coming to the left side of the formation or whatever chip blocking Clowney and then going off onto his route. And Luck failed to do that. So you can put some of that, the blame on him as well, because he should have recognized that. Maybe because he was going to the

right side and assumed it would be a quick hitting pass play that he didn't mess with it so much. But nevertheless, it happened and he didn't throw the ball and didn't get rid of it and he paid for it so that's kind of a problem so you want to i mean you we can bash pagano for that because it was because it was a bad idea to begin with but you got to blame luck too because he's smart enough to know better plain and simple uh the other part of that on that fourth and one screen pass we talked about that i talked to you guys about that why my disdain was so that the screen pass made no sense because that situation did not warrant the texans to uh to be blitzing and they didn't of course nor would they in that situation that's another thing that you can do on both parties. You can blame the coaching staff because that's a stupid play call in that situation.

And then on the second half, you can blame Luck because he didn't alter the play. And he's got a couple plays to his disposal in that situation. He didn't change it, and he should have. It's a bad combination of things, and the problem is good teams and good coaching staffs don't have that many bad options in those critical situations, I think. that put their quarterback or their team in situations to where there's one really terrible option and then there's B, a really bad option also. So I think that this coaching staff is in for a rude awakening come the offseason. And we saw that Jeff Fisher was fired from the Rams. He seemed to be Teflon for years. This is a situation, this is a year, this is a strange year where Lux only missed one game,

and Pagano is not coming through, and this Colts team is not coming through. They're under.500, and that's unacceptable when you have Andrew Luck at quarterback as far as I'm concerned. I think Pagano, I think he's gone. I would, and I'm not saying I wouldn't be surprised if he's gone. I think he's gone.

I don't think there's any two ways about it, quite honestly. And, you know, like I said, we'll have this conversation here shortly, but the additional conversation there about GM Ryan Grigson, I'm not so sure that these two are tied at the hip, people. I've talked to you guys about it before, but I'm not so sure that Grigson goes when Pagano goes. So, like I said, we'll talk about that later. We'll get more in depth, and we'll talk to some more people about that.

But that's my assumption on the whole situation. Now, I touched on briefly about what the Colts have left on their schedule. And the Colts do go to the Vikings. They go to the Raiders in Week 16. And then they finish up the season on New Year's Day against the Jaguars. So we've got an opportunity where the Colts are going to play against two teams who have a lot of playoff implications left on their schedule. The Vikings, for one, they're really in a battle right now to see whether they're going to be in the playoffs. The Raiders are in a battle. They're basically with their own division right now,

but both of those two teams have playoff hopes and dreams and are, for the most part, very close to realizing those possibilities. So the Colts are going to have their hands full. These two teams are going to be hungry, and they're going to want to stomp on the Colts from the beginning of the game and they're not going to want to let the Colts up so the Colts are going to come into this these games with hungry teams despite the fact that they're far better especially in the Raiders case not so much in the Vikings case their offense is awful as well I mean they're very similar to

the Texans as far as I'm concerned, except for the fact that their defense is significantly better. So the Colts are going to be seeing basically the same team they just played, only a little bit better, and it's going to be on their field. And let's talk about this too. The Colts this year so far are 3-3 on the road. Not great, not bad, not terrible. But, I mean, if you look at the bad part, yeah, they're 3-3.

But the good part is they've won their last three. So that's something that you can smile about, maybe smirk about, and maybe take some sort of a solace in that they've won their last three in Tennessee, in Green Bay, and then in New York. So maybe the Colts are a little better on the road this year than we thought in past seasons. I don't know. And also the Colts against their NFC opponents this year. Now, strangely enough, there's always seemed to be at least another NFC opponent sprinkled

into there, even when the Colts play whoever the division is, the NFC division that they play. But this year, there isn't any. This is all straight division games against the NFC North. And the Colts thus far are 2-1 against them. They beat the Bears and the Packers and lost the opening week 1 to the Lions. It could possibly have been 3-0 against the North and then be going up for a sweep. That would be way more successful than the Colts have been against the NFC in years past. So that would

be also something that would be interesting should the Colts ever win this game in Minnesota. That would be nothing to, you know, nobody's giving the Colts any extra points for that, but a solid outing against the NFC would be a good start. You know, it would at least give us something to talk about in the positive note because there's so much negative right now and it's just not a fun place to be to sit here and root for the Colts when the Colts are as bad in so many different areas as they are and widespread change seems almost certain to be on the horizon. So we'll get into more of the breakdown of this week's game against the Vikings as the week goes forward, but that's all we got for today.

We'll get into some PFF grades, and we'll get into a little more of a breakdown of what we're going to see against Minnesota and so on and so forth. If you guys have any thoughts on the game, any thoughts on the game looking forward, you guys always know that you can email me at lockedoncoltspod at gmail.com. Get us on Twitter at Locked on Colts. And as always, subscribe to the podcast and let us know what you think of the show. And thank you guys for listening.

We will check you out 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 on Podcast Network, your team every day.