Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS -12/14- Breaking Down The Colts Vs Vikings & Where The Colts Can Exploit Their Defense

Episode Date: December 14, 2016

There's no doubt the Minnesota Vikings have a top level defense. But, the #Colts will be looking in a few specific areas to exploit their weaknesses in order to find success. Meanwhile, can a bad Colts defense stop the anemic #Vikings offense? 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 getting all set for this big matchup between the Indianapolis Colts and the Minnesota Vikings. We've got a little bit to talk about now. We're going to kind of break down this Vikings team,

both offensively and defensively, a little bit by the numbers and kind of show you guys what the Colts are in for here. First of all, the Colts are on the road. As I explained to you guys yesterday, the Colts are 3-3 this year so far on the road, but they've won their last three on the road. This is going to be in frigid conditions, so it's certainly going to be nice that the Colts don't have to play outdoors up there. The Vikings have played outside the past few years, and now it's going to be a little bit

warmer for them, I think. But before we get too in-depth with all this Vikings preview, let me tell you guys about SeatGeek, the most amazing and smartest app on your phone, especially during the football season. It is high time that you guys get yourself some tickets. The season is coming to an end, and SeatGeek is the way to get them. SeatGeek is the smartest, easiest way to find tickets for the football games you want to see up close and in person this season. There's absolutely nothing like being in the stadium for the biggest games of the year, and with SeatGeek, it's never been easier to get the guaranteed seats you want for a great value. Naturally, I have the SeatGeek app on my phone.

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with absolute confidence. Best of all, you guys, my listeners, get a $20 rebate off your first SeatGeek with absolute confidence. Best of all, you guys, my listeners, get a $20 rebate off your first SeatGeek purchase. To get this $20 rebate on tickets, download the SeatGeek app, go to the settings tab before you search for tickets, and click add a promo code. Enter promo code LOCOLTS. SeatGeek will send you $20 immediately, boom, right back in your pocket after you've made the first ticket purchase. Download the Seat Geek app and enter promo code LOCULTS today. Let's look ahead to this and let's look at a couple of numbers here. Let's look at, first of all, this Vikings offense. We already know about this. This is obviously one of their crutches on their season. And since week seven, the Vikings have averaged just over 17 points a game. They've put up as many as 30 points against the Cardinals. And that was kind of an aberration.

I mean, a lot of games with 15, 13, a couple 20s here and there, a couple 10s against the Eagles and the Bears. So these guys are definitely a beatable team. But this offense in general, they don't go downfield very much. They don't do a lot of things very well, that's for sure. They're 20th, tied for 20th with a few other teams at under seven yards per play in the passing game. They've only thrown 14 touchdowns all season. They're right in the middle of the pack with 40 plays of 20-plus yards. And we all know that they're just not a fantastic team. And their offensive line, this is another game where their offensive line is pretty bad.

I mean, it's very close to the Colts. I mean, the Colts have given up 40 sacks, and the Vikings, though they haven't given up quite as many sacks, they are giving up just as many pressures, and it's on Sam Bradford, and he's not dealing with it well. They've given up 29 sacks on the season. Looking at it in a little bit of a different light here, look at their team in general. And let's go to football outsiders kind of for that. That kind of weighs – it really is the most logical way to look at a team, I think, because they really look at situational things,

both offensively and defensively, yards, situations, how they go downfield, how teams attack, and so on and so forth, and kind of where their weaknesses and their strengths are at. And Minnesota is overall their 14th best team. The Colts, on the other hand, are the 25th best team. No surprise there. But when you look at Minnesota's overall offense and their overall defense, just their flat-out ranks, they're 24th in the league in offense. The Colts, on the other hand, are 14th. This is also no surprise. When you have Andrew Luck there, he's constantly going downfield, constantly trying to make plays, and they typically are more successful. Obviously, they've had several situations with drops, bad play calling, a lot of sacks, a lot of porous offensive line play, and they've had a lot of

situations not go their way, but they're still, they do it enough to where they can maintain that middle of the pack ranking there. But Minnesota's defense, on the other hand, is ranked seventh overall, and they have the 10th best special teams. The's defense, on the other hand, is ranked seventh overall, and they have the 10th best special teams. The Colts, on the other hand, are ranked 29th on their defense, and they have fifth special teams. So that's nice. I mean, the Colts do have a solid special team unit. They've played pretty well all year. But when you look at that 29th defense, and they're going up against 24th offense, this is very similar to a matchup that we just saw this past week against the Texans uh an anemic offense can't run the ball can't pass the ball

downfield uh you know very spotty very hopeful for a big play you know in order to put some points on the board. And the Colts' defense is obviously pretty bad. They show up sometimes, and other times they just look terrible. So that's the interesting matchup there if you want to look at the bad side of the coin. When you look at the other side, then you have the 14th-ranked offense going up against the 7th ranked defense. That's interesting. Again, just like last week, I would still take Andrew Luck over any defense in this league. And I say that because I think he makes up for so many warts, and it just really depends on what kind of pressure that they get on Luck. If they are hitting Luck as many times as he got hit, and it's not post the throw,

if he still has a hold of the ball, that's going to be an ugly, ugly game. The Colts are going to turn the ball over a lot. They're going to fumble the ball a lot. And that's, you know, that's not a good recipe for a victory. The Colts absolutely have to win out to have any shot whatsoever at the playoffs. It's very, very unlikely. It's so much more likely that the Texans or the Titans will end up getting a couple of these wins on their schedule. And in fact, in one of them, the Titans and Texans match up, they're guaranteed. One of those teams is guaranteed at least one win. So you think about it that way, that's, you know, still not a good situation for the Colts overall. So we see that those are kind of the head-to-head matchups for the game. And then if we want to dive in just a little bit more and look at how this Minnesota defense,

which is so good and really had them off to a magnificent start to the season at 5-0. And it was this defense that was really doing it. The offense was playing better, you know, are playing pretty solid. But the defense was really winning their games for them. And Minnesota, when you look at how they play against each receiver, it kind of shows you what the Colts need to do in order to win this game, or at least continue to move the ball downfield. And you're not going to be surprised because it's something that we've talked about over and over again. But

the Colts' tight ends are absolutely critical to the success of this offense. You hear me constantly say quit forcing Dwayne Allen into this offense as far as quit throwing him the ball just because he's on the field. And that's true. You can't do that. Even if Jack Doyle is on the field, you can't just force him the ball. That's not how you run an offense. However, the game plan needs to be set up to make the successful opportunities available for these tight ends. Now, Jack Doyle needs to get the brunt of the targets. That's just the

way it is. That's just an intelligent way of looking at it because he is so reliable, so good after the catch, hard to take down. He does everything you want a tight end to do. Jack Doyle absolutely needs to have a big game. You look at the way they go against receivers. Now you look at T.Y. Hilton and how he gets open. And like I said, if you guys haven't seen Matt Waldman's breakdown of how T.Y. gets open despite his size and physicality, you really need to check that out because it's really interesting and it's amazing. And he's showing that this year at how he can just get by any corner or anybody else despite their speed and their strength or size advantages that they may have over T.Y.

So looking at this here, the way that the Minnesota Vikings defend against number one receivers is they are 11th in the league, and that's, aside from their tight ends coverage, that's as bad as it gets. They're fourth against number two wide receivers, fifth against other, which means three and four. They're eighth against running backs, but they're 24th against tight ends. That's terrible. That means that you guys can almost count on Chudzinski really trying to pick apart this defense across the middle. And, you know, not only that, but in the flats. I mean, up the seam.

Because Jack Doyle's just fantastic everywhere he goes. And I would look for them not to use Dwayne Allen as much as a blocker. Not to mention he got just manhandled by Jadavion Clowney. But almost every tight end in the league would. Okay, so I'm not going to pick on him for that because that's an unfair matchup. And to be quite honest with you, there's a ton of linemen in the NFL that Jadavion Clowney is an unfair matchup against. I mean, that's just the way it is. So this week though, I would look for them to try to turn this into a two tight end, uh, because i i think i mean i think that if they have the extra bodies at offensive line i wouldn't be surprised to see some unbalanced

in this just to kind of see they haven't shown a whole lot of it this year uh last year against philly it worked and uh they the colts should have won that game. They dominated for the first half because of the unbalanced line and how they approached it and how they approached going after the Philly defense. And I think that the Colts might need to use that again this week. And I think that they will. I think they'll bring in an additional offensive lineman. They'll use two tight end sets a lot, but they'll really try to feature T.Y. Hilton because I think T.Y. and they think T.Y. can take anybody one-on-one and I agree with that for the most part he's he's been a lot more consistent this year uh the games that he hasn't been consistent he's been a little

nicked up in some of that but you know he's had a couple bad games too everybody has a couple bad games but the one guy who really needs to step up is Moncrief. I mean, you look at their set number two receiver and their number three and four receivers, they're fourth and fifth in the league in that department. And if Moncrief is going to really set a name for himself within this offense, he needs to step up. I mean, the guy has all the talent. We've been talking about him forever. He's fantastic in the red zone, but they really need his skill set in between the 20s, not just inside the 20. I would look for them to feature T.Y. Hilton, though, but I would also look for them to try to really spread the ball around a lot and then I would look for luck to try to

maybe on early downs try to feature the tight ends especially in catch and run situations. I wouldn't look for them to just get three to four yards and understand that they're not going to get much more than that. I would really look for them to try to design some tight end plays, a couple double moves, a little shake across the middle, some seam routes, and stuff like that. What also works against defenses like this that are very opportunistic and are sometimes a little aggressive is when you start using the high-low concept on these guys. It works. It's proven that it works. You can, like I said, you can set Jack Doyle up just about anywhere on the field and he's going to succeed. One of the problems here is that the Colts have yet to really, and it was brought out and brought to the surface when the Colts ran that dump-off play to Robert Turbin at the end of the game.

The Colts don't use the screen pass in the right situations. They don't have the right back in their four screen pass. I mean, I think Turbin's good. I really do. But I also think Todman brings you that elite speed in there and, know without getting some sort of a natural rotation in there uh with him and Turbin back and forth that it's really going to give it away when he goes in the game but with that said they still have effective pass catchers in Gore and Turbin back there that they can use for that and they need to use the screen pass more, but they've also got to design it a lot better. This Vikings defense, like I said, is aggressive. They also are not going to really notice when they're getting through the line any quicker than normal in this game. This is a perfect game to have a huge screen pass go for big yardage or a score.

We did see that, you know, Gore took a dump off this past week for a touchdown. Not, you know, because there wasn't any traffic to go through. In fact, that's the play that Muhor got hurt on. But I think that a screen early in the game this week after, big first down pickup or something like that, and you use it. But I also think that the Colts need to go back to running the ball. I don't think that they're going to get a ton of yardage. I don't think they're going to have a great running game, but they can't just abandon it after the middle of the second quarter. That's not going to do any good for the Colts, and it makes them extremely easy to read, and they can't have that because the Colts will just

absolutely get blown out of the building if they do that. So this is a big game. We all see how important luck and these receivers and tight ends are going to be in this game. Aside from that, it really just comes down to the defense being a serviceable defense and being able to maybe force a couple early turnovers or at least one against Sam Bradford in this offense. Like I said, they can't run the ball. Their offensive line is pretty terrible. They have to find a way to get some pressure. I mean, they haven't gotten pressure against even terrible offensive lines all year, and they really need to do it. And they really need to create pressure, not just get two sacks. You know what I mean? Those two sacks are great, but they've got to continuously get pressure

on Bradford. Bradford is considerably worse. And as I mean, all quarterbacks are worse when you pressure him. But Bradford just almost falls to pieces when you pressure him. I mean, he can't throw, he can't think he looks like that little boy in the adults, jersey and helmet, you know, and he often looks that way and plays that way way when he's getting some sort of pressure on him at least once every four downs, twice every four downs. This is a crucial game for the Colts just to save face after being embarrassed this past week at home. A lot of Colts fans aren't going to travel to Minnesota, but they need to show us because they know that everybody is watching, and every Colts fan is still going to watch this game despite the fact that there's a pretty good chance that the Colts are done this year without any playoff hopes.

But the bottom line is they still have three games to play, and we also see that there's some guys going to IR, you know, like I said, three of them went to IR. They put Patrick Robinson on IR yesterday. And that was no real surprise with them bringing in that cornerback from the old Houston Texans cornerback. And so this is that time of year where people start to go to IR who are kind of nicked up and really present no positive influence on the team if they were to come back. This also is a time of year where guys have to earn a roster spot or attempt to earn a roster spot for next year, or at least least an offseason free agent contract. So it's going to be interesting.

It's going to be interesting. We have a lot of old guys on this defense, and the Colts are going to have to do their very best to have some of these young guys show what they can do. I think Akeem Ayers is probably playing for a contract again. I would love to see him stay in Indianapolis, but I think there's some guys that are older that are out the door regardless of what they do. So it'd be nice to see the Colts kind of show up here again on the road. It'd be nice to see the Colts go three and one against the NFC this year despite a really crappy season. That would be somewhat of a caveat to the year. But we'll have to see.

We'll get more in-depth on this as the week goes on, and we'll reach out and try to find some Vikings guys to talk to and probably the Locked On Vikings hosts and get to them and see what they got on us on this game and what they think. So thank you guys for joining me again here on Locked on Colts. As always, you guys, please subscribe to the show. You can catch me at Locked on Colts on Twitter and on Facebook. You can also reach me at LockedOnColtsPod at gmail.com.

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