Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS -6/5- Why Doyle Has Been No. 1 TE & Colts' WR's Are Being Undervalued

Episode Date: June 5, 2017

To start the week Matt jumps to dispel the notion that #Colts TE Jack Doyle wasn't already the team's top tight end, and some talk about a recent ranking that had the Colts receivers in the bottom third of the league. 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. Thank you guys for coming back to me on a Monday. Really appreciate it.

Thank you guys for all the kind ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts. Those are really helping drive the show up. It's really starting to take off and stuff. Has been for a while now, thanks to you guys. And I couldn't appreciate it anymore. Today we're just going to talk about a few things here. Get this new week started off. We're only going to get news basically from the

team once a week, right at the moment, and probably maybe twice a week at the most after that until things really start kicking off and getting closer to training camp. But there's a few things that I wanted to go over with you guys tonight, and one of them was talking about how the Colts were projected by ESPN's FPI rating to win the AFC South. There was Josh Wilson from Stampede Blue put something out on it and kind of explained it a little bit better so that people would really take notice. There was one side of it where the Colts were predicted to win the AFC South with like a 36% chance to win it. And then the other side, which know, which is good that people

think that the Colts are going to win the AFC South, I guess. I would assume that most of the Colts fans already think that. Although I think that Colts fans are relatively honest with themselves about what the rosters around the rest of the division are looking like. You know, the Titans had, like I said, probably my favorite overall draft for what they needed and for what they've already got on the roster. The Jaguars, they spent hefty in the offseason. They had a nice draft as well. And then you have the Texans with ultimately getting rid of Osweiler

and getting J.J. Watt back this year. They've souped up some of their offense. I really like the quarterback that they've added, you know, for their system in particular. And O'Brien, to be quite honest with you, I think is going to flourish with this new, you know, just with not having to have Osweiler in the lineup. So I think you guys are honest with yourselves about it, but I am as well. And I think that it's a bit of a, you know, a four-sided coin flip, you know, to, for a lack of better, uh, way to explain it. I just think that this is going to be one of the tightest seasons in all, uh, for the division, the, the D the defenses are going to be better.

I think for the Colts and, uh, the Titans, but I also think that you've got offenses that are starting to improve quite a bit with their playmakers. I think Mariota being ranked above Luck on the NFL 100 is a joke. You know, I don't know how many people honestly think that Mariota is a better quarterback than Luck, so I kind of wonder what the whole reasoning was behind that to begin with. But when you look at everything else, like who are their weapons and where do they do and how are they playing and what did they need with the new weapons that they brought in, the offenses are starting to kind of get lumped together. I think that it's undoubtedly Andrew Luck is the best quarterback in the division.

But when you look at the pieces around him, the weapons that he's got, offensive lines and everything else, it kind of gets jumbled in together. Defenses now, obviously, we know that the Texans are one of the best defenses in the division, one of the best defenses in the league. At least they were last year. They lost some pieces. They got some back. But you've got the Jaguars now.

Is their offseason of free agency spending going to actually pay off some dividends or not? And then the Titans, their defense is getting significantly better. But the Colts really started to lay the foundation for the uptick of their own defense. Now, how good they are in their first year of all being together, that's something that is yet to be determined, obviously. But the Colts are moving in the right direction for sure. So for them to get predicted to win the division, you know, that's cool and all. But even this says, you know, it was strange because the Colts, as a division winner with a lowest percentage getter of any division winner around

the rest of the league. And with that in mind, the Colts, 36% chance of winning the division. The Titans were at 30%, Texans at 22.5%, and the Jaguars were only at 10%. That's a little strange to me that it kind of played out that way. I'm a little surprised that they don't have the Texans ranked higher than that as far as above the Titans. I figured the Titans and Texans would have been a little closer. I'm actually a little bit surprised that the Colts were that much over. And with this FPI rating, apparently there's some 10,000 simulations or something that decides this. And I think this goes to prove to you that this rating

or whatever this actual thing is, is that it rates quality quarterback play. And I think that it's natural to see or to assume that these simulations see that Andrew Luck is the best quarterback in the division. And that's going to ultimately be what puts the Colts over the edge. So that's cool. It was kind of interesting to see that. I don't really know how much I believe in simulations and how much I'll put into those or anything like that, but it is still interesting, and it just kind of shows you, even after a year where there's a complete transition and almost a total rebuild, that the Colts are where they are, and that, you know, something is predicting that they're going

to win outside of just the fan base. So another story that I kind of thought needed touched on a little bit. It's from Mike Chappell. And it was interesting to me, not so much what he's saying in the article, but kind of how he displayed it a little bit. Now, Mike's a great guy, really smart. I enjoy his work as well. But I kind of took a notion with him saying that Jack Doyle was changing roles as the number one tight end. Now, I think that when you look at everything in order, you look at why is he changing the role? To me, that was what I took issue with, is he's not necessarily changing the role. He's ultimately still and has been the Colts number one tight end since last year. I mean, when you look at his stats versus Dwayne Allen's stats, you just see that Jack Doyle last year was the better target, the number one target.

The difference is that Jack and Dwayne Allen were two completely different tight ends. They didn't have the same role. What they wanted from Dwayne was what Jack provided, if that makes sense. They wanted Dwayne to be that lockdown blocker and pass catcher. And what happened was that Dwayne started to get beat up a little bit on his blocking assignments, both in the run game and in the passing game.

And he was effective at that early in his career. He wasn't so effective in that towards the end. And that's why ultimately the Colts decided to go another direction, to pay Jack Doyle that money and to let Dwayne Allen go away, you know, for a draft pick that ultimately got the Colts a little bit more help in their rebuild this year, which I thought was a smart move as well. So you look, I mean, look at cash percentage just in with itself. Jack Doyle's nearly 80% cash percentage almost through his career. In fact, I think it is actually, it does come out to around 80% for his career, but 78.7 last year. Dwayne Allen has only had

one year or two years where he was above 65%. And those were his rookie year in 2012 and last year, actually 67%. That's a 10% difference just this year. But if you look at the overall stats, I mean, he had a 50%, 58%, and a 55% in his career in his years. In those middle years, they're kind of sandwiched in between two good seasons or quality catch seasons anyhow. But then you look at the rest of them, you know, the typical statistics. Targets, Dwayne Allen had 52 last year. Jack Doyle had 75. There's only two games difference how many games they played, and that doesn't equal 25 or 20 targets. Jack Doyle was clearly the better target. He was the more relied upon target,

and that's just unmistakable. You can't argue that. Then you go to yards. Jack Doyle was at 584. Dwayne Allen was at 406. Dwayne Allen had a little bit better yards per reception with 11.6, whereas Jack only had a 9.9. But that's kind of, you know, splitting hairs there when you consider the routes that they run. And that was feeds into more of what I'm talking about, about them being two completely different tight ends. They just didn't play the same. They didn't have the same routes. Jack Doyle was the guy closer to the line of scrimmage typically, and Dwayne Allen was the guy that would eat the seam a little bit more when called upon.

Those were their roles, and that just is a different role for what their skill set is. Jack Doyle wasn't as fast as Dwayne Allen. Dwayne Allen would go up the seam a little bit more. That's just natural. I mean, but when you look at everything else, I mean, you know, Jack Doyle only had five touchdowns last year. Dwayne did have six, but he had three of them in one game against the worst Jets defense I think anybody's ever seen in their life. They just didn't guard him because he hadn't done anything all year to that point. So kind of a gimme. I mean, results are results.

But just look at career touchdowns. I mean, Jack Doyle has 24, and Dwayne Allen has 19. Now, if you're telling me that Dwayne Allen's the number one tight end, why does he have fewer touchdowns? He's every bit of the red zone threat that Jack Doyle or anybody else is. The fact is that Jack Doyle catches all his. Not only that, but he's able to do more. He allows the offense to be more functional. He allows the offense to be a little more diverse. He allows them to play the blocker and release into the red zone for a touchdown or at least to get some more yards up the middle, whereas that's not his natural job to go up the scene. So, I mean, Jack Doyle is a more well-rounded player. He's a better

tight end in general. I don't see that he changed roles. I see that he is a guy who was paid to say, hey, you were our number one last year and you outplayed the guy who was supposed to be our number one last year. Here's number one money as a tight end for $19 million. And Dwayne Allen's going to go away. You're just the guy now. Now you don't have Dwayne Allen. Now you've got another guy coming up behind you in Swope who is ultimately the guy that we think that Dwayne Allen wanted to be

or could be anyways. Not the blocker now and can be a better receiver than Dwayne Allen probably was. I'm real excited about Swope and I think that the combination of those two, he and Jack, will be a really nice one-two punch, so to speak, at the tight end position for the Colts moving forward. So looking forward to that, I think that Jack's going to have a phenomenal year and I don't think that there's really any debating that I mean he's just too important he does too many things well and when you look at everything that he does and the results that he gets from them I think that that's obvious that Jack Doyle

is the guy at tight end and that he can take over the top spot uh you know if you want to I don't know what how to explain it exactly other than to be the perceived number one. He's been the number one as far as I'm concerned, but now just Dwayne Allen isn't in the picture at all. So, I mean, you take that for what it's worth. He's just got another guy coming up behind him. He's got another decent multitasking tight end in Brandon Williams, and that's ultimately what the Colts are going to roll with this year, it looks like. Now there's another thing. We're going to go to receivers and kind of talk about this. Bleacher Report, towards the end of last month, a couple days ago, ranked the Colts pass catchers as 23rd in the NFL. I think this is mainly wide receivers,

but it does look like they've kind of added in tight ends. But I think that's just to paint the picture, not so much as what they get. But to me, 23rd is pretty soft, considering the Colts have one of the best tight ends, as far as I'm concerned, in the league, as far as being able to be multifaceted. And Jack Doyle, who I just explained to you, they've got T.Y. Hilton, who was the number one receiver in the NFL last year. You've got some pieces. You've got some veteran guys around him. I understand that

the Colts aren't an elite wide receiver core. I'm not arguing that. What I am arguing is that they're not that close to being a bottom third group. I mean, they're just not. I would say they're somewhere closer to 15th. I mean, this is kind of, it feels like we're splitting hairs a little bit here as far as where they rank, but I just don't understand. I mean, outside of, I mean, where's the knock there? Is it that Moncrief is injured last year and hasn't quite lived up to what his billing was going to be for last year? Is it that Dorsett, that the expectations are a little too great, thinking that he should be a featured wide receiver? Is it that they don't think that Kamar Aiken is going to come in and

contribute a little bit, both in the red zone and in the middle of the field? I mean, for that matter, they mentioned Quan Bray, but then they don't talk about Chester Rogers, who's a guy who is clearly on a come-up, if you ask me, and kind of fits the role of that guy who just doesn't get a lot of talk but is one of the most consistent guys on the team. He runs good quality deep routes. He puts his foot in the ground and can change direction very well. I mean, I just don't understand this.

I get that they, you know, had, they've got, somebody's got to be somewhere on this lists all the time. I just don't see that the Colts could be that far down the list in, you know, like I said, near the bottom third of the NFL. That's just not where they're at. As far as I'm concerned, I don't understand if you, if you, if they are adding in the tight ends. I mean, if you want to take, say, because Dwayne Allen's not on the squad anymore, that you think that that's going to take a decrease, I don't see that at all. I mean, Dwayne Allen was largely ineffective last year, as we've already pointed out,

until the Jets game. I mean, outside of that, what was he really doing? He wasn't blocking well. He wasn't catching the ball well until towards the end of the season. Just basic tight end responsibilities. His routes were bad. He wasn't getting open. I don't understand a lot of the criticism here just because there are certain guys that they deem as being quality. Maybe it's because Dwayne Allen went to the Patriots

and because the Patriots picked him up, he must be great. I mean, that just, you know, this situation just doesn't go together well, as far as I'm concerned. So I'm going to take issue with them being 23rd. I think they should be ranked higher than that. I think when you add in the fact that, you know, you have to look at this a couple different ways. You can say that they're this rank as a wide receiver core, but you also can't rank a guy without taking in the quality of the consideration of the quarterback and the backfield. I mean, am I right? You know, you've got the quarterback that's going to get him the ball. Peyton Manning had probably some of the worst receivers on his team that Indianapolis has ever.

I mean, Blair White, do you even remember who that is? Peyton Manning for a year made him look like a freaking all-pro wide receiver. It just doesn't matter who they are. I mean, they don't have to be a big name. They don't have to be a guy who's going to take the top off of the defense every single play. They've got to be guys who can catch the ball and be effective moving the chains. Have a couple home run hitters. Have the guys who can take the grunt work across the middle. That's about what you need. Not only that, but you've got the backfield now where you're going to have a threat out of the backfield to catch the ball as a receiver. That's going to take

linebackers. That's going to take some really athletic defensive ends and some nickel corners and safeties out of a play a lot. That's going to take off a lot of double teams for certain receivers. That's going to take a little bit of pressure off of T.Y. Hilton, I think. So I think a lot of this is just a couple guys haven't lived up to the billing. One guy's gone.

And now we just, you know, Moncrief's been injured. So we're just going to, you know, say these guys are bottom of the pack here for the most part or amongst the bottom of the pack. I definitely don't agree with that. So a couple of things I just wanted to take issue with and, and talk to you guys here on a Monday, enjoying my weekend. I hope that you guys enjoy your weekend. As I tell you guys, every single show, please call in. If you guys have a question that you want your voice on the air, I'll download the voicemail and I I'll put it on the air, and I'll answer your question. It's 574-516-2881. Call in.

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