Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS - 9/13 - Challenging Pagano's Timeout Excuse, Colts Defense Needs Henry Anderson ASAP and What the Colts Will Face in Week 2

Episode Date: September 13, 2016

Matt challenges the lack of facts behind Pagano's timeout gaffe excuse, explains that the #Colts defense could be pretty solid with return of Anderson, and other injured defensive backs, and briefly previews the Week 2 matchup against the #Broncos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Each and every weekday right here. You can also catch the show on iTunes and Stitcher and any other podcast platform that you use. What can I say? It's been a solid 24 hours since the loss to the Lions, and I hope that everyone's had a chance to exhale a bit. But I got to be honest. I know we're supposed to let this one go. I mean, after all, it's week one, and we need to move on and not sit and continue to simmer on this. But the more Pagano talks, the more I have issues with what he's saying. And I'll get to that shortly.

But first, I'll give you guys a quick update on the Colts injuries from last night. Patrick Robinson, when he went out, he apparently went out with a concussion and is now in the league's concussion protocol. And TJ Green is designated as week-to-week by Pagano with his MCL sprain from from Sunday today Chuck Pagano spoke to the media and and was uh and praised Luck quite a bit and he should have and the offensive line for that matter as well they were obvious strong points to the Colts game Sunday Luck was fantastic the offensive line really stepped up, especially in the second half. I mean, the left side of Costanzo and Muhort were really good.

They allowed just one hit and one hurry between the two of them. And in general, the O-line, like I said, was really good. They only allowed one sack and got them down for seven total pressures on 51 passing plays. I'm pretty sure that's pretty high among the league for the first week of the season. Now Pagano also praised the Colts two-minute offense and how they drove the field at the end of the first half scoring a touchdown and again at the end of the game taking the ball with just over four minutes to go and again converting on a touchdown. Now he's right and the offense did very good executing in those positions, and they were absolutely critical points in the game

and for the Colts to being in position to win the game. But to be fair, I think Pagano was largely attempting to take some of the focus off of his late-game gaffe with talking about how well they did in critical points and so on, trying to get some head nods from the media when the focus was clearly on his poor time management situation from those who were there. I mean, the questions were coming up, and he was answering them,

but he was answering them, kind of dodging them a little bit with talking about how good they were. And that's what coaches do, especially Pagano. He's going to avoid the negative connotations, and he's going to go straight to the positive, that's fine. We do that as fans sometimes and we try not to sit and complain about all the negative all the time. You've got to get past it and we will. Like I said, I've got some issues with some of the stuff that he was saying.

Naturally, the timeout was brought up and what I spoke about last night or yesterday, as far as taking it after the first down play, he had five plays previous to worry about the personnel when he was in the red zone or at the very least inside the 30-yard line. I mean, this is stuff you do previous. You know that you're going in to the last drive of the game. You should have all this stuff.

All your ducks should be in a row at this point in time. Well, he mentioned that even on the headset, and I can only assume he's talking about Chudzinski, that they were talking about draining the clock. Somebody was talking about draining the clock, but Chuck called a timeout anyway instead of having the right people ready to go in that situation. Here's the real problem, in my opinion. After T. Way caught the ball for no gain, he caught the ball at 118, went down. There was an immediate timeout. The play clock didn't even run down. They called it immediately while they were at the 12-yard line. Why? You've got three downs to score, you're inside the 15, and your defense has given up 34 points already. Not to mention Chuck never even attempted to get

the personnel in on the play. As I said, none of the time had run off of the play clock whatsoever. There was never an attempt. It was an immediate decision to call the timeout. You want the real kicker? They never even changed personnel. From the play on T.Y. or from the catch that T.Y. went down at the 12-yard line previous to the timeout to two plays later, the exact same personnel was in the game.

Go check it for yourselves. On the play that T.Y. went down at the 12 and on the touchdown pass to Doyle, the exact same personnel was in the game. His explanation holds even less water. He screwed it up and he just won't say it. I maintain my stance that the timeout wasn't necessary at the time regardless. It should have been prepared for, they should have been prepared for the situation, and that's directly on the coaching staff, whether or not it's Pagano alone or the assistants or whoever is directly at fault there. It doesn't matter.

That's poor coaching, poor preparation, and that's the bottom line. Again, obviously, the slow starts were brought up, and Pagano attributed to poor execution and yet again he wasn't wrong I mean Pagano can't go out there and tackle for these guys they let the Lions backs and receivers get a ton more yards after the catch than they ever should have in some sticking points and on on second and third down situations Chuck's a bit of a Jedi in this regard he puts his little Sean Connery dialect on, and it just turns these guys into butter, and it seems like all is forgotten.

Don't get me wrong. Some of these guys in the local media will ask the good questions, and they want real answers. But whether he gives them to them or not, it doesn't seem to matter. You know, Chuck puts on this veil and kind of just sidesteps anything that should give any real substance to an answer. And he's the coach who doesn't have to, but, you know, still cheap. If you're looking to get stories and insight on the entire NFL all on one show,

be sure to check out Locked On NFL Podcast with Matt Williamson. And for all you fantasy diehards out there, Vinny Iyer will give you everything you need to be successful in your leagues with the Locked On Fantasy Football Podcast. And as always, subscribe to your favorite Locked On Podcast and give them a rating and a review and let them know what you think about them. Also, if your target audience is men in the age of 18 to 50 and want to advertise on the show, email the show at LockedOnColtsPod at gmail.com and let's do this.

Now, getting away from that that it does sound like henry anderson could be well on his way to getting back into action uh for the colts which is a really good thing i mean the colts need him they're saying that they're taking it slow with him to get him taking more snaps uh in practice as he gets ready to go and that he's getting closer so that's encouraging and let's let's keep our fingers crossed in that regard. We don't want him coming back too soon, but this defense sorely needs him. So now to the matchup that awaits us this Sunday. Let's get our minds off of the stuff from this past Sunday, and let's look ahead now. I got that off my chest a little bit, so we'll move on.

The Broncos, if you watch the game, which I'm sure that most of you did, Broncos and the Panthers, you see what we're up against, especially with their defense. Their defense hit Cam Newton eight times, racked up three sacks, and their defense was pretty good in coverage, obviously, defending six passes, and they had one interception. Held the Panthers to 103 rushing yards from the Panthers' running backs, not including Cam Newton, of course. I think he had around 50-some yards, too, but that's not necessarily something you're going to see from

most quarterbacks. Yes, Luck can do that as well, but this is the running back situation. If they're holding the Panthers running backs, who are pretty decent, to 103 yards, you can pretty much guarantee that the Colts running backs are going to have a day ahead of them. Offensively, they had 92 yards from C.J. Anderson on 20 carries. That Broncos offensive line is really good in the running game. I mean, they did pretty well in protection too, protecting Simeon, but their running game is really stout. They only had four additional carries from Devontae Booker and Andy Jonovich combined. Other than that, it was Simeon on some simple scrambles and stuff like that. And he can scramble, but he's no more of a weapon than any other quarterback when the pocket breaks down.

I mean, he's athletic enough to get out and chew up some yards, but he's nothing that the Colts necessarily need a game plan for, I wouldn't say. He was actually pretty impressive against a real quality Panthers defense, especially for a seventh round pick with no previous experience in the league. He went 18-26 for 178, a touchdown and two picks. Not a bad initial start in the league, I wouldn't say. I think the thing that a lot of the people on, a lot of the guys on the broadcast were mentioning is how he doesn't get rattled. He doesn't get nervous. He didn't look nervous either.

He looked like he belonged. And that's encouraging for them from their quarterback. But it's also a sign that the Colts need to take him seriously, not just assume he's Trevor Simeon, somebody that nobody recognizes. He's an NFL quarterback, and they've got a game plan for him just as much as they do for anybody else on that offense. Like I said, he never looked rattled. He made good decisions for the most part, and is at least for the time being a game manager at his core. He's

not a big-time downfield passer. Obviously, you could see his mistakes when he's under pressure. He gets a little careless with the ball, floats a few. Colts, though, have struggled mightily against the game manager type quarterbacks in the past and have equally struggled against backups and just bad quarterbacks in general. Whether it's a starter or whether it's a backup or a less than quality quarterback, the Colts struggle against them quite a bit. And here's a little side note, the Colts are 7-2 against the AFC West since 2012, and specifically against the Broncos are 3-1 in that same time span. It's going to be a tall order though. I mean, listen to this defense,

Chris Harris, Vaughn Miller, Todd Davis, who was their leading tackler against the Panthers Sunday. Brandon Marshall, TJ Ward, big hitter in the secondary. Bradley Roby, really good cover guy. Demarcus Ware and Derek Wolfe. I mean, all these guys can get after the passer. All these guys can defend. I mean, that's a lot of defense to deal with. The Colts O-line is going to have to be as good and likely quite a bit better to deal with this Broncos defense. As a unit, the Colts O-line isn't the epitome of athleticism necessarily,

but they've done a good job against the meat of this defense in recent history. Now, I threw a couple of polls up on Twitter today as well, and the first one was, who was your biggest disappointment from week one? Lost to the Lions, and the options were defense, coaching, and the running game. 62% of you said the defense over coaching at 33%. I was a little surprised by that because I've seen so many tweets and so many people complaining about the coaching in particular. But the defense was an issue.

But you know what? And this is something else that Pagano brought up. I mean, it is true. Those guys, the new guys that came in, in the secondary, Melvin and Darryl Morris, both those guys played really pretty decent. I mean, Melvin almost had a pick six in Lions territory right before the Colts' final drive of the game. I mean, that could have really changed the outcome right there. He was really highly talked about in Arizona's training camp

this year. They really like him. He's been in the league for four years. You know, they just didn't have space for him on their roster, it doesn't seem like. Now, the other poll was, what was the biggest positive taken away from the week one loss to the Lions. The options were the DB coverage, the offensive line, Andrew Luck, and the Colts tight ends. That went Andrew Luck 73%, offensive line 22%. I expected the offensive line to get quite a bit more votes in that regard. I also expected the tight ends to get a little bit more because the Colts, not only did the Colts struggle covering tight ends, the Colts, especially last year, really struggled getting their tight ends involved in the offense. So to see this, three touchdowns by their two tight ends was something that I thought would garner a lot more excitement,

so to speak, within this offense. I thought that was a huge part in their success as well. I also got a couple tweets asking when Henry Anderson and Vontae Davis will be back. They're expecting Vontae back in October, and Henry Anderson, like I just explained at the beginning of the show, is somebody who they're working back slowly, so hopefully shortly, especially with Anderson, but also Vontae now here's something that you can possibly chew on a little bit with Cromartie there he's listed as a DB on the Colts roster not as a cornerback so that is somebody who could also fill in as a safety or situational safety in nickel or something like that when the Colts defense does get a little

more healthy and starts to get people back. Once Vontae's back, who's going to be opposite of him? Is it going to be Cromartie? Is it going to be Robinson? I don't know. Who's going to be in the slot? To be fair, Darius Butler is supposed to be expected back shortly as well. But in that regard, I also think that Cromartie did one hell of a job in coverage. They also did well in run support the other day. So where are we at with that? Where are we at with where does Cromartie fit into this defense? They can't let him go.

He played great. He's not expensive. They need to keep him around. And I also think that as injury-prone as Butler has been lately, and his limitations defensively, I mean, he used to be the guy who could lock down the slot. Now he's the slot corner because there isn't really anybody else to be the slot corner. I don't know if that's necessarily up Cromartie's avenue as far as his skill set, whether that supports it or that's ideal for him, but I think it's an option, and I think they need to pursue.

You know, Robinson played a lot in the slot too when he was in San Diego, so there's an option there as well, and keep Cromartie outside opposite Vontae. I don't know, but they're going to have options when some of these guys get healthy, and I think that's good. It looks bad now because they don't have those guys, and they're forced to deal with what they have. But when those guys come back back when Henry Anderson comes back when Vontae comes back they're going to have a real nice rotation up front in their front four they're going to have

a pretty decent secondary as long as anybody everybody once they get healthy can stay healthy the real issue and we just don't have a choice because we can't exclude them is going to be the linebackers probably all year. So we need to get used to that. And I'm sure that we'll be talking about them quite a bit in the near future. So this defense has the opportunity to get better. There are a lot of people saying that they think that the Colts' defense this year could be as bad as the Saints' defense has been in the past.

I don't see that at all. Because the Colts' front four is definitely better than it's been in the past. I don't see that at all because the Colts front four is definitely better than it's been in recent years with T.Y. McGill up there. Kendall Lankford's really good and really underrated. Henry Anderson, when he comes back, he's a beast. David Perry, he's solid. Zach Kerr, he's good. He didn't play well the other day, very well Sunday. But that's a heck of a rotation up front. And they can do a lot of different things in sub packages with that front four as well. So they really have to figure out what they're going to do with the linebacker position. That is the true, true weakness in this defense,

regardless of what it looks like now with people out with injury. So what are they going to do when they go to Denver? First of all, they have to worry about the offense protecting Luck. They've got to make sure that these guys aren't getting to Luck free reign. He can't take too many hits. They've got to keep him as clean as possible like they did this past Sunday. Will they do it? I don't know.

I sure hope so because we can't afford to have either A a Luck having to throw under duress constantly through the game. That's going to lead to interceptions. That's going to lead to bad juju for sure. And we just can't have him getting hit. remarkable that he's even got as much athleticism and as much health as he does at this point. Messing his kidney up last year, I hope, sent some real shockwaves through some of these linemen and some of the offensive personnel and hopefully Coach Pagano that they have to make sure that these guys, I don't care if you hold, you've got to make sure luck doesn't get hit. And that, in turn, leads to make sure you're not in a position to where you have to hold. Do your job. Do it well. You know, pass protection isn't easy. It's a heck of a lot harder than it is to run block. Run blocking, you're attacking the defense, whereas they have to react to you coming on to them to block them, whether it's up front initially or at the second level or a safety downfield. But when you're in protection, you're the one that has to react to the defense. And those guys are athletic. I mean, those guys coming off the edge are coming full bore. You've got to react to them. Those guys have a bevy of swim moves, rip moves, everything.

You know, you have to react to them and have to be able to counter what they throw at you at 100 miles an hour. So this offensive line really did their job Sunday. They really have to do it better even coming up this Sunday. So tomorrow we're going to have a guest. On here we're going to have Matt Harmon of NFL.com. We're going to have a little bit of a lighter show. He's going to go through some of the Colts skill position guys

and talk about their fantasy value for the rest of the season. I mean, we're only at week one right now. So he's going to come in and he's going to kind of tell you what you should expect for your fantasy team if you've got some Colts on there. I know most of you do. So look forward to that. Matt's always a good guest.

He'll be here tomorrow. We'll talk more about this matchup we have coming up with Denver on Sunday. And I appreciate all of you listening. I appreciate all of your rates and reviews and everything else. You guys have been great. Colts Nation, keep it up, please. And as always, you can find the show at LockedOnColts on Twitter. You can check out the Locked On Colts Facebook page.

You can get at me, mdanley underscore NFL on Twitter as well. We've gotten the negative off our chest now about this past week. So let's move on. Let's think about what we're going to do this week. Let's hope that the game plan is real and the game plan is successful. Let's hope that the Colts coaching staff is learning from what they're seeing instead of repeating it over and over again like they've done in years past. Let's hope that this season is different from others

and that the Colts are going to have a successful season. I look forward to talking to you tomorrow, so stay tuned and I'll talk to you soon on Locked on Colts.