Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS - 9/21 2.0 - Moncrief Out At Least 4-6 Weeks, Devin Street Signed to Active Roster | We Could See Some New Faces On The Field Sunday | George Bremer Stops In To Describe Atmosphere In The Locker Room

Episode Date: September 21, 2016

What we all feared was happening when Devin Street was signed this morning has come to reality, #Moncrief will miss at least 4-6 weeks | #Colts making their way off of the injury report could be seeing the field including Henry Anderson, and George Bremer stops in to describe the atmosphere in the locker room when the news came down. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, where are you going, Jim? The elevator's over here. Taking the stairs. But our meeting's up on 8. Yeah, I know. But that's 8 floors up. That's like 8 times... I don't... a lot of stairs. That's the point. I've already lost a few pounds and earned almost $100 in wellness incentives. Whoa, you're getting rewarded for working out? Yeah, I know. I'm just as surprised as you are, Bob.

Fearless is full of surprises. That's the power of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Federal Employee Program. Learn more about our healthy benefits and sign up at fepblue.org slash choose blue by December 11th. You are Locked On Colts, your daily Indianapolis Colts podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network. Welcome back, Colts Nation. I'm your host, Matt Dainley, and we've got some bad news that you've probably already caught wind of here on Locked On Colts for our extra show today. The big news coming out is Dante Moncrief expected to miss at least four to six weeks with a scapula fracture?

As far as my initial thoughts on that, it's a little scary to me with such a high-impact position there at wide receiver to have that kind of a fracture. I mean, Tony Romo, Aaron Rodgers, those guys are both quarterbacks. But wide receivers are blocking constantly, constantly in impact, constantly tackled, obviously, when they go down. A lot of times they'll go down on that shoulder. That shoulder's very vulnerable. That whole area of the upper body is very vulnerable. It is protected by shoulder pads, but you saw that the impact,

what kind of an impact actually caused the fracture from this past Sunday. So you know that something as trivial as that, again, could easily refracture the same area. They did say that he's not going to need surgery, but this is a big blow to the Colts in general, the Colts wide receiver core. It's a big issue for the Colts moving forward. These injuries are just not stopping. They don't know when to quit, apparently. I think we all saw this coming this morning when the Colts signed Devin Street off of the Patriots practice squad. He had played 2014 and 2015 in Dallas with a total of 30 games.

He had only had 20 targets throughout those games. He was more of a special teams guy. And even bringing him in, they're not going to use him right away. They're going to use the guys that they've had in the fourth and fifth spots on the wide receiver depth chart. Those guys are going to be moving in and taking the snaps in Moncrief's absence, but he's a guy who could possibly, if he shows out, learns the playbook and such in the first few weeks here in Indianapolis, then he should probably get back on the field because he's a heck of an athlete. He's a guy that a lot of people really liked coming out of the draft. He hasn't had huge production in the NFL, but he was a good

wide receiver coming out from the college rinks there in Pittsburgh. So it's some bad news and some good news. The Colts are bringing back some guys today to get started working out their injuries and such on the field. Patrick Robinson will be back today, they've said earlier, participating in non-contact drills and such. So this is something that is, you know, when we had some positive news set to come forward today with so many guys who had been injured getting back on the field for practice, we deal with now the inevitability of Moncrief being out four to six weeks. And I think that's a low ball time frame, to be quite honest with you. I think most of those kind of injuries are. But we will talk with George Bremmer of the Harold Bulletin in Anderson here

shortly. And we'll kind of see what he's hearing there at the Colts facility today and what he's getting from the overall atmosphere and such surrounding this latest news. However, when you look at this kind of a situation in a very small time frame, we spoke before about T.Y. Hilton and Dorsett not being overly productive thus far this year. And Moncrief had only had ten targets on the season thus far, but he had three targets in the game. He was out in no time. So he's had seven targets in his first game, which is a pretty good amount. So we should have expected him to continue that and possibly get

eight to nine targets during each game but the wide receiver position is going to end up getting filled by Kwon Bray and some other guys who have seen very few snaps and actually saw more snaps probably Sunday in Denver than they ever expected to that early in the season. So we've got some guys who are going to be getting themselves adjusted to rotating in and out at a pretty consistent pace. And it should be interesting. The Colts have a lot of work to do, obviously getting some guys back who are injured, and now we've got another guy out. So this isn't good news, Colts but again stay positive it can only get better if it gets worse first so hopefully we'll have all this most of this squared away here in the next couple weeks and then Moncrief hopefully will be the only guy still out but I would look for Moncrief to miss

every bit of six if not seven weeks eight weeks possibly too like I, that seems to be a area on the body that is awful vulnerable to re-injury. And we'll talk to George Bremer about that as well and kind of see if he agrees with me. Again, George and I, neither one of us are doctors, don't take it for any more than our assumptions and knowledge of the game. But I think that's a pretty good assumption on our part as well. So thank you again for listening. Thank you for the ratings and reviews on iTunes. Keep getting a hold of me, LockedOnColts, on Twitter, on the Facebook page, and send me the email at LockedOnColtsPod at gmail.com. And on the line with us now we have George Bremer,

Colts beat writer and sports editor for the Herald Bulletin and Anderson. George, how are you doing today, man? Great. Thanks for having me again, Matt. Appreciate you jumping on with us on short notice. It's not a good day for Colts Nation with the recent news of Dante Moncrief likely being out four to six weeks. This is a bit of a shot in the side in an already injury-plagued season for the Colts, yeah? Yeah, absolutely.

Defense has been decimated the first two weeks with injuries all over the field, front and back end, and now one of the biggest playmakers on the offensive side is going to be out for at least a month. If there's any good news, I suppose, it's that there's not going to be surgery involved, more of a rest and rehabilitation type of a situation. So, you know, he will be back, so it could be worse. But obviously, four to six weeks, it's going to be a tough road to haul for this offense here.

I think the majority of us saw this coming with the news this morning that the Colts signed Devin Street to the 53-man roster. He's been in Dallas the last two seasons, but they signed him off of the Patriots practice squad. What are Pagano and Chudzinski's thoughts on him right out of the gate? Yeah, not a whole lot early on here. Coach Pagano basically said that he was a very productive player at Pittsburgh in college, and that's what they're looking at, you know, see if they can tap into that. But I really think he's going to be a guy who's here for depth for the time being.

You know, obviously there's another playbook. He's going to have to get up to speed with some of those things. So I think on Sunday I would be surprised if you saw a really big impact from him. So more likely he's going to be a guy to come in and it's not probably going to change much. In other words, I guess for the first couple of weeks that Moncrief is out, but it'd be more like a long-term depth acquisition more or less. Yeah, I think so. I think he's more a guy that, you know, they're looking at, they're going to need numbers there, obviously, you know, because of Moncrief going down.

And so he's somebody that they can bring in and hope to develop and can make an impact down the road somewhere. Now, we spoke about this before, but neither you or I are doctors. But with a fracture in a shoulder blade, that seems to be a very, what's the word I'm looking for, a specific area of the body that would seem to warrant a high risk of re-injury. Would you assume that? Yeah, absolutely. And I think they're going to have to be particularly careful here because, again, we talk about different injuries at different positions meaning different things. And this is one of the things where you would think a shoulder for a wide receiver is a hugely important area. So you can't mess around there.

You can't let this become something chronic or something even worse than it already is. So they've got to kind of resist the urge if it's there to rush him back or to do more with him than they need to do, and I think it's going to complicate the whole process. You're going to have to make sure he's 100% when he comes back and then probably going to have to give him some extra padding or some tools to protect that shoulder. Yeah, he's been – I mean, he's a highly productive part

of the Colts' offense as well. It's not something that you could – he may only be – he only may need to be out four to six weeks, but I have a hard time ever accepting either the short end or the long version of their expectations for somebody being out with injury. I would say something like this, especially like you said, for his position and dealing with taking multiple hits, he's got to use his arms a lot to get off the line of scrimmage. He has to block. There's a lot of things that are involved in the far upper body

to an NFL wide receiver. He's somebody the Colts need to have for long term. They can't really risk losing a guy who's become so productive in their offense. Yeah, absolutely. And you've seen the way they've handled Henry Anderson on the defensive side. I think it's very similar in the situation.

And I think they're going to do the same thing. As badly as they would love to have Henry Anderson out there for the first two weeks, it wasn't the right thing for the player. It wasn't the right thing for his long-term health. And so they resisted that urge and they get by without him. I think they're going to do the same thing with Moncrief. One of the biggest things,

and literally big in this case, I think they're missing with Dante out is his size. He's 6'2". He's the big receiver for this team. There isn't anybody out there right now who's going to be able to replace that. No, and Street's not quite that size. I believe he's more right at about 6'0", if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, right in that same area.

Oh, no, I take that back. He's actually 6'3", per his scouting here. So I was surprised. I didn't think he was quite that tall. I didn't either, but I'm sure that that's one of the things that they would look at when they brought him in because, obviously, you look at Quambray and you look at Chester Rogers, and Chester in particular has done some things that I think this team's excited about, that they can maybe use him in some areas,

but both of them are about in that six-foot range. They can't do what Dante Moncrief did, if that makes sense. They can come out and they can do the things that they do, but they can't bring to the game what Moncrief brought. Absolutely. His athleticism put him on another level and still does and puts him among some of the best athletes at the position in the in the league for sure now somebody the other day during the press conferences or during the availability with Pagano brought up an interesting statistic I'm not

sure who brought it up but I wish I did so that I could talk to him about it or tell him that I thought it was a great question. But they brought up the fact that T.Y. Hilton and Philip Dorsett, luck is only, I think, 15 to 34 when targeting them downfield this year so far. This does not help that situation. Is there somebody that's going to be able to step into Moncrief's role obviously not being able to fill 100 but to be able to mitigate some of that or should we expect Hilton and Dorsett to pick up um kind of the slack here uh not only improve uh their their availability to luck and their receptions throughout this mess, but maybe step it up just a little bit extra

and kind of absorb some of the impact? Yeah, I think a lot's going to fall on them. And T.Y. Oatman was very open about that today in the locker room. He was almost angry, and it was all directed at himself. He said he hasn't made plays yet this year. He hasn't had a game-changing performance. And he made it very clear that that's something that he hopes to change almost immediately. He wants to go out there

this week and be that player that he knows he can be and be there for Andrew Luck. I think that's going to be a really interesting thing to watch. We really haven't seen T.Y. Hilton in that kind of a mind frame for a while. He's always been a really studious

guy, and he's always a really frame for a while. He's always been a really studious guy, and he's always, you know, a really hardworking guy. I mean, Reggie Wayne talked about that from day one, that, you know, as much as T.Y. was under his wing, he didn't have a whole lot he had to do because T.Y. was the one asking questions. T.Y. was going to him, you know, to get things done. But I think today you really saw a different T.Y. Hilton, a really motivated T.Y. Hilton. And I think, you know saw a different t.y hilton a really motivated t.y

hilton and i think you know both the info doors that understand that that this puts more onus on them and you know on the tight ends i mean jack doyle obviously has been far more productive than anybody would probably imagine here in the first two weeks uh but you know i think they've got to get dwayne allen a little more involved he is a guy with some size who maybe they can use in some circumstances, red zone and those kind of things to kind of help make up for the loss of Moncrief. He obviously doesn't have the ability on the outside that Moncrief has, but he is a big target. He is maybe a guy that can alleviate some of that.

And they're going to have to find somebody to kind of take up those across the field or crossing routes across the field uh where moncrief succeeds so well um you know duane allen's more of a tight end that's going to hit the seam a little bit more i've talked about this uh recently on the podcast but he's he's a guy that can hit the seams he's going to he's a different route combination guy than Jack Doyle is. Jack Doyle is a lot closer to the line of scrimmage type receiver and so on. So that's going to be interesting to see how they use those two in this situation as well. Let's talk about some of the other guys that have had the injury bug bite them as well. Now we knew that Vontae Davis, Patrick Robinson,

and TJ Green were likely at least going to be on the field this week. Not so sure about maybe Patrick Robinson, about how he's going to function after, you know, still, as far as I know, still being actually in the NFL's concussion protocol. But what do you think reality is as far as those three all coming back this weekend? Yeah, I wouldn't expect Vontae Davis to be back until at least the London game and probably more likely the Chicago game. He's going to go out and practice today for the first time. He's been out doing some field work.

He said he's been cutting a little bit. He's been able to test that ankle to some extent, but really I think he's going to need at least a week of practice and see how he recovers and see where he's at think he's going to need at least a week of practice and see how he recovers and see where he's at before he's going to be ready to go. T.J. Green I expect to be available if there aren't any setbacks, and that's always kind of

a caveat with all of these things. Clayton Gathers is going to sit out today's practice, but I expect to have him back Thursday. I think that he'll be a guy who's maybe on a pitch count on Sunday and be available. I think the he'll be a guy who's maybe on a pitch count on Sunday and be available. I think the big one to really keep an eye on is Henry Anderson.

He's really gotten to that point where, you know, he kind of said earlier today he thinks he's done pretty much everything he can do in practice. It's up to the coaches, and he's going to let them make the call, but he feels like he's pretty ready to go. So I think you could see him back in sort of a role like you've seen Kendall Langford the last couple of weeks where he may play some limited snaps and get into that rotation.

That would obviously be a big boost for the defense as well. And you just recently wrote a piece on Farley, the safety there for the Colts. Tell us a little bit what you think about his possibilities for maybe an extended or an exaggerated role this Sunday. Yeah, you know, a lot of it depends on the health of a lot of guys, but when you look at the fact that Winston Guy is not here anymore, you know, Farley becomes that number four guy, and when you don't know what you have from Clayton Gathers, you're not sure how far, you know, he's going to be able to push things in the game. And you don't know TJ Green exactly where that knee is. I know that he's going to be comfortable and confident.

If he's out there, he's going to feel like he's ready to go. But with those two in that sort of a situation, I think Farley becomes a really legitimate chance to see some playing time. And the thing about Farley that happened on Sunday in Denver is his versatility. You know, here's a guy who got thrown in as a nickel corner because they literally had run out of quarterbacks and went out and made an open field tackle and got a stop, got the ball back.

You know, I think the coaching staff obviously saw something they liked there. He's obviously going to take a bigger role on special teams with Winston Guy gone. And I think he is definitely a guy. I don't know that his role is going to be huge in the immediate future, but I think he's definitely a guy who is starting to kind of raise some eyebrows and get some looks. I agree with that. Now, one more thing.

With the cornerbacks that have seen so much playing time here recently with all the injuries, the safeties that have come in, the rotation up front in the defensive line, now I made a point to, or more of an argument so to speak, that I think this actually, despite how bleak it looks now and in the first half of the season for the Colts, especially starting off actually with an 0-2 record. This could drastically help their depth and their outlook going forward once all these guys come back. And hopefully, you know, the idea would be for them to stay healthy. But should they stay healthy, this would drastically improve the depth of the corner

because they've been thrown into the fire, like you said, and these guys have had to take real snaps in real games, in real situations where the game's on the line, so on and so forth, against real top NFL talent in a couple different instances. Would you agree with that, or is this something that you see maybe a couple of them would get released when these guys come back? Yeah, I think some of them probably will get released when everybody gets back, but there's no doubt I think it has helped the depth, and I think at least one of these guys

I think will stick around. Darrell Morris or Sean Melvin, both have had their moments. They both have made a couple plays here and there, and for guys who've been here for about two weeks, that's a pretty incredible thing to say, really. I think it does. I think it does help the depth. And earlier, I forgot about Patrick Robinson. You had asked about him. He is going to participate today in a non-contact jersey.

I think that's kind of the first step back. He's passed his impact test, so he's still in the protocol, but he is progressing. So I think there is a chance they'll get him back on Sunday as well. That's good news. I'd love to have him back. I think regardless of kind of how he's perceived, I thought he did pretty well when he had the opportunities. George, thank you. I appreciate you jumping on in short notice, like I said. George Bremer, you can check him out on Twitter at GMBremer. George, thank you so much for your time, man. No problem. Anytime.

Thanks a lot. Well, there you got it, folks. George right in the mix down there in Indy, and it doesn't sound any better than we thought before we spoke to him. So a lot of things have to change or a lot of things have to improve for the Colts' season to get better. It doesn't seem like they're getting a whole lot of help with these injuries and just some bad breaks all the way around. But thank you for tuning into the extra

show today. The next show for tomorrow will be a crossover with Derek Togerson, who's the host of Locked On Chargers, and we'll be giving you guys a crossover for that. And we'll be giving you guys some questions. There will be, and we'll have some questions for each other, and we'll kind of break down this matchup the best that we can between the two of us. So thank you for listening. I'll talk to you guys tomorrow here on Locked on Colts.