Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS - 9/27 - Luck Is More Than Just An Average Quarterback | Where The Colts Measure Up In The League

Episode Date: September 27, 2016

Andrew #Luck does need to cut down on mistakes, but he is so much more than just an average NFL quarterback. Looking at where the #Colts measure up against the rest of the league after Week 3 & beating the #Jaguars is vital for Colts in London. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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 podcast on the Indianapolis Colts, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back Colts Nation. This is Locked On Colts for Tuesday, September 26th. Thank you for joining me once again as we are now into our second show officially after the Colts' first victory of the season. I have to start again by thanking all of you for listening every day,

lending me your ears for a little while, whether you're driving to or from work or mowing your lawn or whatever you're doing. I truly appreciate it. Be sure to tell your friends and keep this train moving in the right direction. If you love the show, take a few seconds and go to iTunes and give the show a five-star review and drop me a line. Let me know what you you love the show, take a few seconds and go to iTunes and give the show a five-star review and drop me a line. Let me know what you think about the show. Also, don't hesitate to get at me on Locked On Colts on Twitter or the show's Facebook page,

and feel free to contact me at LockedOnColtsPod at gmail.com as well. Now, today on the show, I'm going to go through a little bit of where the Colts stand right now in just kind of the typical categories, whether it's third down conversion rates, so on and so forth. I know it's only three weeks into the season, but we kind of spit these numbers out at you guys on the show or on Twitter or whatever, and I wanted to kind of show you guys where the Colts are at currently, some of the bad, some of the good, and kind of give you a heads up on an interesting statistic that isn't really a statistic at all. Actually, it's just a combination of some points in a certain area. But the first thing I wanted to kind of get to was Andrew Luck. Now, I've seen a couple

articles out there and I write myself, but I also read quite a bit. And there was an article I read yesterday. And in fact, I put it on the show's Twitter page, but the article was basically getting to that the excuses for Andrew Luck's turnovers have to stop. I don't know about you guys, but I consider myself a pretty rational Colts fan. I mean, not only rational, but objective. You'll hear me complain about Luck's silly plays. We mentioned last night on the podcast with Jake Arthur about that four-yard pass that is all the way near the sideline. And it's almost a pick or a deflection every single time.

It's a stupid play. It's a dumb throw. There's situations like that all the time. You'll definitely hear me criticize Andrew Luck when he needs criticized. And Luck does have a lot of turnovers in his first handful of years in the league. But I think you also have to keep in mind that every turnover is not created equal. You know, he's currently at just below his best completion percentage for a season. Granted, that week two loss in Denver really set him back.

He was just over 50%. But in week one against Detroit, he was 31-47, almost 66%. And this past Sunday against the Chargers, he was 24-37 and almost 65%, 64.8%. So if you take that first half out of the Denver game. Luck is right at 65%, which is four percentage, about three actually, percentage points better than his best full season, where he played 16 games. And it was in 2014 where he had a completion percentage of 61.7 and 40 touchdowns. Now, Luck right now is at 61.3. He's got 913 yards, six touchdowns with a 4.8% touchdown percentage and a 1.6 interception percentage. That's still good enough for just under his best. His best is right at about 3.9%. That was also in 2014. Differential there between the touchdown and

interception percentage. And right now he's at about 3.2. So Luck's not having a bad season. Yes, his turnovers need to decrease. He needs to come down. He needs to stop having the stupid plays every so often. It used to be last year, the year before, you could pretty much count on Luck to have one gaffe per game. And I guess the whole reason that I bring this up is because near the end of the article, this guy says that Luck is just an average NFL quarterback. Now, I don't think you have to be a rocket scientist to understand that Luck is far better than an average NFL quarterback. He is improving. He is getting better. I am just as critical of him as anybody will be. But Luck's on a roll this year. He's definitely doing his job, but his sack percentage right now is at 6.8. That is the worst of his career, but he's still playing well.

So it's week three. Things are moving. Things are condensed a little bit. Numbers are jumbled a little bit. Those things obviously smooth out as the season goes along, but Luck's just fine, and he's a little bit better than average, I would think, and I don't think you have to be a Colts fan to acknowledge that. But now I want to get into what I was looking at earlier, and it kind of didn't really blow my mind, but it definitely made me think about it. The Colts have given up 95 points so far in just three games. That sounds awful, right? I mean, it sounds like the defense is just garbage. And to be fair, overall, in the three-game sample size, the defense collectively has not been very good.

We all know about the injuries are there, so I don't need to tell you guys about them. But we saw a different team Sunday when they were getting some defenders back in the mix. But 25 of those 90 points have been as a direct result of turnovers. Now, first one was that Luck picked six to Aqib Tlaib against Denver. There's seven points. Luck got strip-sacked later in the game. There's another eight points. That turned into eight points because they got the two-point conversion. There's 15 right there. Luck was strip sacked again by the Chargers. There's another seven points. And then Luck interception on the very first play with the play that I was talking to you guys about, about the ball that he threw towards the boundary.

And that was intercepted, I believe, at the 33-yard line. He ran it back to like the 12, and the Colts ended up holding them. The defense ended up holding the Chargers to a field goal. There's another three. That's 25 points right there. Basically, all defensive points for the other team. The Colts right now are giving up over 30 points a game, but if you take those 25 points away, the Colts are giving up 23.3 a game. That's pretty decent. Now, the 25 points, think about this this way. The Philadelphia Eagles have given up a total of 27 points so far this season altogether.

So that's not exactly encouraging. But when you do use the caveat of the offense basically being their own worst enemy, giving up 25, nearly 25 points, like I said, the Colts are giving up just over 23. That puts them right in the middle of the pack of the NFL. In fact, exactly with the Carolina Panthers at 23.3 points per game. Now, strictly on the defense. However, the Colts are 31st in points per game, including those 25 points at 31.7 a game. Now, it's strictly on the defense. However, the Colts are 31st in points per game, including those 25 points at 31.7 a game. Some other interesting notes. I'll kind of run through these. I'll try not to confuse you with them, but I think it's important that we kind of see where

the Colts are at at this point. I know it's early, but every three to four games, you're going to see different trends from this team, whether it's up or down, and the Colts have some trends they desperately need to send in the other direction. These defenders coming back from injury, we are going to see Arthur Jones here in the next couple weeks. This is all important because these are factors that can turn these trends on an upward path and could lead to more success for the defense. Now I'm going to go through these real quickly with you. The Colts are 26th in third down conversion rate defensively.

They're 23rd in offensive penalties with 23. They're 23rd in penalty yards, both offensively and defensively. 24th in the league in yards per game allowed defensively with 400 plus yards allowed. They're 28th in yards per play allowed defensively at 6.4 yards per play. 29th in third down attempts defensively. 31st in points allowed. 21st in sacks with four. And if I'm not mistaken, Eric Walden's got three of those. That's pathetic. 26th in sacks allowed with nine, 26th in QB hits, 20, and 27th in receiving yards allowed, and 22nd in rushing yards. Now that's the negative, obviously.

A lot of that 20s and even a couple 30s in there, those are mostly defensive categories. Obviously, we know that the Colts offense is significantly better when comparing the two units. However, it is so early in the season, these are very minimal differences with teams just five and six spots ahead of them. So these are things that they can definitely turn around and start to make upward movement towards the middle half of the league and maybe in the top third. And they desperately need to be in that top third, to be quite honest with you. The offense is going to be moving pretty well, but we've seen the offense stutter just a bit. So we're going

to need that defense to play a lot like they did Sunday consistently throughout the season. Now, naturally, had the Colts had a different outcome this past week, this fourth week against Jacksonville in London could have massive repercussions for Chuck Pagano. However, I don't think that they're there yet. The Colts looked pretty good. I think it kind of reinstilled a little bit of promise with this team. I definitely know that it gave the guys in that locker room a lot to look forward to, and they understand that they can play regardless if Mathis or some of the big time guys that we expect to be big time, we'll put it that way, show up or not. And right now there's not a lot of guys defensively showing up. However, Henry Anderson had a fantastic game and just limited snaps, had several pressures, a QB hit or two, and made his way through the offensive line pretty impressively, I think, for his first game back and having been

kind of walked along just a little bit to get him ready for the game. Vontae Davis as well. You didn't expect him to play that well. He played really well. So it's nice to get these guys back, see what they can do. Now, real quickly, if you guys are looking for all of your NFL action on one podcast, be sure to check out Locked On NFL with Matt Williamson. Check out the Locked On Fantasy Podcast. Check out the Locked On NFL Draft. These guys are all great. All of the entire Locked On network is fantastic. Make sure you guys are checking them out, especially check out some of the teams that you guys are getting ready to play this week. I've been doing this a lot throughout the year where you get to hear from the guys that you're getting ready to

play against and you get to hear kind of what their strategies are, what they're, you know, if you're not familiar with their defensive alignments or their offensive packages, and find out what kind of personnel they use and a lot of different stuff. This is great for that. You can go and check them out. It doesn't make you, you don't get to help the team in any way, shape or form, obviously, but you obviously have that knowledge going into the game. It makes it a little easier and a little more interesting during the, during the game, if you're keeping track of it. So make sure you guys are checking those out. All the Locked On Network is fantastic. Also, if you want to advertise on this show, you're going to have the ears of thousands of listeners, especially in the Indianapolis area. Well over 80% of my listeners are in the target

audience of men in the age of 18 to 44. If this interests you, get a hold of me, email the show at lockedoncoltspod at gmail.com, and we'll move that forward. Now, the areas where the Colts are looking pretty decent, obviously a lot of these, as you can expect, are going to be offensive categories. But there are some interesting ones, and we'll kind of go through these. The Colts are 12th in the league offensively on third-down conversions. They're 15th in turnover differential. That's not a good thing, but it's middle of the

pack right now, week three, you get my drift. They're 12th offensively in yards per game, 15th in yards per play, 14th in time of possession, and conversely, they're 13th defensively. So, I mean, obviously that, you know, that flips the time and stuff, but that's not too bad, really. It seems like the defense is on the field quite a bit because they get stuck in some long sustaining drives but overall it looks like they're doing pretty decent and getting off the field they're seventh and first downs per game 13th and third down attempts now 13th and third down attempts offensively and this means that they're better on first and second down six you know they're having more first and second downs. They're having more

first and second down success. That's a good thing. You don't want them to get to third downs as much as they typically do. You want them successful on their early downs, then you would assume that they're moving the ball in the early downs on both the first and second downs. So that's a good thing. They're sixth in receiving yards offensively. That's no surprise. They're tied for fourth in receiving touchdowns. Again, absolutely no surprise there. But I think they've got six, and that's really tight.

There are several with five. The guys above them are seven and eight. And they're 15th in rushing yards allowed. Now, I think this is a little misleading, this last one, the rushing yards allowed, but it's also a good thing too. It's misleading in that the Colts are being passed on more often than they're being rushed against. However, when they're still 15th and rushing yards allowed, but I think that's simply, like I said, just played off of how many times they're being

ran against. They're not being run against as much. And to be quite honest with you, against San Diego, the Chargers really were trying to put forth Melvin Gordon on the ground quite a bit, and he was absolutely stuffed by the Colts front seven. So that is very encouraging with as bad as the Colts defense in the run game has been. So now where are the Colts within the division? The Texans still have the lead on them. They're two and one. The Colts are one and two. The Titans are one and two, but the Jaguars are oh and three. Now the Colts and the Jaguars are going to be going to London this week. I'll have Ryan O'Halloran on here. We're going to be doing our crossover podcast for the two teams, and I'll be putting that out in the next couple days. But this Colts team, I think one of the show's titles right after week one

was It's Not As Bad As It Looks. The Colts, it's still in that, we're still in that category. The Colts could easily be 3-0 right now. Not that they necessarily would deserve to be, but they had the potential to be 3-0. They definitely should have won against the Lions. They were down six with luck preparing a drive against Denver. The Colts did end up pulling one out in week three. The Colts have been in every game.

This is encouraging. The Colts aren been in every game. This is encouraging. The Colts aren't getting blown out. Even when Andrew Luck's not at his best, or the defense is getting gashed, or Pagano's being outcoached, or whatever. This has to be encouraging to you because the Colts are in every game. I think that you've got to like the play calling on both ends. We're seeing Mike Adams being sent up the middle on some safety blitzes, some guys coming off the edge a little bit more.

Again, not a lot of success in the sack category, but there are some big plays being had in big moments, and that's just as helpful. So that's nice to see, but we definitely need to create our pass rush, especially this week. We don't want to give the Jaguars any hint of hope in this game. The Colts need to absolutely just wipe the floor with the Jaguars in London and send a really emphatic message that this past Sunday against the Chargers was no fluke. That's how they're going to play defensively, that Luck is a 65% completion quarterback, that he's going to throw three touchdowns, four touchdowns to every one interception.

All this stuff needs to come together. I do believe it will. I do think that it will. I don't know how many wins the Colts are going to get as a result of it, but I do believe it will. I just, I do think that it will. I don't know how many wins the Colts are going to get as a result of it, but I do definitely see the Colts' units collectively gelling better right now. You're seeing a good chemistry in both ends. It's nice to have Gethers back too because he's, you know, the enforcer there. It's going to be interesting to see where the Colts are doing, what the Colts are doing on defense as the season progresses. Now, I'd love to get some more

of your questions on the show. If you want your question read on the show, get me on Twitter, Facebook, email, any of the three. We say it every time. If you guys want some questions answered, ask them. I'd love to answer them for you, and we'll have a better back and forth while you guys are listening to the show. You guys may hear your questions on the air. And it's more fun for me as well. Also, I want to make sure that you guys are ready for this interview later on in the week. It's going to be fantastic. I'm going to tell you about it tomorrow.

It's going to be a really, really good interview. There should be a ton of information out there. Hopefully, it's all interesting. I can imagine that a lot of it is stuff that we don't know as Colts fans or that we hadn't maybe heard or whatever, but it's a fantastic interview from a fantastic person. And it's just great access for all of our ears and a great opportunity for me to try to pull as much out of this as I possibly can. So make sure you guys are rearing for that. I think we're going to, we're going to have that

set for possibly Thursday or Friday. Uh, I'm not real sure when we're, when I'm going to release that yet, but it's going to be great. I may push that into, uh, two different episodes just to give you maybe guys just to maybe give you guys an extra episode this week. We'll see on that. I haven't really made the decision on that yet, but it's going to be great. And I can't, I can't wait. I'm excited for it. So we should feel lucky. The Colts came away with only one injury for the most part with rights and a back injury. Hague filled in real nice. I told you guys before the game that I thought Haig might get the start. If not, expect him to get a lot of snaps at right guard.

He did. Not only that, but he moved out to right tackle. After Wrights got hurt, Harrison filled in at guard. And Haig did a fantastic job as a rookie in his first real action. It was great. I was really excited about that. I think our offensive line, like you guys heard us talking about last night, we are pretty hype on that offensive line. Yes, there's some negative categories that the Colts are at currently, but the Colts have a real foundation along that

offensive line that they are going to build for the future. This is perfect timing because we're seeing luck. Luck's healthy now. Grickson has had a couple of solid drafts bringing in these guys. This last draft was fantastic, I think. I think Austin Blythe is a really good lineman, though he's not known really right now. He was a center in Iowa, but he's going to do a lot of work in the guard. He's the second or third on the depth chart, I think third behind Harrison at center.

But, guys, we've got a lot of depth on the line right now, whether you can see it necessarily at this moment or not, and that's a really good thing. Things are starting to shape up. Let's hope for another strong week of practice for the Colts, and you can expect a fantastic week of shows this week. So tell your friends, get them on the line, tell them about Locked On Colts.

Make sure you guys are coming back. Retweet the show. Email me. Drop me a line. Let me about Locked On Colts. Make sure you guys are coming back. Retweet the show. Email me. Drop me a line. Let me know what you guys are thinking. You guys have been fantastic so far. The numbers continue to rise. There's more correspondence every day, and I love it.

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