Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS - 9/8 - Top Offensive Player Projections, and Interview with George Bremer

Episode Date: September 8, 2016

How significantly will Andrew Luck bounce back? Will the Colts' have two thousand-yard receivers? Colts beat reporter for the Herald-Bulletin George Bremer (@gmbremer) stops by to talk with Matt about various situations heading into Week 1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Part of the Locked On Colts, your daily Indianapolis Colts podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network. We are back, ladies and gentlemen of Colts Nation. Welcome into Locked On Colts on Audioboom.com. As always, I'm your host, Matt Dainley, each and every weekday. Remember to send me any of your questions if you want them read on the show. And be sure to use hashtag LockedOnColts on Twitter. And send me an email, LockedOn on Colts pod at gmail.com or hit me up on the show's Facebook page. However you want to do it.

Let's get them in. Also, if you could go to iTunes and rate and review the show or check us out on any of the available platforms, wherever you get your podcasts. I told you that I was going to get some of the questions that you guys were asking me on the air, and that's what we're going to do. We had a nice bit of questions come in, and I'm going to answer one of them straight up to begin the show, and the rest of them will be answered within the context of the show, and I'll explain that just in a little bit. We're also going to have George Bremmer from the Colts Beat Reporter from the Herald Bulletin. You can catch him at GM Bremer on Twitter. So first of all, let's get to this very first question. We'll get this out of the way because

we've got a packed show. The first one comes from Curtis on Facebook, says, first off, I'm a Purdue fan. I was stoked to see Frankie Williams make it to the 53-man roster, only to be dropped earlier this week to make room for another corner. Wanted to know your thoughts on his chance of making it on the team. Will he make the practice squad? What did you see from him before his departure? Since Frankie Williams has made the practice squad, so let's get that out of the way real quick. Frankie Williams is a bit of a mixed bag. He was getting beat on deep balls. He's the epitome of a depth corner who was meant to play special teams at this moment. He did his job for the most part. He did pretty well, but he was very susceptible to getting beat deep. Anything underneath him, though, he reacted well to it. He has pretty good

ball skills and such like that. But for the moment, he's pretty much right where he needs to be. He's a practice squad player, and there's probably not much that's going to change that. I wouldn't count on him moving up to the 53 this year again with Vontae Davis eventually coming back healthy, hopefully, pending any more cornerbacks or anything else being injured. And the next question is from Jameson, and it pretty much asks, what kind of a season do you expect from Frank Gore this year? Is he going to go over a thousand yards? Is he going to have double-digit touchdowns? And is he durable enough to last the entire season? Well, I had a couple other questions, one specifically about Moncrief and another one

about Luck. So what I'm going to do with the rest of the show before we get to George is I'm going to get through some of these guys, Gore, Moncrief, Hilton. I'm going to go through Dwayne Allen and Andrew Luck. I'm going to give you kind of what I expect to see from these guys this year and what my expectations are stat-wise and so on and so forth. So let's get right into it. We'll go with Frank Gore first for Jameson. A little tidbit here is he needs only 35 yards to pass Thurman Thomas

to take over 14th on the NFL career rushing list and could conceivably pass Franco Harris to take 13th all time if he were to gain another 81 yards. Colts haven't had real great rushing numbers since, so if he gets that in the first week, that would be a pretty good week for Frank Gore considering the way the line looks at the moment I think Gore has a very similar season to that of 2015 and possibly slightly better he just seems to be really grasping his role he's a three down back all the way through he can catch out of the backfield he's good between the tackles and he's

still got enough hop in his step to get outside if he needs to I think he gets to I do think he gets to a thousand yards and probably somewhere between four and seven touchdowns. I think 10 is quite a bit high. So I think anywhere between four and seven touchdowns, he's probably going to share some of those short yardage carries inside the five and 10 yard line with Turbin. So I don't see him racking up an inordinate amount of scores this year. We'll go on to Dante Moncrief. He doubled his targets from 2014 to 15. In 2014, he had 49. In 2015, he had 105. And he also did that with receptions from 32 to 64 and touchdowns three to six.

He also went to 733 yards last season. I think we can expect an uptick in his production, but not to the degree in which he's going to double like many statistical areas from last season. I think we can expect an uptick in his production, but not to the degree in which he's going to double like many statistical areas from last season. That would be for not like an all-time year. He'll get around 120, 125 targets, I think, though. I think they'll give him a little bit more of a share of the looks out of that offense. He's expected to be one of the biggest playmakers in that offense, and I think that they'll treat him as such. He could quite possibly break 1,000 yards and may get into double-digit category in scores. I believe he had six last year, so I think that he'll probably take a stab

at eight touchdowns this year, but don't be surprised if he does actually get to that 10 touchdown mark. Hilton has broken the 1,000-yard receiving yard mark in his last three seasons. That's pretty special. And he surpassed 130 targets in those three years as well. Now, I have a feeling that his targets may drop a bit when you consider the fact that Moncrief is coming up, and they also have Dorsett in the lineup. They may take a little bit of looks away from him, but he's still a favorite target of luck I'm going to say that he gets about 120 targets as well I think him and Moncrief are going to be pretty split right down the middle but I'll give him an uptick in receptions to 90 this year I

think he'll be a little more efficient and I think he'll eclipse his career best of 62.6 cash percentage and will match his career high of seven receiving touchdowns. I don't really see him going above that. I don't see him getting less opportunities for those either. So I think he'll get right at seven this year again. Dwayne Allen, he's such a hard prediction to make because he's had more peaks and valleys in his production, even when he's been healthy. When you exclude a sophomore season, he's seen a decrease in targets steadily where he got 66 in 16 games in his rookie season, but he's only gotten 79 over the last 25 games in the last two seasons that he's played. With his importance still uncertain in the passing game, despite the Colts basically

choosing him over Fleener, I'll put him at about 450 yards or so, three touchdowns, and I'll low ball him a bit at 45 targets for the season. I'm not real sure what to expect from Dwayne Allen. Not real sure what his role is going to be. So I'll be conservative in that regard. But I think that's a nice season for him, especially if everybody else is pretty much where I've got him labeled at right now. Now we get to Luck. Luck is where it gets interesting. I've been hard on him despite his being a phenomenal talent and responsible party for the meat of the Colts' success since his arrival. We could possibly see a career high for Luck in attempts, I think, this season.

It's quite possible that he takes over the 627 that he had in his rookie season. Chudzinski's offense does allow him to have multiple options at each level of the field, and Schottenheimer has been tirelessly working alongside him to get his involuntary process at its best to where he doesn't have to think about it. He's just reading and reacting and to where that's a little more refined. He's looked about as focused as ever thus far in camp and preseason and I'm expecting big things if he doesn't revert to any bad habits. With Luck and his aggressiveness, it's something that is going to come with his skill set, and with it are going to come some interceptions. He'll throw 14 or 15, I think,

but if he were to do it on 650 attempts, which I think is extremely possible for him, it would be the second best interception percentage of his career at 1.6 in 2013, where he only had nine interceptions. On the other hand, all this work is to get his completion percentages and his efficiency up, and that'll carry over to his scoring as well. Luck will have his typical handful of touchdowns on the ground, and I've got him down for 35 through the air, which should put him amongst top five date passers in the league. So can Luck improve significantly in completion percentage? I don't know about how significant it'll be, but I've got him putting up 63% completion rate, which is also a career high for him.

But it is about where he should be if he's going to get legitimate elite conversation type stuff. He's got the elite talent. There's no debating that. But to put it all together would be what it takes to jump to the next level of stature in the league. I got Luck at 63% completion percentage on 650 attempts, 35 touchdowns, 15 picks,

and we'll finish off with around 4,800 yards. I think that's fair. So as I mentioned before, we have George Bremmer coming up here real shortly. If you're looking to get stories and insight on the entire NFL all in one show, be sure to check out Locked On NFL Podcast with Matt Williamson.

And for all of 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 Pod. Also, if your target audience is men in the age of 18 to 50 years old and want to advertise on this show, this is where you want to do it. Email me at the show at lockedoncoltspod at gmail.com and we'll get the ball rolling. George Bremer is coming up next. And as promised, we are here with George Bremer, the Colts beat reporter from the Harold Boylton and CNHI Sports Indiana.

George, how are you doing today? Thanks for your time. Great. Thanks a lot for having me. I appreciate you being on. Kind of a fluid situation down there at Colts practice today. How's everything looking? Incomplete, I think is probably one of the big things.

So many guys right now in various stages of recovery, guys who the team hasn't seen at all who are going to play some pretty big roles on Sunday. I mean, we just got done talking with Antonio Cromartie. He says he's ready to go. Ted Monachino is very high on what he can bring to this team, but obviously, never taking a snap here in Indianapolis. He's going to start on Sunday. Probably Patrick Robinson

is going to be opposite of him. He's had full practice so far this week. He seems ready to go. And then after that, your next two quarterbacks are probably two guys who signed this week. Darryl Morris and I'm going to come up with the second guy in a minute. That's how quick it is. That's Rashaun Melvin.

That's how much change there's been. We kind of joke with Cromartie about it. He says he knows everybody's name, but you know, there's been a lot of faces in and out and changing offensive line is a very similar thing. You know, gun to my head right now, I would say it's probably going to be Costanzo at left tackle, John Harrison at left guard, Kelly at center, Denzel Good at right guard, and Joe Wright at right tackle. But you've got Joe Hay, who's coming along. He didn't practice yesterday after having practiced on Monday a little bit. Jack Mewhart

was kind of a surprise to see out there on the field yesterday. I don't think necessarily he's going to be ready to go this Sunday, but maybe in Denver, which would be a remarkably quick comeback for him. But there's a lot of that going on, and I think those are two of the key positions, offensive line and cornerback. Yeah, and speaking of the cornerback, with all the injuries to the secondary seemingly just never ending already, even before the season kicks off, Cromartie was brought in to add some much-needed experience and playmaking ability to the Colts' pass coverage. Now, like you said, Monchino's high on him,

and he stated that unequivocally he feels that he's ready to go. What have you seen from him in practices, and does he appear to be fitting in scheme-wise as well as overall ability just in general? That's what makes it even tougher because practice right now is only open for about the first 20 minutes, so we see maybe the very beginning of individual drills. So we really haven't gotten a chance yet to see where he's at. I know as far as the scheme goes, he is prototypically what they want.

He's got that size. He's got the length. He's an aggressive guy. He's played in this system before when he was with the Jets. He played for Chuck Pagano's brother John out in San Diego. So from that side of things, he's well-equipped. I think the big question is where's his conditioning at and how ready is he to go after no training camp really and no reps in the preseason.

And I think Colts fans everywhere are pretty excited to hear that Wrights could possibly be starting at Wright Tackle. But Muhort in general, after going from virtually assuming that his season was over to a two-to-four-week window there for recovery, have you ever seen anything like that before or ever heard anything like that? That was one of the the biggest head spinning situations that i've been involved with i mean that night you're hearing all kinds of things coming out especially nationally about you know possibly an acl tear possibly done for the year everybody's

kind of girding for the worst and then you know 12 hours later it's well not as bad as they feared and then you start here in two to four weeks and you're still kind of thinking well you know you go back to last year and and andrew luck i think he was two to six and he ended up being out the rest of the year and you're just thinking where is the situation really at but i'll tell you again we don't see a lot of it uh jack was participating yesterday in any individual drills i know that that he was limited total so i'm sure what they got the teamwork he didn't do as much. But he was out there. Some of these other guys, Henry Anderson and Clayton Gathers, they've been out there,

but they've been mostly observing even during that part of practice. Jack was out there, and he was working. He was walking around the locker room, and he looks good in that regard. So it's really remarkable to see where he's at right now with where he could potentially have been. Wow, that is too, because that's almost equivalent to the real world version of you're getting your leg amputated. Nope, you just have an ouchie. Yeah, sorry, just need a bandaid. Yeah, right.

That is one of the strangest things I've gone or that I've heard in a 12-hour span, how you go from one far extreme to virtually the other and even then when you hear a knee injury just in general from a lineman and in the the span of recovery is a two to four week window that seems almost presumptuous to me too so it sounds great that's great to hear that he's moving around he's mobile and that he's actually participating as opposed to just being out there stretching and so on. But the linebacker position, opposite to Quell Jackson, is pretty fluid to say the least as well, especially with C.O. Moore nursing a hamstring.

Are there any indications to you to who has the upper hand in the battle to earn the start on Sunday? You know, Ted Marchina said today it's going to be all hands on deck, and I really think you're going to see it be a situational kind of situation. It's going to depend on the matchups. It's going to depend on the game situation at the time. I think you're going to see a lot of Josh McNary, especially in the sub packages because amongst that group, he's probably the best guy in coverage.

And then you're going to see Edwin Jackson and Antonio Morrison in there as the situation dictates. So I think you'll see all three, and I think you'll see quite a bit of all three. That's good to hear, at least that they know that they have a plan. Yeah. And right now, I would not expect to see more. I mean, he was back at practice yesterday on a limited basis as well, and maybe he makes some progress today and tomorrow,

and I feel like he's ready to go. But you're talking about a guy who, for the most part, has been out for about a month. It would be kind of tough, I think, to just throw him right back into the swing of things and put him back in the middle of that defense that quickly. But we'll see. So I assume that that kind of falls in line with Monachino talking about that he'll tailor the game plan to the available guy's strength.

Has he mentioned anything else about what he feels would lead on to what the keys to stopping the Detroit offense will be outside of the office, or excuse me, the obvious with Stafford or Tate and some of those guys? Yeah, I think one guy's name who came up a lot today was Theo Riddick. He caught 80 balls out of the backfield last year, and it's just another thing to keep in mind. It's another way to stress the defense, and I think that's what they're looking at on the whole is just the number of weapons, the number of different ways that the Lions can attack you and it's an offense that really people around here are going to be used to.

It's Jim Caldwell, it's that Peyton Manning system that was here for so long. It's very similar to that. It's just a lot of different ways that they're going to try to attack a defense and attack it where it least wants to be attacked. The Colts are just trying, I think, to get healthy, first and foremost, and to make sure that those healthy guys know their assignments and in details are going to be extremely important because this is one of those games where if you're just off by an inch, it could mean a touchdown. Right.

Again, we're here with George Bremer. You can catch him on Twitter at GMBremer. He's Colts Beat Reporter for the Herald Bulletin. George, there doesn't seem to be, doesn't appear to be much doubt that Andrew Luck will be starting Sunday, but Will Carroll described his shoulder situation as labrum fraying. Now, I know you're not a doctor or anything like that, but are you seeing anything with his throwing motion

or any noticeable aggravation that appears to be anything more than just plain old soreness? No, I mean, everything that we've seen, and again, we only see little bits and pieces, but everything that we've seen is normal. He doesn't look to be favoring anything. It's not like last year when even in the individual period he wasn't throwing at all uh you know he was just observing he was out there doing his normal reps during the period that we saw yesterday uh from what i understand he's on a bit of a pitch count

it's something that that it looks like you know according to will is more of a long-term is only a long-term issue uh some of them need some maintenance, keep an eye on it, and make sure it doesn't get worse. All right. Well, that's good to hear. I don't think that too many of us worried too much about it. It was kind of the first that anybody had heard anything about any problems with Luck's throwing or his shoulder or anything like that. So that's good to hear.

It's pretty minor and possibly just nothing at all. As a key mayor, you've been seeing many snaps in practice since he was brought in? And is there a general assumption as to how much he'll contribute in an opening week? Yeah, I think he's going to be a real wild card. He's healthy. So that gives him a big advantage over a lot of guys on that defense right now. But obviously, he hasn't been here. He hasn't been in the system. He's been mostly a 4-3 guy for his career. But he said yesterday that he felt like he was a 3-4 guy in his heart. But since he came out of the draft, that's where he thought his best fit would be. So that's why he chose to be here.

I think it's interesting that a lot of reports said Los Angeles wanted him back at a lower price. When they cut him, they were hoping they'd be able to kind of swing a deal like Baltimore did with Jess and Forsett. And Ayers chose to come here in part because he wants to play in this scheme and he wants to play in this system. Now, he's not being very open about what his role is. He kind of joked yesterday he's only been here for a couple hours,

so he doesn't know yet. And I'm not sure the team knows. I think that's part of what Monachino was talking about. They're going to look. They're going to see who they have available, and they're going to try and determine where those guys fit in best and try to get them into a role that will help both them and the defense. For Ayers, on paper, he looks like more of an edge-setter guy.

They haven't had a whole lot of luck with that early in the preseason. You've seen a lot of runs bump into the outside. So if he can get out there and help in that regard, it's something the team needs. I mentioned yesterday on the show that his situation kind of reminds me of Jerry Hughes in reverse from when he was in Indianapolis to where he went to Buffalo and kind of fell into a scheme that best fit his skill set, and now we see Akeem Ayers is kind of opposite of that.

He's coming from another situation, and he's coming into the Colts scheme that benefits him better. And that's interesting. It's going to be interesting to watch and see if he can have somewhat of a revitalization to his career here in Indy. There's no doubt. And he was, I believe, the 39th overall pick in his draft. So you're talking about a guy who's got some raw ability. He's got some talent,

athleticism. Right now, I think this defense, obviously, any playmaker they can find and get into a role they can use, the more the better. George, I really appreciate your time today. Thank you for joining us here on Locked on Colts. Hope to talk to you soon, man. Have a great day. No problem. Thanks a lot, Matt. Anytime. As always, that's great stuff from George. Make sure you're following us on

Twitter at Locked on Colts, and make sure you're following George there at GMBremmer. Also, follow me at mdanley underscore NFL. Be looking out for our last show of the week. We're going to have on Matt Derry from Locked on Lions. We're going to go through some stuff with him as we all get pumped up and ready for this week one battle between the Colts and the Lions. As always, make sure you rate and review

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