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Insider: With a young secondary, Colts defensive line knows it has to take over games

INDIANAPOLIS — The Colts defensive line spent a little too much time last week trying to figure out exactly who they’d be playing against in Houston.

Texans left tackle Laremy Tunsil, the team’s best player, was on the injury report, and the Colts were trying to figure out how Houston might approach the game if Tunsil wasn’t available; and if he was, how Indianapolis might have to rush quarterback C.J. Stroud.

None of that is out of the ordinary. A defensive lineman watches a lot of opponent film each week, looking for weaknesses and tells the pass rusher can use on Sunday.

But the preparation got a little out of hand last week.


“You know what?” Defensive tackle DeForest Buckner remembers saying in the defensive line room. “It doesn’t matter who’s out there. We’ve just got to go out there and do our job. It’s about us.”

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Tunsil ultimately couldn’t play, swinging the advantage decidedly in the Colts' favor.




That's a matchup Indianapolis should win handily, at least on paper, although matchups that seem one-sided on paper have a way of producing upsets every week.

Not this time. Indianapolis sacked Stroud six times, obliterated the Texans running game — Houston averaged an ugly 2.0 yards per carry — and made most of the defense’s game-changing plays.


Colts dominant defensive plays

Dayo Odeyingbo punched the ball out of Stroud’s hands as the rookie quarterback went down in Samson Ebukam’s arms on Houston’s first series, and Kwity Paye fell on it, setting up another Anthony Richardson touchdown and an early 14-0 lead. Taven Bryan corralled an escaping Stroud near midfield at the start of the third quarter to kill a promising Houston drive. Paye leveled Stroud on third-and-goal from the Indianapolis 12 to start the fourth, limiting the Texans to a field goal. A Jake Martin revenge sack on his former team disrupted another promising Houston drive, leading to a missed 51-yard field goal. Buckner ran down Stroud to end the game.


Indianapolis has eight sacks through the first two games of the season, tied with Carolina and Tampa Bay for the fifth-most.

The Colts are going to need the defensive line to keep up the pressure.


A young Indianapolis secondary, particularly the cornerbacks, has been overmatched at times in the first two weeks, putting pressure on the defensive line to collapse the pocket on every snap.

The D-line has known this was coming. When they looked at the roster this summer, they could see how young the secondary has gotten — veteran defensive backs Stephon Gilmore, Rodney McLeod and Brandon Facyson are all gone, replaced by inexperienced players.

“We have to be the ones to take over games and dictate how games go,” Paye said.

The big guys up front welcomed the responsibility.

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Buckner and his guard-butchering running mate, Grover Stewart, have set the tone for the Indianapolis defense the past couple of seasons, and through two games, nothing has changed.

The Colts might have the best defensive tackle tandem in the NFL.

“Normally, you don’t say that the first guy we need in our defense is nose,” defensive coordinator Gus Bradley said. “The way (Stewart) has played the last couple weeks, I don’t know what it would be like without him. … Those two interior guys, Buck and Grove, are playing at a high level right now. When that occurs, it gives you more flexibility on the back end.”

Flexibility the secondary desperately needs.

The Colts produced 44 sacks last season, the third-most of any Colts defense since the franchise moved to Indianapolis in 1984, and brought back every principle pass rusher except veteran Yannick Ngakoue, who was replaced by Ebukam in free agency.


Familiarity helps.

“Last year, we were kind of rushing together, but we were kind of looking to work off each other,” Paye said. “This year, we’re just rushing, and we’re naturally rushing off each other. That’s kind of what the front is meant to be.”

The Colts defensive line has also made life easier by forcing teams to rely almost exclusively on their passing attacks. Buckner and Stewart have always been formidable in the middle, and the continued development of Paye, plus the addition of Ebukam, has given Indianapolis four plus players against the run up front, backed up by a trio of talented linebackers: Zaire Franklin, Shaquille Leonard and E.J. Speed.

The results have been dominant so far. Outside of a late run by Jacksonville’s Travis Etienne against a gassed Indianapolis defense in the opener, opposing rushing attacks have done little. Indianapolis is holding opponents to 2.57 yards per carry, the best mark in the NFL.

All of that power starts up front.

“We feel like we’re the engine of the defense,” Odeyingbo said.

The task will get more difficult the next two weeks.

What awaits the Colts defense

First, Indianapolis must face arguably the league’s most dynamic runner at the quarterback position, Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson. Then it’s Rams star Matthew Stafford, who has been sacked just once in the first two games.

The Colts know it won’t be easy.

But the lesson of the first two weeks is something that showed up on the final play Sunday: The best player on the Indianapolis defense still hustled even though the Texans no longer had a chance to win.

Buckner broke through the line, ran down Stroud from behind and enveloped the rookie in his massive arms, producing a sack through sheer effort.



“I’d been rushing my tail off all day, getting the slide protection to me all day,” Buckner said. “If you play through the whistle, if you’re relentless, you’re going to be rewarded for it.”

The way the Colts defense has been constructed this season, the defensive line is going to have to be relentless all season long.

They have to be the engine.