Quick thoughts on Jaguars-Colts

[DrSpaceman]

part of the second half was, again, drops and mistakes.

Two key drops were killers, one for an INT when they are about to score and go up two scores, I believe, and another that just prevented a realistic chance for a first down deep in own territory. ANd they were EASY catches to make.

But yes, offense and play calling I just didn't get. You aren't making a 3rd and one up the middle against this D. Would have been a good spot for a sweep, or play action and roll out luck.

On the other hand, once again, no sacks, very little pressure on Luck.

The bad part was, again, no sacks, very little pressure on Bortles. They did get in there for a couple of key blocked passes and arm grabs on key downs.

really though I think this is the team we all expected at the beginning of the year. Around .500. Good or great offense but bad defense with no pass rush and a bad secondary.

Also.....come on Hooker, you have to make that tackle on Moncrief.

And Walker......you have to make that play on the fake punt.

[VeveJones007]

On #6, who was the premier pass rusher on the dominant Lovie Smith Bears defenses pre-Julius Peppers. I’ll hang up and listen for your answer.

[Colt Classic]

Originally Posted by JAFF

Looking at this last draft, it wasn't throwing darts

There's a bullseye on a dart board, but it's not easy to hit it consistently.

[JMichael557]

Isn't the lack of pass rush being affected by the fact that the other teams receivers are running down the field wide open. No need for the QB to hold the ball.

[Oldcolt]

This team, while not ready to win at the level we want, is learning how to win football games. We are definitely moving in the right direction

[IndyNorm]

Couldn't agree more. Glad we won, but we definitely didn't deserve it. If the Jagoffs had anyone better at QB then we lose (even though we still make Bortles look like a pro bowler). Great performance by the O in the first half, bad performance by the D in the first half, god awful performance by both the D and O in the 2nd half, and ST was horrible all game long (we would have been better off kicking the ball out of bounds on every kickoff).

I agree on the play calling. Aggressive and great in the first half, but too cute (end around to Rogers) and conservative in the 2nd half. Felt like at times I was watching Clappy and Chud at the helm, especially on the 3 and out where we ran up the middle 3 times. I hope Reich learned this.......

Also, seems like we went away from Ebron in the 2nd half (maybe Jax decided to take him away).

[nate505]

The only nice thing I'll say is that these were the games the Colts would blow last year, and they didn't for at least this game. It's refreshing to see...but man that 2nd half was beyond brutal.

[Chaka]

Thanks GBB. Your thoughts and impressions are always insightful and interesting to read. After going through this thread, I feel like the comments this week are overly focused on the negative aspects of yesterday’s game, perhaps understandably because of the stressful second half. I’m not disagreeing with the majority of your comments really, but I did think there were some notable positives that really haven’t been discussed, and I’d be interested in any responses to let me know if I’m misreading the situation:

1) The offensive line continues to dominate our opponents. No sacks again this week, and it didn’t really even seem like Luck faced a lot of pressure. Maybe our rushing stats weren’t as great this week, but it seemed like JAX was determined not to let our RBs beat them and perhaps that helped open up the passing game in the first half.

2) Ebron and the other TEs. With the notable exception of Alie-Cox’s miscue in the second half, the TEs performed exceptionally well yet again this week.

3) Our passing game thoroughly dominated the JAX defense in the first half. Remember, JAX’s defense, even after yesterday, allows on average only 200.6 yards per game.

4) The vaunted return of Leonard Fournette was a dud. He averaged 2.2 YPC on 24 carries against our defense, certainly not what JAX was hoping for. Backup Carlos Hyde did even worse – 1.7 YPC on 5 carries.

5) Though we had no sacks, we recorded nine tackles for a loss (versus only 3 by JAX). I couldn’t quickly find a team stat to see how this stacked up to other teams, but it seems like we beat our opponents in this category nearly every week. Ultimately, however, we just had a hard time making these count yesterday because we’d let JAX convert on 3rd down.

I’ll add one general comment on the negative side – it seems like the Colts’ tackling has really regressed over the last several games. There were several critical missed tackles this game which allowed JAX to continue drives that otherwise would have stalled much earlier – most notably the Moncrief miss and the fake field goal, but those certainly weren’t the only ones. I think if our tackling was surer (as it was earlier this season), the game wouldn’t have been nearly as close.