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'Rookie mistake,' 'mishit' punts cost Colts in loss to Jaguars

INDIANAPOLIS — The play that sparked the Jaguars offense back to life Sunday shouldn’t have happened.

A bounding punt inside the 10-yard line, a Colts gunner running free down the middle.

Jacksonville return man Jamal Agnew had already called off the rest of the return team. There was little reason to think a return was a possibility.

“It should be a nothing play,” Colts special teams coordinator Brian Mason said. “We allowed a big return that changed the makeup of the game.”

Agnew fielded the punt on a bounce, blew past two Colts defenders and raced up the sideline for 48 yards, setting up the Jaguars at the Indianapolis 46-yard line in a game Jacksonville trailed 21-17.


Ten plays later, Tank Bigsby plowed in for the go-ahead touchdown.

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It was all set up by Agnew’s play, a play that looked gutsy in the moment, although in reality it was a veteran return man taking advantage of a younger player’s inexperience.


Indianapolis lost its All Pro-caliber gunner, Ashton Dulin, to a torn ACL halfway through training camp. For years, Dulin has been punter Rigoberto Sanchez’s right-hand man, running down Sanchez’s directional punts, forcing opposing return men to either wave their arms for a fair catch or risk getting crushed by the big, powerful receiver.

With Dulin out for the season, the Colts are breaking in a new player at the spot opposite Tony Brown.


“The first teaching point, it was a rookie mistake by Jaylon Jones, something that will certainly get corrected,” Mason said. “He needed to find the ball in that situation and be able to down the ball. He got kind of turned around and did not look up to find the ball, knowing the situation.”

When Jones couldn’t find the bouncing ball, he turned his back to Agnew, an ill-fated move he made just as the ball hit the ground.


“Once that happens, he’s got to be right there to front up the returner, make sure he gets that ball down, and we’ve got a win at gunner,” Mason said.

Agnew saw Jones’ back, saw the ball and changed his plans to play it safe.

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The veteran caught the ball on a bounce and sprinted to his right, immediately taking advantage of a Colts coverage unit that was ill-prepared for Agnew’s decision.

“There’s a number of issues we had in coverage,” Mason said. “We had a handful of guys that kind of froze up when the ball hit the ground and didn’t continue to keep covering the field, and we had two guys that had poor leverage to the left, and did not cover the field correctly like we should. We’ve got to be more disciplined in our coverage lanes.”

Agnew outran Segun Olubi, Grant Stuard and Mo Alie-Cox to the sideline, slid past a blocked E.J. Speed and Sanchez, only to get caught from behind by Colts safety Nick Cross.

But the damage had been done, and it wasn’t the only time Sunday that the punt unit failed to live up to Mason’s standards.

Sanchez punted five times for an average of 41.6 yards — none of his offerings traveled farther than 46 yards — and Agnew returned two punts for 58 yards, pulling the punter’s net average down to just 30 yards per return.

In Sanchez’s first game back after missing the entire 2022 season due to a torn Achilles suffered in training camp, the veteran Colts punter had at least one vintage punt, burying oa yard off the sideline before it bounced out of bounds, but it wasn’t his best day.

“Certainly, in the big picture, we need to punt the ball better,” Mason said. “We did not punt up to the standard we’re capable of, and we need to be more disciplined in our coverage.”

Sanchez’s injury didn’t play a role in Sunday’s struggles.

Fully healthy after a year away, Sanchez averaged 48.4 yards on nine punts in the preseason, and opposing return men averaged just 2.9 yards per return in seven chances.

“From an injury standpoint, there’s no concern,” Mason said. “Rigo’s punted really well throughout training camp. We’ve just got to be more consistent. There’s not any one thing that happened; we just mishit probably two punts, and we’re capable of being more consistent than that.”

Consistency is critical on special teams.

As Agnew proved, one bad snap can have big consequences.

The law of accumulation: a lot of little things add up

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