When I started writing for Stampede Blue, I thought these film breakdowns would be a great opportunity to breakdown film in great detail. Both the positive and the negative plays. I never thought I’d be sitting here 7 weeks into the season feeling like I have to completely nitpick to find unsuccessful plays. Sure, this offense isn’t perfect (spoiler alert: there is no such thing as a perfect offense), but it’s pretty close at the moment.
What makes the Colts so hard to defend is that defensive coordinators are losing sleep trying to figure out where the ball is going. If you’re going to gameplan for the Vikings, you might want to circle 18. If you’re going to gameplan for the Bengals, you definitely want to have a plan for 1.
When you play the Colts you have no idea who to circle, so you have to circle all of them.
Jonathan Taylor is obviously where you would want to start. He’s playing like the best running back in football and the engine of the offense. But as soon as you commit to stopping 28, well the Colts are so good on play action that you end up creating too much space in the pass game.
On obvious passing situations, you have no idea where the ball might go. You can’t make the Colts play left-handed by doubling their top target, because they’re so well-rounded they’ll make you pay for that.
Any given player can make a play and that’s just as dangerous (if not more) than an individual player you can’t stop.
If there’s any unsung heros on this offense, it’s the offensive line. They absolutely move people off the ball. Watch the C and RG on this play. This is what I call a “Wide Single” on inside zone. A wide single is a front side combination block where the center and playside guard work up to the Mike backer, except it’s “wide” because the center is completely uncovered.
This is teach tape.
Obviously Quenton Nelson makes a ridiculous backside cutoff block on this play, but this is the stuff that is just expected from a gold jacket player.
This play to Alec Pierce is incredible. The Colts are running a concept they call “Dippin”. It is a Deep In (or Deep Curl) paired with a Pylon route.
The goal of this concept is to put that deep third player in a bind. As soon as he bites down on the deep curl, the pylon route is running away from the middle of the field safety. I love it so much.
Daniel Jones makes an incredible throw here. So much for Danny dumpoff!
This is a really good concept in the low red zone. Penn State called this a bunch with Tyler Warren. Daniel Jones is going to read the end man on the line of scrimmage. If that defensive end plays stays wide to the play the sweep than Daniel Jones will toss it Tyler Warren on the shovel pass. If that defensive end, steps to play the shovel pass, than Daniel Jones will give it to JT on the sweep.
It’s just really hard to defend the horizontal space on a sweep when you have the threat of Tyler Warren on a power shovel.
The Colts don’t find themselves behind the sticks very often. They are really good on first and second downs. But I wanted to pick this play out to show what happens when they do get a rare mistake. This is a third down play that should easily be a punt. Instead it’s a 4th and short that they would later convert.
The Colts used a lot of these insert action passes off of some of their runs last Sunday. It’s very hard to defend as a defense, because that safety has to come downhill to fit the run when a WR creates an extra gap by inserting himself into the core of the formation.
It’s a really cool idea that Sean McVay has done with Puka and Ben Johnson has done with St. Brown.
One of the Colts best run concepts is Duo. Duo is a downhill run scheme designed to have as many double teams as possible. The running backs job is to read the response of the Mike linebacker. He can bang it, bend it, or bounce it. When that Mike LB steps up into the hole JT knows he’s supposed to bounce it to the outside.
Just watch his start/stop ability. That unblocked corner has no chance.
The Colts have also found ways to build on their naked keeper game. I was initially worried after their last trip to So-Fi when the Rams were all over some of the slide routes to Tyler Warren. This time they get Warren releasing into the pattern instead of out of the backfield on a slide route. They pair it with a counter action which really gets the LBs coming down hill and lets Warren sell the down block. Really cool.
We are seven weeks into this season and the Colts are putting up historic numbers on offense. If you follow @ColtsFilmRoom on Twitter, you’d know how much of a Steichen believer I am. I’ve enjoyed studying his offenses and even started a Twitter account just to post clips from it. But even I would by lying if I thought this was possible.
I thought Daniel Jones put himself in a good position to win the job after his preseason performance vs. Baltimore. But when he was named the starter, I was skeptical of it all. I thought they’d be good, but more “buy yourself another year to figure it out” kind of good, not “this is the best offense in football” good.
Eventually they will have a stinker, that’s just sort of how it goes. But I don’t see them slumping for very long.
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