International games can be the best or the worst—depending on the outcome of the game. If you win, there’s nothing like that flight back home. If you lose? It is MISERABLE. Luckily, the Colts under Shane Steichen have not had to experience that.
I’ve said it before, but the NFL is a week to week league. It doesn’t matter what the media thinks, Vegas thinks, or your co-worker at the watercooler. Records do not matter. Unless you have a crystal ball, nobody has any clue what will happen in a game. You may be more talented than the player across from you, but if you do not show up every Sunday, you will get beat.
The Colts learned this last week vs. Pittsburgh, and clearly came in motivated to head into the bye with a win.
Shane Steichen isn’t as RPO heavy as he’s been in the past, but man I love this RPO. First let’s break down what’s happening here. An RPO is Run-Pass Option where we’re reading a certain defender that will dictate whether we hand the ball off or we throw it.
RPO’s are challenging on a defense because it puts players in conflict. It’s impossible for one player to properly fit a gap and execute their pass responsibility at the same time. Offenses take advantage of this. Certain coverages are better vs. the RPOs than others, but this particular RPO the Colts are running is very tough to stop.
The Colts are pulling the center on a “Fold” block. What is a Fold block? A fold is an another way to execute a combination block, but with better angles in the run game.
On this play Bortolini and Goncalves are “comboing” up to that linebacker on a Wide Zone play. Well, from the shotgun, the angles are very tough on the OL. The center has to fully reach block that DT in a hurry and it can be very tough. So the Colts “fold” it by pinning down that DT and “pulling the Center” like it’s a gap scheme run. These are much better angles.
What the fold does here is also move the gap that the Mike LB has to cover. He is in a complete bind here, because he either has to move with the Center pull to play the run, or he has to give Tyler Warren tons of space in between the hashes. I love this RPO vs. teams that play Wide 9’s because they’re asking linebackers to fit interior gaps fast that you can manipulate.
If you have followed my account for a long time, you would know I love Tyler Warren.
He came up clutch in some big time moments in this game and deserves his flowers. He’s already gotten plenty of love because of his box scores, but this is the type of winning football that some doubted he had in him.
This is a funky 3×1 check from the defense designed to take away #3 to the flat. Billy Bowman is all over this route from Tyler Warren, but it doesn’t matter. He is not big or strong enough to make this type of tackle. He just slides right off of 84.
This play was even better. This is as gutsy as it gets in overtime. A seven step dropback pass is very aggressive. That’s a lot of time for the OL to protect without much help schematically to keep the DL from teeing off on the QB. Daniel Jones could just take the flare from Jonathan Taylor, but he makes a beautiful throw on this sail concept. Watch Tyler Warren track this ball knowing he’s going to take a hit on the boundary.
Just two special plays with the game on the line.
There’s been a LOT made of Daniel Jones turnovers the past two weeks. In my opinion, we are likely to see some positive regression in this area, especially with the bye week coming up.
Ball security needs to be a bigger priority for Daniel Jones—it’s been his kryptonite for years. There’s too many times where he doesn’t have two hands on the ball in the pocket. That’s why we’ve seen too many strip sacks and fumbles.
Some of the INT’s have been out of his control, in my opinion. Some have been unlucky, some have been poor play design and execution from the overall offense, and some are just pressing it. But the fumbles and strip sacks have to get cleaned up, because those are almost always preventable.
This is a screen pass and the Falcons are all over it. That happens. But what we can’t do is make a bad play worse. Offenses I’ve learned tell the QB to throw the ball at the feet of the RB. If it’s 4th down and you kick the FG, then it’s 4th down and you kick the FG. I think there’s better things to call than a 3rd&long screen, but nonetheless, you can’t turn it over on a screen like this.
It’s a bad mistake, but easily correctable.
Overall, I think the Colts are getting the bye week a the perfect time. They just made a trade for Sauce Gardner and they hopefully should get Mooney Ward back to finalize their elite secondary. Over the past two weeks, it felt like Pittsburgh and Atlanta both had some answers for some of the tendencies Indy has, so using this week to self-scout will be important.
The final stretch of the season will be very important for this team, obviously. Four division games, two NFC south playoff teams, and the Chiefs. It won’t be easy by any means, but the Colts should feel very confident.
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