Lets start with the elephant in the room. The three remaining teams on the schedule, are a combined 29 – 13. Two of those teams have beaten the Colts in the last three weeks and the third team is from the strongest division in the league and has every reason to treat the game as a must win. Another thing working against our guys is the injuries to Jones, Gardner, Ward, Smith, and Raimann, not to mention Buckner. We may get a couple of them back over the next three weeks, but this group makes up a healthy chuck of salary, so the team is missing much of the core that they were counting on.
Our QB is limited and I feel like I am being kind. Do you want to know why our OL looked serviceable against one of the top defenses last week? Seattle didn’t go after Rivers much at all. Rather than sending an extra guy that would leave an opening somewhere in the secondary, they correctly decided that since the ball was coming out quickly, just make him throw into tighter windows. Without the threat of the deep ball, they had seven guys to cover 15 – 20 yards. It is basically a red zone defense, no matter where you are on the field.
So, looking at the charts, if the Colts go 3 – 0, they have approximately a one in three chance to make the playoffs as the division winner, the 6th seed, or the 7th seed. It would mean that there was only a 2% chance that they were excluded from the tourney.
Starting with game one, lets dream that there is a raucous crowd for a Monday Night game and the defense forces four turnovers, with one of them producing immediate points. Rivers and Grupe stay clean and the Colts emerge victorious. In the mean time, The Jags lose to Denver and the Texans handle the Raiders, but maybe a physical game slows them down a little. Colts 9 -6, Jags 10 – 5, Texans 10-5.
During our game, we again see Rivers trying to loosen his shoulder on the sidelines. He tries to soldier through it, but a total quacker of a pass makes him realize that he simply cant threaten the D with his arm and he hands over the reigns to his mentee. Leonard looks calmer and Rivers is in his ear between each series to the point that the 6th rounder actually looks good. A couple of “dag-gummits, you can do this” later, Leonard looks more like a guy at the end of his first season, rather than the beginning. I have not made it a secret that I believe that Leonard gives us the better chance to win, because we can use more of the playbook. If Rivers can’t go and knows he cant go, he has to make the call.
Week 17 sees Jacksonville come to town with a 60% chance to win the South with a win vs. the Colts. Lucas Oil is not the same house of horrors as Duvall County. Sauce and Buck are as close to healthy as they are going to get at this late date. Another inspired crowd and defensive effort hands the Colts a lead and they do what they do when they have a lead, which is feed JT. Houston travels to play the Chargers, who are also playing for their playoff lives. The Chargers can ease some of the burden of the history of their late season collapses and Herbert is good enough to do to the Texans, what the big four (Mahomes, Jackson, Allen, and Burrow) regularly do to them in the playoffs. Colts 10 – 6, Jags 10 -6, Texans 10 – 6.
Week 18 would mean that there is not chance for a 3-way tie, unless the miracle event occurred where we tied the Texans and the Jags tied the Titans. For miracles sake, lets say that us beating the Texans is less of a miracle than us tying them, while the Jags also tie. I can’t consciously pick the Titans to beat anyone, especially on the road. A Colts win would mean that the Colts and Jacksonville tied for the division title with 11 – 6 records. I think it would go the 5th tie-breaker. This one is called the, “Strength of victory” tie-breaker. It is defined as the combined record of all of the teams that you have beaten. I do not believe this is a good one for the Colts.
I think we have to have something unexpected, like the Jags losing out, to have a chance to win the East. We’ve played better at home, so that would be a bummer, but the most encouraging thing about what would lie ahead is that there is every chance that Allen is the only A-list QB that you would have to go through. The Bills and Broncos are the co-favorites as far as the betting line concerned, but neither look as formidable as the Chiefs, Ravens and Bengals of recent years.
For all this wild ride to even start to look like it has a chance, the Colts have to do something that they have not accomplished since November 9th, which is to win a game. They haven’t won a game against a team with a winning record since October 19, against the Chargers. It would require the team to look like it has some “Want to”, which has not been the case since Luck retired. It would take a Herculean effort by a defense that has shown flashes, but has not really taken over a game against a good team.
This piece is similar to Spradley’s ‘The Colts could make things very interesting down the stretch”, but I am hoping that you might tell me how we get it done. I’d like to hear your responses to whether or not there is even a chance that the Colts are playoff bound and what the Colts have to do to make it happen. I don’t have the same expectations that I did at 7 – 1, but my glass is still half full.
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