Indianapolis, IN — As pandemonium ensued following the initially missed game-winning kick off the foot of kicker Spencer Shrader, Shane Steichen sighed loud enough for the nosebleeds to hear it. The third-year head coach had just led his offense down the field, trailing by two points amidst a 2-minute drill, and elected to passively chew clock behind the legs of star running back Jonathan Taylor to get into field goal range.
After getting an all-time break in the form of an untimely leveraging infraction by the Broncos’ interior defensive line on their block attempt, Spencer Shrader would remain perfect in his young career with a 45-yard game-winning kick. Just prior, Shrader had missed the would-be 60-yard attempt, but the penalty in question gave the Colts another shot from even closer — ironically enough, just inside Shrader’s career-long.
There’s a story in there about how Shane Steichen mismanaged the end of that game and got lucky; however, sometimes in the NFL, it’s best to be a little lucky. That’s not to absolve this Colts offense of their questionable final drive, but the bigger story is how pairing Daniel Jones with Steichen has quickly proved to be a worthwhile reclamation project. There’ve been some woes, but the offense has simply been too good to nitpick.
It’s been discussed ad nauseam, both the recent influx of successful reclamation projects as well as the blazing hot seats of everyone involved with this Colts regime, but after two weeks, the well-established tune is singing much more optimistically.
Sure, the long-evasive Week 1 victory was enough to single-handedly instill delirium into a checked out fanbase, and yes, the same can be said about starting the season off with a 2-0 record for the first time since Peyton Manning was in town, but this feels.. different.
General manager Chris Ballard has shown a willingness to deviate from the norm in recent years, but especially during this past offseason. The otherwise uncharacteristic big fish free-agent acquisitions in QB Daniel Jones, S Camryn Bynum, and CB Charvarius Ward were enough to prove as such, but then a wildly different defensive scheme in Lou Anarumo’s coordination was also brought in. Regardless of whether it came on the heels of a last-ditch effort or a new era of ownership opening up the checkbook due to a newfound dedication to winning, through two weeks, these additions have collectively re-wired the Colts’ psyche entirely.
The early resurgence of seventh-year quarterback Daniel Jones has been a sight to see, and it starts at the top. Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen were open and honest with Jones in the offseason, expressing their belief in him and offering him the chance to win the starting job. He took that motivation from New York, and instead of running it back to backup J.J. McCarthy at Minnesota, he decided to bet on himself in Indianapolis. Lo and behold, Indiana Jones was born.
With Jones at the helm to kick off the season vs the Miami Dolphins, Indy’s offense rattled off a perfect 7-7 scoring drives, becoming the first team since 1977 to accomplish this feat. Continuing onto Week 2, Jones and Co. would score on their first three drives vs the Denver Broncos, setting an NFL record for the most consecutive scoring drives to start a season with ten (four touchdowns, six field goals).
Perhaps the easy name-to-nickname pipeline should’ve been enough to convince us all, and sure, it’s only been two games, but Shane Steichen and Daniel Jones have just stacked another efficient performance that’ll likely incite unmanageable expectations for the weeks to come. After being deemed an afterthought, with a large sect of the sport’s fandom clowning on Jones any chance they get — solely due to his shortcomings on the field, mind you — Danny Dimes has seemingly transformed into a star overnight. I am by no means anointing him as such, but if he continues to play like he has thus far, he will be considered for the face of this franchise moving forward.
Not only has Daniel Jones been wildly efficient, but he’s as comfortable and confident as he’s been in recent memory. Jones was running for his life in New York due to a subpar offensive line in each of his six seasons, not to mention the bottom-tier receiving corps he was afforded. Everything was stacked against him, but still managed to stay afloat and net himself a second contract with the organization to remain their starting quarterback. Now, with arguably the league’s best offensive line as well as one of the best group of offensive weapons leaguewide, Jones can calmly hit the layups without having his process sped up.
“I feel confident. There’s a great energy about our team,” Jones said to the media following the electric 2-0 start. This comes after torching one of the better defenses in the league to the tune of 23-34 (~68% completion), 316 passing yards, 1 passing TD, 1 sack taken, 107 passer rating, as well as 6 carries for 2 yards and a patented ‘Dimes Dive’ (QB Sneak) as Pat McAfee would call it.
Daniel Jones isn’t just confident nowadays; it’s almost like he’s unlocked. Not only has he been his typical efficient self on underneath, quick-hitting routes, but that efficiency has since trickled into each level of the field. Shane Steichen is undoubtedly providing Jones with a fitting game plan and scheme, utilizing lots of pre-snap motion and post-snap play-action, but Jones is arguably making life just as easy on himself with his overall command of the offense. It’s not just on clean-pocket dropbacks, either; he is playing at a career-high level while blitzed and/or under pressure.
Jones is a career 61.9% thrower when blitzed (466-758) and a brutal 49.8% passer under pressure (384-771), per Pro Football Focus. It’s the biggest reason I, like many others, was skeptical of this experiment altogether. In Week 1 behind the Colts’ offensive line, however, Jones was 80% on throws under pressure (5 attempts on 8 dropbacks) and was 68.4% on throws while blitzed (19 attempts on 20 dropbacks). Against the Broncos in Week 2, Jones stacked another strong showing.
According to Next Gen Stats, Jones was blitzed on a career-high 71.1% of his dropbacks vs the Broncos and completed 16 of his 25 attempts while facing five or more pass rushers for 265 yards and a touchdown, the 4th-most passing yards against the blitz in any game in the Next Gen Stats era (since 2016). Through two weeks, this Colts offense is being blitzed north of 50% of its dropbacks and has allowed just two sacks.
This is more than promising in itself, but the aforementioned confidence has been sprinkled into Jones’ post-snap decision-making. It’s been well-documented that Daniel Jones largely won the starting job in Indy due to his top-tier pre-snap operation, and while that’s certainly been on full display through two weeks thus far, the entire culmination of his quarterbacking has evolved before our eyes.
Coming into this game, national and local media alike suggested avoiding Broncos cornerback Pat Surtain II entirely. The young defensive back has blossomed into the best cornerback in the NFL, and has been strategically avoided as a result, but Daniel Jones had other plans. Jones attempted 10 passes into tight windows, completing 6 of them for 100 yards, including 4 tight window completions for 41 yards against Pat Surtain II. On the day, Jones targeted Surtain II 9 times and completed 7 passes for 63 yards and netted a defensive penalty, the second-most targets of the reigning Defensive Player of the Year’s career.
“We know he’s a hell of a football player,” Steichen said regarding the challenge that Surtain II brought. “When we get 1-on-1 matchups with him, we’ve got to win them. I’ve got a ton of respect for him. He’s one of the best, if not the best, in the league right now. There’s a ton of respect there, but I thought our guys stepped up to the challenge for sure.”
Even after back-to-back potentially narrative-reversing showings to start the season, Jones is by no means satisfied. He feels confident in his team and his own ability, but it’s a long season and Indy’s signal-caller knows that.
“I think we’re executing at a high level, but there’s still things we need to do better,” Jones explained post-game. “You look at some of the red zone stuff today. There are things we can sharpen up down there, things I can sharpen up for sure, but I think collectively, as a group, we’re confident about what we can be, and we know we’re still growing and developing.”
You want your head coach and starting quarterback to almost have a hive mind, especially considering Steichen’s offensive influence, and it appears that both Steichen and Jones are on the same page when it comes to cleaning up red zone woes.
“We’ve gotta go back and look at some things. They brought some pressure there a little bit, but we’ve got to get that stuff cleaned up,” Steichen explained. “Obviously, we’re scoring points, but those are four-point plays. That starts with myself, and we’ve got to be better.”
With as much recent evidence of ‘failed’ quarterback prospects turned successful reclamation projects as there’s been, I struggle to see why I disregarded that as a possibility for Daniel Jones in Indianapolis. Hand up: I wrongly assumed that this regime was dead in the water and presumed whatever move they make to be the lesser of two evils. After years of similarly band-aided processes, why would the final year of the Chris Ballard era finally be the one to right a half-decade of wrongs?
It’s borderline frustrating that this has materialized as such, not because of a bitterness in being wrong, but because the outlook was predictable. Hindsight bias allows me to say that, but when the talks all offseason have centered around the offense just needing someone to hit the layups, it makes perfect sense how this pairing could result in such success. Instead, I allowed the overarching dysfunction of recent years to play too big a factor in my analysis.
The grass isn’t always greener, but it certainly is when you compare Daniel Jones’ past supporting casts, or lack thereof, to his current-day one. Like many Colts fans and media members alike, I figured that the only way this regime would be able to right the ship would be to unlock Anthony Richardson, but of course, the newly established pipeline of reclamation projects is proving Chris Ballard right. Some of his detractors may scream at me and suggest that even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while, but so far, I am prepared to eat my crow.
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