The Colts suffer another loss, this time to the Green Bay Packers as they move to 0-2 on this young season. The final score was 16-10 but it felt far worse than that. The Colts were completely dominated especially against the run (again). The first half was some of the worst football most Colts fans have ever seen and arguably the worst I have ever seen from them in the Steichen tenure. In the first quarter alone, the Colts allowed 164 yards on the ground from a plethora of players. While Josh Jacobs was the dominant back, many players got in on the onslaught. Without further ado, here are some thoughts I had for the Colts Week 2 loss to Green Bay.
The Run Defense Is Embarrassing
Colts defensive coordinator Gus Bradley made the excuse last week that the run defense was poor because they focused on the vaunted receivers of Houston and would stop the run on the pass rush. If Bradley chose to do the same thing (hope not) it continued to be a failure. If there was a bright spot for Gus Bradley, it was the second half defense was improved but the damage was already inflicted with the first half massacre.
On the very first drive, Green Bay went right into the run and never let up. I mentioned in my storylines piece that this game would be a heavy dose of Josh Jacobs and some sprinkling of Malik Willis. That’s exactly what happened. Green Bay had 53 rushing attempts and 14 passing attempts. LeFleur and his staff had a terrific game plan to exploit the weakness of this Colts defense, and their offensive line gave Josh Jacobs and company huge holes to run through in the first half.
Unforced Errors
We have seen so far in the Steichen era that he forces his coaching staff to pay strong attention to detail and relentless preparation. Through two games now, it’s evident that this coaching staff is not keeping up. We saw multiple missed throws (again) by Richardson to Adonai Mitchell and the dropped passes on key moments of drives were in some cases back-breaking to Indianapolis. They could not sustain drives with the mistakes and got dominated (again) on the time of possession and did not set themselves up for success.
Where Was Jonathan Taylor In The 4th Quarter?
Probably the most puzzling issue we saw the entire game was head coach Shane Steichen leaving Jonathan Taylor on the bench for the 4th quarter. Taylor had missed some balls during the game that prevented a drive to continue its momentum but on the ground he was terrific. The offensive line looked much better this week, and they cleaned up their mistakes.
The only arguments you could make to keep Taylor on the sidelines were if he sustained an injury, which it appeared he did not. Or they knew they were going to pass every down, and they wanted Sermon and Goodson, which is more their forte. Regardless, to not have your best player on the field for a must-have TD drive, to me, is inexcusable. While they did score on the field without him, could they have scored faster and gotten back on the field with more time to go on that final drive?
Steichen gave zero insight into the reasoning behind it in the postgame media session and said there would be updates throughout the week. Those comments make it seem like there was something else going on. This coaching staff must be better and must correct these issues, and quickly. You hope as a fanbase that your team shows improvement from week to week and this team regressed from last week. The Colts return home next week to battle the Chicago Bears on Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium.
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