stitches

The more I'm thinking about it, the more * off I get at Mike Mitchell... what an absolutely horrible thing to say the day after your own WR1 got taken out by one of the dirtiest hits of the season.

Yep... If you are going to teach your guys that the only way to defend such a pass is to launch yourself head first into another player, then you are putting not just the other guy in danger but your own players too.

If you cannot teach proper tackling technique and pass contest, you probably don't need to be coaching in the league...

I just rewatched the final 2 minutes since I had to miss them during the game. I freaking love Steichen. He assumed the Steelers will let the time run out since it would have left them something like 35 seconds for a 3 score game otherwise and let Minshew kneel it down. The Steelers decided to be smartasses and called the timeout. What did Steichen do? You could see him on the sidelines * off. "Oh, you gonna play those games?" Two runs down the middle to waste a bit more time and make the FG even easier and he let Gay kick the FG. Steichen has the killer instinct. He doesn't let anything slide and he extracts everything he can from a game. If there is a coaching thing to do to give the team an edge he will do it. Love it.

Agreed... The only thing that's a huge negative is AR's injury and him missing on opportunities to get experience and development during the season. But other than that... I love that Shane has brought back the spirit of this team after they seemed so soulless by the end of last year. This team seems to have character and some juice. IMO we still need talent infusion at certain positions if we want to be a serious contender, but it looks like this season at least gave us the answer on the HC position.

You are joking but, it's insane how... playable our OL has been with so many injuries and so much turnover all over the line. Our starting OL has played a grand total of 1 full game and two half games together the entire season. And it has not been all smooth sailing, but we've been... solid. Big props to the players that have stepped up and the coaching staff for getting them ready and putting them in position to succeed.

How are you liking Addison, NFLfan? Has he won you over already?

Bill decided to screw up their tank for Caleb since it become known he will be out after the season. I don't mind that

Levis still has some rookie moments and he just got blown up by a free rusher he didn't see, but I like what I'm seeing from him in general. He looks like an NFL QB. Doesn't look out of place at all... BTW, Levis is taking worse shots than AR took(and a lot of them are self-induced). Just comes to show how chance plays part in injuries...

That was indeed probably our worst game this season. Serious failures in all aspects of the game. Kind of disappointing when chasing a playoff spot, but not entirely shocking when you consider the talent level at some important areas of the team. My position has been that Steichen has been making chicken soup from chicken % for a lot of the season and it was just about time some of our deficiencies showed up. On to the next one...

Minshew is so darn panicky!

Yeah. It's hard for me to formulate the reason I like him so much but you hit the nail - flawed human, battling his demons, sometimes in public, but his heart is in the right place. And some of the things people were bashing him for were actually huge positives in my books(like him trying to free the whale)... And people should never forget that he turned into the conscience of the Colts(moving on from Wentz and then from a coaching staff that had ran its course in Indianapolis) and then the entire league(Dan Snyder) in the span of 12 months or thereabout. And of course, like with everything else he did those things rather clumsily... but in all the noise and turmoil that unfolded in public - HE WAS ACTUALLY RIGHT on the issues. In all of those cases!

Well, they didn't say that exactly, but that's what their ranking shows where Irsay comes at no. 7 best owner in the league. https://theathletic.com/5115078/2023/12/08/nfl-owners-ranking-32-teams/ Thoughts?

I said it before and I will say it again - I think Minshew is the perfect backup, he's good enough to execute your offense and give you a chance to win some games, but not good enough to have unrealistic expectations about being a franchise guy somewhere. If he wants to be here in that capacity, I'm good with Ballard signing him for a couple more years... It seems like him and AR have a very good relationship too, so...

Happy Holidays and I share your sentiments... Cheers

Meh, to me this whole argument is largely pointless. About as pointless as it was when people were arguing about whether TY Hilton was a 1 or not and how he can be a 1 if he's playing from the slot predominantly... (for the record - IMO, no, neither Pittman, nor Hilton are/were traditional no. 1/X receiver). It's just immaterial to the larger questions we need to answer. Is MPJ a good receiver who provides value commensurate with the expected pay he's going to receive? If yes - he's young enough for us to expect for him to keep up this production over the length of his next contract... If no - can we expect him to improve to a point where he's worth the money? And can we replace that production for cheaper so we can use the money more effectively elsewhere? How does he fit in our receiving core? Does he have a well defined role that is valuable and hard to replace at lower salary? Is this receiving core good enough with Pittman as the main guy? To me the answer to this is no. BUT... that doesn't mean that we need to let him go because he wants to get paid. It means we need to add talent, not lose some of the best talent we have.

I think I actually heard it in a podcast last week - The Athletic football show but not sure what episode it was. Let me check and will get back to you when I find it. I don't know where they are getting their numbers...

It is easier said than done but not by much really. How often does this happen? Like... once or twice a year? In the whole league? This was just a freak outlier of an outcome. It's so rare you should probably not even consider this possibility when deciding whether to attempt 2 pt or not. In fact... I wonder what's more frequent - 2 pt attempt returned for TD or 1 point attempt blocked and returned for a TD? Our offense seems to be one of the most heavily schemed offenses in the league right now. Steichen is doing wonders with what Minshew is providing us as play. I read some stat that the Colts are running RPOs at the highest clip in the league by some huge margin over the second highest(24% vs 19%).. I've been thinking for a while that teams should run RPOs and playaction much more than they usually do. No idea why they are not trying to do it more, even when they have good QBs. And I'm glad Steichen is actually one of the coaches that seems to be using what league-wide is much more efficient play than a regular dropback.

The Ten TD has not been taken away. The graphic on the live show was wrong to give them 6 points. When you return a TD after 2pt attempt of the opponent you get 2 points not 6. So it was a mistake by the broadcasters graphics team and they fixed it by the time you returned probably.

We are deficient at some of the most important positions in this league - QB(this is the most obvious one - hopefully AR changes that), WR(I know people are excited after this game, but we should look at the big picture and overall our WR group has been below average for a while now and we need more than one good game from them to pronounce that problem solved), secondary and especially CB(now, we have some young/injured players there so we will see how that group develops but as it stands right now IMO that group is below average for the league too)... We have some good talent and we have some promise from a few of the young guys, but IMO right now our offense is highly schemed(read coach and playcall dependent), I read some stat that the Colts are the team that runs most RPOs in the league and by a huge margin - we are at 24% and the second highest is 19%. On the other end our defense has not really been tested as much as most teams get tested. We have faced relatively soft QB schedule and the good QBs have dissected this D(Lawrence, Carr, Stafford). IMO right now this team looks like a team that's overperforming its talent and is winning games based on edges that the coaching staff is finding and exploiting.

Nice! Well done! I love what Steichen has brought to this team. This team has moxie and spirit! Our talent is nowhere near enough for us to be scoring this many points and winning this many games. But somehow... they just get in position to win them even through offensive mistakes and questionable defensive possessions...

Please Minshew don't throw an interception!