We Have To Be Terrible At, Atleast 1 Thing On D

[Fr33UpFr33ney]

People seem to forget, there is no infaliable defense. It very rare that a team is invincible on one side of the field and cannot be stopped.

What 1 thing do you want to fix, becuase unless we have 5 first round picks and 50 MILLION in cap space, we cant fix em all.

We can draft Up Middle and Botttom of draft for O-lineman and take a change on missing a Stout Defensive lineman or Corner.

We can (Madden Momment) trade offensive players for picks and sure up the Defense at every level but suffer scoring points because of the offense.

We can continute to invest in the perfect left to right D line and Linebackers and start getting burned on big pass plays 3x a game like in 2004.

We can Look for a Expensive CB (CB is a terribly expensive position now a day) and Safety who will get hurt because of our hole in the D-Line.

The point is, no matter what you do at one possition, the investment has an impact on another position.

Me personally, I think we need to figure out how to get our thrid down conversion on d down to 33%. And I think this is best accomplished by suring up the Defensive back position, but we may suffer more on run.

But 1 thing is for sure

WE CAN'T FIX EVERYTHING

Edited October 14, 2011 by Fr33UpFr33ney

[21isSuperman]

We have to be terrible on at least one thing on defense? I strongly disagree. Sure, you can't fix everything by finding a big name player to fill the role or using a first round pick. But that's where trades, free agency and late round picks come in. So you can use a high draft choice for your DL (such as Freeney), use late round picks for your DB (Bethea) and early-mid round picks for your LB (Angerer). While this doesn't fill everything, it is possible to find good, effective players all over the place. Even with that, some of the times (as we see now with the defense we have), many problems are caused by poor coaching instead of players that aren't good enough. Yeah, Lacey is terrible at CB, but we did have Tryon who showed he could play well and we barely tried to address the CB position.

[pacolts56]

We have been terrible.....

The Colts defense during the Peyton Manning era, with the exception of 1 season, has ranged from terrible to barely average (on a good day) at the DT position.

Once....just once, I'd like to see a Colts DT that commands the fear and respect that DEs Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis do game in and game out.

And I'll go as far as saying that had we been able to add a DT over the last 5 years that performed even close to, if not at a Pro Bowl level along with Freeney and Mathis...we may well have one another Super Bowl or two.

But our defense against the run has always been our achilles heel...and has at several key times kept Manning and the offense on the sidelines, effectively subtracting 1 or 2 offensive possessions and points off the scoreboard.

[doogansquest]

Nevis is a good DT at just a rookie. He will be feared. Sure he's injured, but this season is a wash as it is.

@21: We can have players all over the place, but perhaps the OP is trying to suggest that we can't ADDRESS everything at once. Even if we focus on CB in the next off-season, our DE's will get a year older, we will have a lot of contracts due on both sides of the ball, and questions about the interior of our offensive line.

We can't address everything at once. Right now, the secondary is REALLY suffering, but even focusing on it will just hurt us somewhere else.

Every team has holes. One team has to win the game. Some teams are just better at covering the holes than others. Peyton Manning was perhaps better at that than anyone else.

[JoKeR]

Why does one dimension of the D have to be terrible? I think the Colts secondary should atleast be average. But first they got to get the weak links off the field.

[21isSuperman]

@21: We can have players all over the place, but perhaps the OP is trying to suggest that we can't ADDRESS everything at once. Even if we focus on CB in the next off-season, our DE's will get a year older, we will have a lot of contracts due on both sides of the ball, and questions about the interior of our offensive line.

We can't address everything at once. Right now, the secondary is REALLY suffering, but even focusing on it will just hurt us somewhere else.

I see. I thought he meant it as just a general statement, "it is impossible for a defense to be good at everything". I see what you mean though.

[ColtJ82]

I think our philosophy in regards to pay offensive players has turned out to be flawed somewhat. Peyton Manning has made "good" skill players look "very good"....see Austin Collie, Pierre Garcon, Jacob Tamme, and Blair White. If he can do this then maybe we should be investing more money on the O-line and other side of the ball. Our offense is based on precision route running and timing. Even simply decent skill position players can succeed with these two skills.

That being said, maybe it is time we invest on the other side of the ball in order to make a final run with Peyton. Dallas and Reggie eat up a good chunk of cap space. Shift those monies to the Defense and lets see what happens.

Just my opinion at this point.

[pacolts56]

Nevis is a good DT at just a rookie. He will be feared. Sure he's injured, but this season is a wash as it is.

I do like what I see in Nevis....and I hope you're right.

One source of aggravation is that with the prospect of us selecting 1st overall, this is a heck of a year for there to NOT be a blue chip DT available.

Because if there was someone on the order of Ndomukong Suh or Haloti Ngata coming out, I might very well be in favor of going that route instead of....well....you know who. ;)

[Roland Deschain]

Bill P.? Is that you?

[Jason_]

I do like what I see in Nevis....and I hope you're right.

One source of aggravation is that with the prospect of us selecting 1st overall, this is a heck of a year for there to NOT be a blue chip DT available.

Because if there was someone on the order of Ndomukong Suh or Haloti Ngata coming out, I might very well be in favor of going that route instead of....well....you know who. ;)

lol...I know what you mean. The best options for us, imo, are Brandon Thompson from Clemson and Josh Chapman from Alabama.

Honestly, I think there are 3 players we could add that would really help to drastically improve our defense and it would require one trade down to get an additional 2nd round pick...Manti Te'o in the first round, Josh Chapman at the top of the 2nd round and then the best CB available with the other 2nd round pick.

This is a deep draft for CB so whichever CB we could get in the 2nd round should be able to step in and be the #1 which would move everyone else down a spot....Powers becomes the #2 and I think he'd be much better against other team's #2 receiver instead of their #1. Then the rest of the CB's on the roster compete for the Nickel CB spot and one of them might be able to push Powers for the #2 spot. This upgrades the secondary pretty much all around.

Te'o would give us the big, strong and fast MLB that I think we desperately need. I love what I've seen from Angerer so far but I'm still not convinced he's our future at the MIKE. He plays bigger than he is but the truth is he's still pretty undersized for a MIKE at only 235 lbs. That's why he gets dragged along for extra yards by some of the bigger backs like Hillis, Foster etc. I would then try out the other LBs in both the SAM and WILL spots to see which ones are best at which position. Angerer winds up a definite starter at one of the OLB positions and likely Conner, Wheeler or Edds makes the spot at the other.

Josh Chapman is a bit of a variable but I think of the top DT's he'd be the best fit for us with Brandon Thompson a close second. Thompson however is still being projected as a top 10-15 pick so we couldn't get both he and Te'o and the drop in talent at MLB is, imo, steeper than the drop in DT. Chapman plays with Alabama who's base defense is a 3-4 but they run a lot of variations with it using both 3 and 4 man fronts and I've seen Chapman line up in a number of different positions. In a 4-3 I think his best position would be NT which is the type of DT we need. He and Antonio Johnson compete for the starting spot and even if Chapman doesn't win then that means he pushes AJ to be a little bit better. I like what I've seen from AJ so far but he's the only NT we have and that is what hurts us. Every time he comes off the field it forces Nevis or Moala into the NT role and that's not where they're going to excel. You'll notice in watching the games that Nevis or even Foster were much more active and effective when they were playing alongside AJ. When Foster and Nevis were on the field together then Nevis becomes the NT. Nevis then faces a double team where he's much less effective and Foster is easier for the other team to block one on one with one of their interior linemen because he's so much smaller.

So yeah, taking these 3 guys early imo vastly improves our defense and then we could look for a safety like Mark Barron or T.J. Mcdonald if one of them drops to the 3rd round or Harrison Smith in the 4th/5th.

Really though, there are a players who are really going to affect how we draft. Guys like Ricardo Mathews, Ollie Ogbu, Chris Rucker, Kevin Thomas and Joe Lefeged and then to a lesser degree David Caldwell and Terrence Johnson. If any of these guys can show significant improvement then they may be able to move into a starter role and be much more effective than the current starter at their position. If Mathews or Ogbu can show improvement then one of them could move into the backup NT role (Ogbu was a NT at Penn State but I think he needs to put on some muscle to be effective at the position in the NFL) and we keep AJ as the starter so NT wouldn't be as big a need come draft day. Regardless of how any of the young CB's improve I still think we address CB in the draft but the amount of improvement any of them show could affect how high in the draft we have to address the position. I really like Robert Blanton from Notre dame as a late round CB selection. He's very solid from what I've seen...maybe not an elite playmaker who's going to rack up a lot of interceptions but he plays very solid in man and zone coverage from what I've seen.

Also whether or not Brackett comes back will affect the draft but personally, even if he comes back I'd still love to take Te'o but I doubt it would happen.