Colts Texans post game reaction

[DougDew]

20 minutes ago, indyagent17 said:

Sadly if he has a healthy season and we miss the playoffs Ballard will be gone.

I seriously doubt that.  And he shouldn't be gone because of that, IMO.

[2006Coltsbestever]

2 minutes ago, ColtStrong2013 said:

I had a great time at the game. They were 7-14 on third downs while we were 5-10, and I could point to quite a few third down conversions that Stroud pulled out of his butt that could arguably be the difference in this game. I thought we battled and had opportunities. Saw some explosive plays that we haven’t seen since Andrew Luck left. That isn’t disputable in my opinion. There is a lot of growth needed left for this season, but man there is a lot of potential for this team. I thought the secondary played really well all things considered. I was not impressed with our run defense. I thought Franklin played less than stellar, for someone that ran their mouth an awful lot this offseason at this Texans squad. Felt personal what they did on the ground today. 

I agree, that catch by Collins was unreal. That was the game. It was a great catch but lucky too.

[jvan1973]

7 minutes ago, Dingus McGirt said:

Caleb and Jayden - the new heroes of the league - looked great today.

[bluephantom87]

1 minute ago, indyagent17 said:

Let’s face it Richardson has a lot to learn and I hope he does. He missed AD twice on wide open touchdown plays. AR has no touch and this was the knock on him at Florida. Sadly if he has a healthy season and we miss the playoffs Ballard will be gone. Too many times he has gotten passes for mistakes but all these years without a playoff win is adding up. As badly as the defense played we should have won this game by making two throws that any capable QB would make .Richardson completed 9 passes today! He was myopic and focused on Pitt way too much and not one TE caught a pass today. 
 

we will see if AR truly has all the skills needed to be a solid NFL QB. I know it’s one game but if we have 17 games with these issues the team will have tough decisions. 

 

I agree but this comes with the territory. AR has something like 20 something starts at qb including hs. Growing pains are coming. The more he plays the better he should get with repetition. His raw talent is undeniable though.

 

As far as Ballard this should be his last year anyway based on his overall record and especially if the team misses the playoffs again or doesn't challenge for the division simply because of his offseason decisions like reataining Gus as dc while also neglecting to upgrade that thin secondary talent wise.

[Restinpeacesweetchloe]

A lot of AR accuracy today was on Steichen. He did not give him any intermediate or easy throws.

[Moosejawcolt]

1 hour ago, GoColts8818 said:

That doesn’t prove your point in the slightest.  The way the run defense is works is the DTs clog the holes and slow the back down and let the linebackers come up and make tackles.  The DTs weren’t clogging the holes taking the linebackers out of the play.  The problem started up front.  Franklin and Speed didn’t have good days either but they also weren’t put in position to because the DTs didn’t do their jobs letting the linebackers be blocked out of the play by the guys the DTs are supposed to suck up.  Anytime a running back is getting six or seven yards down field before he’s touched you have an issue with your DTs.

Actually, in this defense, the DT's shoot the gaps and do not clog the holes. I could be wrong but that's the way I see it. Attack the qb all day and hopefully hit the rb ln the way if it is a run play.

[Dingus McGirt]

16 minutes ago, 2006Coltsbestever said:

They played Tennessee though  

Caleb did.  

[2006Coltsbestever]

Just now, Moosejawcolt said:

Actually, in this defense, the DT's shoot the gaps and do not clog the holes. I could be wrong but that's the way I see it. Attack the qb all day and hopefully hit the rb ln the way if it is a run play.

What is strange is, under Bradley our Run D has always been respectable, it is always our Pass D that gives up big plays. Today, our Run D looked like the 2006 Colts without Bob. 

[Smoke317]

This game came down to a couple plays.  AR missing AD for the TD.  Then Granson stumbling and AR throwing the INT just twisted the knife. From a sure 7 to at worst 3 to 0 points. Crucial in a 2 point loss. AR is young and inexperienced but dang can he spin it. With Shane calling the plays he’s gonna be special.  

[2006Coltsbestever]

Just now, Dingus McGirt said:

Caleb did.  

Yeah Meant Caleb, I said they 

[jvan1973]

2 minutes ago, Moosejawcolt said:

Actually, in this defense, the DT's shoot the gaps and do not clog the holes. I could be wrong but that's the way I see it. Attack the qb all day and hopefully hit the rb ln the way if it is a run play.

That's exactly what they did.   Only to see a toss to the outside.  I wish we would run the ball from under center from time to time

[DougDew]

3 minutes ago, Moosejawcolt said:

Actually, in this defense, the DT's shoot the gaps and do not clog the holes. I could be wrong but that's the way I see it. Attack the qb all day and hopefully hit the rb ln the way if it is a run play.

You're thinking more of a tradition Dungy D, but still, one of the DTs should be more of a run stopper.  What I saw was a lot of OT plays and wider, which speaks to edge setting and DE play.  I could be wrong though.

[Patrick Miller]

You know, after watching Mixon run down our throats I’m not sure the Colts can just clean that up. I’m thinking it’s more of a personnel problem than it is a technique problem.

[DougDew]

1 minute ago, jvan1973 said:

That's exactly what they did.   Only to see a toss to the outside.  I wish we would run the ball from under center from time to time

Yes, those shotgun run plays with a halted hand off always seem to take a bit longer to develop than the UC run plays.  JT likes to attack the middle so the quicker he gets to the LOS the better, IMO.

[Moosejawcolt]

10 minutes ago, DougDew said:

I seriously doubt that.  And he shouldn't be gone because of that, IMO.

I am more disappointed in the fans on this forum than Ballard. I  have been saying it for years. No matter what AR becomes, we will never win a superbowl with this defense. It is antiquated. Even if we wanted to run this defense. The talent is not there to run it effectively.  U blitz and u get burned. In short. Ballard has not provided Gus with the talent to run any sort of defense successfully. Gus cannot play zone and/or blitz because he doesn't have the players. I said  before many times. Forgive Ballard if u want for Luck's retirement. There is no forgiveness for his building of a defence after 8 years that is below average and yielded very few legit players. Oh, and yes Gus needs to go because unless he is given loads of talent, his scheme is ineffective.

[jvan1973]

Just now, DougDew said:

Yes, those shotgun run plays with a halted hand off always seem to take a bit longer to develop than the UC run plays.  JT likes to attack the middle so the quicker he gets to the LOS the better, IMO.

I totally agree.   Hit the hole at full speed.  The RPO stuff has to be hard on a RB as well.   They don't know if they are getting the ball or not until the last second.   I'm not suggesting scrapping it entirely, but lining up and pounding the rock is how the oline is built.   

[DougDew]

Just now, Moosejawcolt said:

I am more disappointed in the fans on this forum than Ballard. I  have been saying it for years. No matter what AR becomes, we will never win a superbowl with this defense. It is antiquated. Even if we wanted to run this defense. The talent is not there to run it effectively.  U blitz and u get burned. In short. Ballard has not provided Gus with the talent to run any sort of defense successfully. Gus cannot play zone and/or blitz because he doesn't have the players. I said  before many times. Forgive Ballard if u want for Luck's retirement. There is no forgiveness for his building of a defence after 8 years that is below average and yielded very few legit players. Oh, and yes Gus needs to go because unless he is given loads of talent, his scheme is ineffective.

IMO, DeFo is STILL our best defensive player, and he's been here too long for someone to not have surpassed him by now.  He's never been Aaron Donald, so somebody needs to be the guy that takes the lead.

[NoVA Colts Fan]

I am no expert on NFL rules, but the folks who are on TV - including an ex-ref who is supposed to be the expert - were terrible in my. opinion.  I ended up just putting them on mute.

 

I was screaming "it's a 10 second runoff" when the commentators and that ex-ref said the officials figured out what time they snapped the ball on the play that didn't count after the review was initiated.  Complete nonsense.  Then made it seem like they knew the rule all along after halftime.

 

No doubt that the Texans WR got his knee down - but, it seemed to me that the ball was loose and touched the ground in his process of going to the ground.  Not saying I know the rules, obviously I was wrong, but the announcers just ignored the fact that the ball seemed to be juggled and hit the ground.  

 

And, I don't understand why our reception was ruled OOB, when he got his toe in before his heel.  Isn't that the same as a toe drag?  Someone posted this above as well.   I am not saying the call was missed, I just did not understand.

 

Any way, there is a correlation to me hating the announcers with the Colts losing the game.   So it's probably me.

 

 

 

 

[richard pallo]

45 minutes ago, Restinpeacesweetchloe said:

That blocked punt today you could see coming a mile away.

Have to give a shout out to our Special Teams coach.  Last year we had blocked punts that resulted in touchdowns.  This year he did it again in the first game.  Great game from him and his boys.

[jvan1973]

Just now, DougDew said:

IMO, DeFo is STILL our best defensive player, and he's been here too long for someone to not have surpassed him by now.  He's never been Aaron Donald, so somebody needs to be the guy that takes the lead.

Buckner looked pretty damn good today.   He isn't Aaron Donald,  but who is?

[ColtStrong2013]

18 minutes ago, 2006Coltsbestever said:

I agree, that catch by Collins was unreal. That was the game. It was a great catch but lucky too.

big players make big plays. I thought we kept pace with them quite well, given the start we had. I don’t like taking the ball. Seemed confident and against the data, which is deferring often gets you the last possession of the half and exactly what happened with the Texans. Going for it on 4th and short and the playcall was a really poor start, but we recovered well. What a fiasco at the end of the first half. I also didn’t like going for two at the time as it led to a two possession game, but had we converted the ending would have been interesting. 
 

we made some great plays. Abandoned the run. I have zero doubts we’ll see a whole lot more of Jonathan Taylor this season than we did today. We’ll see a lot more of CJ Stroud too… 

[NoVA Colts Fan]

Also, definitely disappointed with the outcome, but the team has an excitement that I have not seen since Luck.

 

I feel AR will grow into his skill sets.  Miscommunication w AD and a slip by the TE made AR look worse than he was.  I can get behind him and give him time to season.

 

Every drive, I felt like we had a chance to score before it started.   Haven't felt that way for a while with our previous qbs these last few years.

 

 

 

 

[ColtStrong2013]

2 minutes ago, jvan1973 said:

Buckner looked pretty damn good today.   He isn't Aaron Donald,  but who is?

he’s going to have a big year. They were doubling Latu A LOT, especially early on. 

[Smoke317]

4 minutes ago, Patrick Miller said:

You know, after watching Mixon run down our throats I’m not sure the Colts can just clean that up. I’m thinking it’s more of a personnel problem than it is a technique problem.

I think it’s how you attack the scheme. If you’re gonna flow with their zone blocking you have to have somebody watching the backside cutback. If you’re not gonna flow you’re gonna be looking to penetrate through.  And we had nobody coming through getting any penetration and if Buck ever did it didn’t matter because Mixon had already hit the cutback lane.  Usually both Buck & Grove get TFLs or penetrate and disrupt plays. Didn’t see much from Grove or our linebackers on those cutbacks. It can get cleaned up. 

[DougDew]

2 minutes ago, jvan1973 said:

Buckner looked pretty damn good today.   He isn't Aaron Donald,  but who is?

I agree.  Some players age well, and DeFo seems to being doing that, but as he trends downward I would like to see somebody else by now clearly trending upward, and that's what the defense lacks, that second banana, IMO.

[ColtStrong2013]

7 minutes ago, Moosejawcolt said:

I am more disappointed in the fans on this forum than Ballard. I  have been saying it for years. No matter what AR becomes, we will never win a superbowl with this defense. It is antiquated. Even if we wanted to run this defense. The talent is not there to run it effectively.  U blitz and u get burned. In short. Ballard has not provided Gus with the talent to run any sort of defense successfully. Gus cannot play zone and/or blitz because he doesn't have the players. I said  before many times. Forgive Ballard if u want for Luck's retirement. There is no forgiveness for his building of a defence after 8 years that is below average and yielded very few legit players. Oh, and yes Gus needs to go because unless he is given loads of talent, his scheme is ineffective.

I too am disappointed in the fans on here… but it’s mostly just people like you. What a miserable post that you must have saved in a word document to copy and paste. 

[Colt Overseas]

Looking at the game stats, it’s insane that Cross and Blackmon had to make a combined 27 total tackles today. Taught both players played hard today, but it really shows how badly we were getting beaten up front.

Doubt Ballard will sleep tonight, he whole team building philosophy is to build in the trenches. That’s where it was lost today.

[Two_pound]

If you check the past 52 years of Colt history you will see we NEVER play great defense(except for maybe 4 or 5 years:87, 95, 05, and maybe a couple other years scattered in) I have pointed this out on this forum many times over the last 20 years. I said a couple of weeks ago Bert Jones had to outscore everyone, Peyton had to outscore every one, and Luck had to outscore everyone. There was virtually no defense on the Colts when those 3 guys were quarterbacking. And, guess what people, Anthony Richardson is goin g to have to OUTSCORE everyone because we are consistently playing 8 yards off the ball on a play run from the 2 yard line(see Diggs second score today). Maybe the Texans should cut Stingly? After all Mitchell made him look real bad today.

[ColtStrong2013]

48 minutes ago, indyagent17 said:

Let’s face it Richardson has a lot to learn and I hope he does. He missed AD twice on wide open touchdown plays. AR has no touch and this was the knock on him at Florida. Sadly if he has a healthy season and we miss the playoffs Ballard will be gone. Too many times he has gotten passes for mistakes but all these years without a playoff win is adding up. As badly as the defense played we should have won this game by making two throws that any capable QB would make .Richardson completed 9 passes today! He was myopic and focused on Pitt way too much and not one TE caught a pass today. 
 

we will see if AR truly has all the skills needed to be a solid NFL QB. I know it’s one game but if we have 17 games with these issues the team will have tough decisions. 

I’m going to view it as a benchmark to measure his growth this season. I saw a lot out of him today that I liked. It’s going to be a rollercoaster, and we have to accept that as it is. I’d rather have a rollercoaster that is 22 with stupid high upside than Carson Wentz, that’s for sure… 

 

I don’t think we had a great game plan offensively. I was kind of disappointed with that. AR made some big time plays that hid an otherwise poor offensive performance. and you know what, that’s what good qb’s do. Ready to see his growth. Also- we need better tight ends. 

[jvan1973]

1 minute ago, DougDew said:

I agree.  Some players age well, and DeFo seems to being doing that, but as he trends downward I would like to see somebody else by now clearly trending upward, and that's what the defense lacks, that second banana, IMO.

Latu was in the backfield a bunch today.   He didn't get there,   but he will figure it out I think.  He got double teamed a quite a bit.   That's saying something for a rookie.

[ColtStrong2013]

Just now, jvan1973 said:

Latu was in the backfield a bunch today.   He didn't get there,   but he will figure it out I think.  He got double teamed a quite a bit.   That's saying something for a rookie.

The line did a good job with pressure. They didn’t get there on several occasions and Stroud made them pay big time for it. Their run defense is a different story. I’ll need to watch it back before speaking more on it. I had a corner angle today, saw a lot but missed a lot too. 

[ColtStrong2013]

3 minutes ago, Colt Overseas said:

Looking at the game stats, it’s insane that Cross and Blackmon had to make a combined 27 total tackles today. Taught both players played hard today, but it really shows how badly we were getting beaten up front.

Doubt Ballard will sleep tonight, he whole team building philosophy is to build in the trenches. That’s where it was lost today.

I think our secondary did well today and your point is mine. Those guys had to make a lot of plays against the run. Way too many. The corners did too. I’m very disappointed in our linebackers. Franklin talked a big game this offseason and had a couple plays but I can’t help but think he was largely the issue. He took some really bad angles on few that I know of for sure and was totally out of the play. 

[GoColts8818]

1 hour ago, Patrick Miller said:

Heck Buckner was the only guy on the d line that could make a play!

I think Lewis had a pretty solid day and both Paye and Dayo got the QB.  Latu was making his presence felt and caused a couple of false starts.  All and all I thought they did a good job rushing Stroud.  It was the run defense that struggled and that was very disappointing to see.

[colts4ever4]

1 hour ago, 2006Coltsbestever said:

This is off topic but what about our Huskers! I love that QB we have now and the D looks great.

there QB is quiet entertaining to watch..unlike my Oklahoma QB 

[Two_pound]

Now for my opinion of todays game. We looked very good except that triple vanilla, super soft, ridiculous zone defense. The problem with the run game is the linebackers weren't attacking, why I don't know. You have to shoot the gaps, you can't stand six yards back from the line and wait for a lineman to come to you and block. Cross played great today, but you're not going to win many games with your safety making 15 tackles. The talent and speed is there, this defense should be dominant. If you want to see slow, no talent defensive players watch the steelers. What's sad is we are going to lose to that collection of sub division 1 college players in 3 weeks.

[Goatface Killah]

Its always disappointing to lose, but Im pretty encouraged with what I saw today.

 

The offense looks very explosive. That defense is being heralded as a top 3-5 defense this year. We had receivers running free down the field all day. When we get Josh Downs back, look out.

 

Defensively, I think its pretty clear we still need help in the secondary. But I also think Ballard will do something at some point this year to get help there. I dont think there is anything wrong with being patient. And to be fair, thats an offense that people are expecting to light it up this year, so nobody should be surprised at what we saw today. The right addition in the secondary could make a world of difference.

 

What bothered me today was the run defense. If we played better vs the run today, we win this game. I have no doubt about that.

[Restinpeacesweetchloe]

Going to watching this new DL coach closely and hope it wasn’t a mistake to change.

 

What I don’t know is how much does the dline coach have to do with LB?

Just now, Goatface Killah said:

Its always disappointing to lose, but Im pretty encouraged with what I saw today.

 

The offense looks very explosive. That defense is being heralded as a top 3-5 defense this year. We had receivers running free down the field all day. When we get Josh Downs back, look out.

 

Defensively, I think its pretty clear we still need help in the secondary. But I also think Ballard will do something at some point this year to get help there. I dont think there us anything wrong with being patient. And to be fair, thats an offense that people are expecting to light it up this year, so nobody should be surprised at what we saw today. The right addition in the secondary could make a world of difference.

 

What bothered me today was the run defense. If we played better vs the run today, we win this game. I have no doubt about that.

If Ballard didn’t do it all off season he isn’t doing it after the season starts.

[Goatface Killah]

3 minutes ago, Restinpeacesweetchloe said:

Going to watching this new DL coach closely and hope it wasn’t a mistake to change.

 

What I don’t know is how much does the dline coach have to do with LB?

If Ballard didn’t do it all off season he isn’t doing it after the season starts.

What you just said makes absolutely no sense. 

[Restinpeacesweetchloe]

75% passing by stroud. Ha ha

10 minutes ago, Goatface Killah said:

What you just said makes absolutely no sense. 

My question was more about scheme. Did the scheme with the new DL coach hurt the linebackers?   And does his scheme hurt the run game?

[ColtStrong2013]

Just now, Restinpeacesweetchloe said:

75% passing by stroud. Ha ha

he was 77% last year with less weapons and no run game… 

19 minutes ago, Two_pound said:

Now for my opinion of todays game. We looked very good except that triple vanilla, super soft, ridiculous zone defense. The problem with the run game is the linebackers weren't attacking, why I don't know. You have to shoot the gaps, you can't stand six yards back from the line and wait for a lineman to come to you and block. Cross played great today, but you're not going to win many games with your safety making 15 tackles. The talent and speed is there, this defense should be dominant. If you want to see slow, no talent defensive players watch the steelers. What's sad is we are going to lose to that collection of sub division 1 college players in 3 weeks.

What is going to happen in the stock market tomorrow Nostradamus?