Bolts From The Blue
This week we are joined by Chris Shepherd of our Colts sister site, Stampede Blue, to help us preview this week’s matchup against Indianapolis.
Despite the lack of (any) preseason hype revolving around the team in Indy due to their quarterback situation, it has somehow ended up being one of their biggest strengths. Daniel Jones is playing the best football of his career and he’s a major player in why the Colts are 5-1.
Before we go to far, let’s go ahead and jump right in! Enjoy!
1.) The Colts have been ON FIRE offensively behind Daniel Jones and his resurgent season at quarterback. Having Jonathan Taylor running the football helps too, but no team has this level of success without a good quarterback leading the huddle. How has Jones found so much success so soon in Indy? What can you attribute it all to thus far?
The first thing I would point to is just how good Shane Steichen has been. Steichen seemingly has built in an answers for anything a defense throw at Jones on every single play he calls. He’s giving Jones easy choices and wide open receivers, consistently.
Secondly, the Colts offensive roster is really good. The offensive line is probably a top 10 unit, Jonathan Taylor is playing like the best back in the league, Michael Pittman Jr isn’t a superstar but he’s a tough, dependable reciver who consistently makes catches through contact, breaks tackles and gets surprising yards after the catch, Alec Pierce is seemingly uncoverable once he’s 15 to 20 yards down field and rookie tight end Tyler Warren is the most complete, pro ready, tight end i can remember watching. Daniel Jones has been really good this year and he might be the worst starter on the offense.
The third thing is Jones himself deserves credit. My first two points are true, but we saw this offense with guys like Richardson, Minshew, Richardson (again), Flacco and Richardson (again, again) and the rosters were similarly strong with those guys playing QB and it was nothing like this. Jones’ preparation is quickly becoming a story in Indy. Peyton Manning’s film study was the stuff of legend and in the six months he’s been in town Daniel Jones film study habits are already being talked about in a very similar way. It’s possible that the Giants were just so awful from top to bottom, that Daniel Jones was always better than anyone thought.
2.) This team is scoring a lot of points but it also helps when your defense is allowing nearly two touchdowns less than what the offense is putting up. What makes this team so stingy on defense?
I’d love to wax poetic about the construction of the defense the same way I just did the offense but I can’t. The fact of the matter is the Colts point differential is so good for two reasons:
1.) The offense scores a ton of points
And
*2.) The Colts have played games this year...
