Stampede Blue
I’d like to start by saying that no team is 44 players deep. Any team that loses a starter at any position, runs the risk of seeing a unit derailed. “Next man up” is not just what you hear from the Colts, it is what each team preaches. Also, no team is going to finish the season with the same 22 starters that they begin the season with. What you hope is that in the unfortunate event that you do lose a player, you lose it where you have good depth, or at a position that can be minimized a bit.
The Colts roster is set for competition at training camp and will likely stay that way until other teams start making financial decisions. I do not believe we get that impact Edge player via trade, since we do not have a 1st round pick to trade for one that could become available. That means that only players who cost more than their teams believe they are worth, are candidates to be released and subsequently signed. It is similar at WR, although there are still some free agents out there who could challenge our current group for WR3.
Now, start going through the positions and ask yourself “What happens if (insert player here) goes down?” If we keep the roster as is, seeing an Edge go down has to make you wonder what the depth would look like? The depth after Latu and Key looks capable if you are replacing Key with Clemmons or JTT and looks deep with the rookie picks, but losing Latu would be much harder to overcome.
Losing Buck or Grove would be a hit, even with an improving Adebawore and new acquisition Wooden. The running game is hurt if it is Stewart that goes down and the pass rush loses even more juice if it is Buck that misses time. Losing a starting LB might be rough. Even though we have penciled Allen and Davis-Gaither into the starting roles, we simply have a whole bunch of players that we really do not have any sort of read on, so absolutely anyone could emerge as useful or better, or never see non special teams snaps. It is hard for me to consider the impact of losing a guy that I have never seen play in Allen, but maybe one of these second tier guys will emerge. It is for this reason that I believe we see Pratt back in Indy at some point.
The defensive backfield is a group which definitely has some injury history, so just how devastating would it be to lose one? Most say Gardner, Ward, and Walley will start, so how much would losing one of them hurt? It is not a barren unit for depth, but losing either of the outside guys looks like a bigger hit than losing our slot. Also losing a boundary CB, is seeing significant cap going unutilized. At Safety, again I would predict a Bynum-Haulcey duo....
