Stampede Blue
It is great to have a 44 year old vocal leader on your team, but his role should not be as your starting QB. Yesterday, Rivers made the entire team feel like they had a chance to win as a 13.5 point underdog. The rest of the team maintained that feeling, even after watching dying quails, stumbles, and a 15 yard max on the ball flight of their QB. The feeling was “We are going to win this dag-gon thing”, which should be how a team feels each and every week. A QB can be and often is the guy that the team looks to for confidence, but as a rule that confidence is placed in the QB’s ability. The other person that is supposed to make you feel like you are going to win each and every time you step on the field, is the coach.
The coach that had his unit ready to roll against the Seahawks, was Lou and his defense. You can say what you want about not protecting a lead with 47 seconds left, but his unit was the only reason that 16 points was looking like enough on the day. His players saw the practices and likely knew that they would have to be at the top of their game if the Colts had any chance to win. I believe if Ward or Gardner would have been available, those 16 points would have been enough. Giving up 50 yards of rushing and holding them to 2 of 13 on 3rd down conversions, should win you most contests. Based on their play, I held out hope for 59 minutes and 42 seconds, that the Colts could pull this one out.
Rivers is getting a lot of flowers this morning and getting on the field under his widely discussed circumstances is quite the story. Most of his accolades are coming from two aspects. The first is that he was making a lot of calls at the line and he is getting credit for getting the offense into the right play. The second is the infectious enthusiasm he had for the game and the moment. Those two qualities were nearly enough to overshadow the fact that the team gained 215 yards on the day, with 120 of those yards coming through the air.
I don’t point to those numbers out to disparage Rivers. My reason for bringing this up goes back to the two things that Rivers got a lot of credit for, by getting the team into the right play and getting them fired up. I’ve never played a down of competitive football, but those sound two things sound like things that the coach should be able to accomplish. I’ll catch some heat, but I think that Steichen should have had Leonard prepared to make those reads and then rallied the rest of the team to believe in the next man up. In short, I believe that Steichen is good at designing plays, but I do...
