Stampede Blue
The Indianapolis Colts are abroad in Munich Germany to take on the Atlanta Falcons in week 10 of the 2025 season, kickoff is at 9:30 A.M. EST.
Last week our Colts walked into Pennsylvania and were dominated by the Pittsburg Steelers. It was an odd turn of events for a squad that had been on a run unlike anything the Indianapolis Colts had ever seen. The Indy o-line was soundly defeated all day long, Daniel Jones was rattled and turned the ball over at NYDJ rates. It was a bad game. And the Steelers played great.
So now the concern becomes is this something that can happen again? Will Daniel Jones go back to being the guy he was who started the season or is he who he had been to start his career with the Giants? Or is the answer just somewhere in the middle? Time will tell on all of those things but last week made one thing clear: when the offense has a down day the defense needed more star-power if it was going to have a chance to win games for Indy.
So Chris Ballard did something about that by bringing in Sauce Gardner from the Jets. At this point you’ve heard every single take there is to have on the trade. You hold your opinion on how good you think it was or wasn’t and all that’s fine and good but if he is who Chris Ballard thinks he is as a player, well, I’m just looking forward to watching him play this week. Once Mooney Ward returns, that duo on the outside is going to be appointment watching for me. Another thing to note: Sauce Gardner is very good but he is human. He will give up a pass on occasion. Relax. It happens.
The Falcons come into this game 3-5. They’re a strange team having lost to teams like the Dolphins while having beaten teams like the Bills. Their offense ranks 28th in points scored but their defense has the 13th ranked scoring defense in the NFL. Though they can’t stop the run, they have allowed the fewest passing yards in the NFL this season.
In theory the Colts are the much better team in this game but Indy has a few things working against them. First, this is a non-divisional opponent. Indy plays Atlanta once every four years. The second thing is that this game is being played in Germany. Over-seas games are almost always weird. I don’t have any data to back up that assertion, I don’t have much analysis (that I’ll list in this article) as to how or why they’re weird. They just are.
The good news is those two factors cut both ways. The Falcons have to deal with the exact same set of circumstances. The difficult part is I can never predict which team will be impacted more by those circumstances. Today could be very good or very bad. Time will tell.
Falcons: 24
Colts: 33
As...
