Monday, September 8, 2008

Not Ready for Prime Time

Bears 29 - Colts 13
That was frustrating, but not jump of the roof bad. We'll react tomorrow, but off the top of my head, without seeing any tape, the O-line looked piss poor.

7 comments:

Bob M. said...

This was a game scripted for an assessment by Stan. Summary (I'll leave it to him to go in depth): OL failures, run game failures, missing Clark... and Manning looks ordinary. I have no arguments with that.

On top of that, I'll say Chicago outcoached us. And outplayed us.

Frustrating. How is it we can have a total OL collapse in terms of injuries, lose Clark, and have Manning throw 6 INTs in the rain and give up two return TDs to an AFC championship team and still lose by only two points AWAY last year, yet with similar OL problems, no Clark, but no INTs, no rain, no return TDs (fumble aside) we get wasted by the Bears? How? For one thing, the Bears D is pretty darn good--I suspect we'll see that all year. For another, we really miss Jeff Saturday--I suspect that really limited Manning's audible package.

Was the absense of Tommie Harris--and not the presence of Grossman--the real reason we won the SB two years ago?

OL looked bad, Manning looked a bit rusty, and run game looked underused and stale. We need balance--it reminded me of most playoff games that we lost--no run game and Manning passes every freakin' down.

The football gods gave us gifts today and we coughed up a hairball in response. Tied with the Jags for the AFCS basement.

Ouch.

Bob M. said...

Oh, and the tackling was 2006esque. We'd get a solid stop for 2 yards, then let up a run for 11. And a 50-yarder will kill you every time.

Did they take the bears too lightly? Hopefully this is the Colts "Spygate Flame Under Our Ass" game of 2008. They looked pretty ordinary in most respects.

shake'n'bake said...

Stop with the 2006 talk, without the 50 yarder Forte got 3.3 YPC

Bob M. said...

Shake, you probably already say my response to that on the FO Audibles page.

Same can be said of Eddie George's 68 yard TD run in the 1999 playoff game.

Don't take this personally because it is NOT intended that way, but it's a loser's mindset in my view. When the Colts sucked in the 80s and 90s, I took comfort in that thinking and always said "well, at least we had a 100 yard rusher today, or two sacks, and other crap. When you go 3-13, that thinking might provide comfort, but doesn't necessarily point the way forward. (i.e. if a player or coach thinks like that they're sunk).

Since we now have higher expectations, your kind of thinking might be helpful for a teaching lesson: "look, we didn't suck, we blew one play." But my view is now, "If you want to be the best, you cannot blow even one play, or that will be the play that most likely kills you."

Bend, don't break.

What plays did our D blow against KC, Balt, or Chi in the SB run we had? I'd say not a single one in three of the biggest games of the year. That's how you win it all. And maybe they blew only one or two against NE, which Manning and company reclaimed for us.

When you're up by 3 scores, well, a blown play is "absorbable," but still not okay. I have seen too damn many of them in the past 3.5 decades of Colts-watching to let them go. If we were up by 35 points, that 50-yard run would still make me grind my teeth into little chips of enamel. As my wife readily admits, I take this too seriously.
Sorry to sound all preachy. It's just a bad day, as we all can relate to. My new mantra--18-1!

Deshawn Zombie said...

Our D did blow a big run against both NE and Chicago in the 07 Playoffs.

It happens.

shake'n'bake said...

My point was it's a lot easier to fix one defensive lapse than the D giving up 5-6 yards on every run.

shake'n'bake said...

in 2006 it took the return of the top defensive player in the league, a new Sam LB and McFarland getting use to the team around him and the ins and outs of the D.

We don't have all that in reserve this year and luckily we don't need it because it was one lapse