First of all, sorry this post is a bit late. Week 6 for the Colts was a Sunday Night Football showdown against the Washington Redskins, and by now, we've all but forgotten that game. However, it's worth noting a few things as we press forward with this crazy NFL season.
The most obvious things to take away form the Redskins game are the injuries. This year seems to be the year for anyone in blue to get hurt, and Week 6 was no different. Dallas Clark - gone for the year. Austin Collie - out for several weeks. Joe Addai - out indefinitely with a really rare injury to the nerve in his neck. Whew, let's hope the second half of the season is better to us than the second half of last week's game.
On a football strategy note, before all of those injuries took place, the Colts were relatively back to their old selves. Early on, Peyton threw some passes that easily could have been intercepted by the Redskins, and they just flat out dropped the pass. But I'm a firm believer that even though that happened 3 or 4 times, if one of those had actually been picked off, it wouldn't have happened again. That's just how Peyton works. He'll play with fire sometimes as long as he's not getting burned, but if he does get picked off, then he settles down a little and plays more conservative. I wouldn't put too much stock in the recent argument that Peyton is starting to struggle and the whole Indy ship is going down. Overall, PM is still having one of his best years ever, and that's with tons of injuries to deal with. Can't ask for more than that.
In the actual game, early in the second quarter, the Colts gave us something we haven't seen in quite some time. They were in "hurry up" offense mode, ala 2003, when the Peyton Manning, Marvin Harrison, and Edgerrin James put the Colts on the map with a dynamic offense. Today's column will talk a bit about the Colts' offensive flexibility, and how they make it so difficult for other teams.
Over the last decade the Colt's offense has evolved, basically to be on whatever kick Peyton Manning is on. Early on, the Colts learned that they could go "no huddle" and attack opposing defenses with a rapid fire pace that usually was reserved for the end of games. Typically, teams would never line up and run plays without huddling up first, unless you were losing and time was running out. Then, it was panic mode..... But the Colts realized that even if they were not in panic mode, they could run that fast paced offense with no huddle, and it would keep the defense on high alert, and would not allow time between plays for players to substitute. So basically the Colts could practice a fast pace all week long, and then hit a team with it in the first half and completely wear them out, not to mention put up a lot of points fast. Then in the second half, the Colts would run the ball (see week 5 review) and take advantage of a tired defense, and just control the rest of the game. But after a couple of years of that, the NFL started to catch on, and became better at defending the no huddle offense by mixing up the defensive agendas. Defenses realized that if the Colts were in hurry up mode, the way to beat them was with random blitzes or weird coverages that surprised Peyton. If another team could throw something weird into the mix on defense, one or two big plays each game would result in horrible interceptions for the Colts, and sometimes those plays would frustrate Peyton so much that it would lead to further mistakes by the Colts. This is known as the "Patriot Years" by my brother and I. Teams like the Patriots found ways to make a few big plays that were so monumental, that it just felt like fate was on their side. It didn't matter if Peyton had made 100 correct decisions, the one bad one seemed to always cost the Colts the game. Enter, the Patriot Years, Volume 2.
The next phase of the Colts offense was to slow each play down, calling fake plays, changing plays before the ball was snapped and making defenses wait FOREVER, before they play actually started. By the time the ball was snapped, the Colts had called a play, changed it, called a different one (maybe fake) and seen how the defense reacted to all of the calls, pointing, moving and such. By that time Peyton had "learned" what the defense was hoping to do, and would just call the most safe, reliable, appropriate play for that situation. It was the exact opposite of the hurry up offense. It was the slow down offense, making the other team realize that they had no control over anything. In a twist of irony, the theory that you had to "get in Peyton's head" was now being turned around and used against every defense in the league. Thank you New England!
But as is the case with everything, other teams started learning from Colts, and many teams in the NFL began operating similar to Indy. Because of this, it wasn't quite as much of a novelty, and defenses all across the league began to get comfortable with this style. So basically, defenses disciplined themselves to not even bother with whatever Peyton was doing or saying. They just wander around, not really moving or lining up, and wait until the play clock winds down. Then after Peyton had done his call, fake call, real call, new call routine, the defense would actually line up and Peyton would be stuck running whatever play was the last one called. This concept actually works against the Colts, and basically concedes the fact that Peyton is the smartest player. But even if he's the smartest, other teams are waiting to line up, and making it so that Peyton can't even make any decisions. Then when the defense finally does line up in their actual formation, Peyton has about 3 seconds to communicate with the rest of the team and call the play.
All of this history of the Colts offense brings us back to the second quarter of the Redskins game. The Colts went back to the hurry up style, and it was faster than ever. After a successful play, Peyton would call out the next play while everyone was running down the field to line up. Then they would snap the ball and start the next play before the defense even lined up. They knew that most teams have started working very hard at disguising their defense by doing all that standing around and learning how to line up at the last minute. By going back to a hurry up offense, the Colts put the pressure back on defenses, and made Washington waste most of what they had worked on throughout the week. Brilliant.
Look for the Colts to continue with this on Monday night against Houston. I'm guessing that you'll see the usual offense with Peyton yelling and pointing and taking forever, and then BOOM - they'll go into turbo mode for a number of plays just to terrorize the Houston defense. And just when Houston get's used to the fast tempo, they'll slow it back down and make each play take forever again. Basically, anything to make sure that Indy is in control. That's how we like it, and as long as #18 is in blue, we'll get to see it.
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