(by Ross Jacobs)
Another rather dull, one-sided affair with all backups, but one thing really stood out here that has my attention… If the Colts starting defense is as terrible as their backups, this team is in a lot of trouble.
A lot was made of rookie QB Jack Strand’s performance here, and we’ll discuss that in a minute, but a lot of it had to do with this awful Colts defense. There’s no one area that was particularly egregious either. It was everyone. Although if I had to pick out one group I would say the linebackers, and that leads me to the core issue here.
Player Notes...
-- The Colts drafted LB CJ Allen from Georgia in the 2nd round with the hopes that he would step in and be a Day 1 starter and defensive leader. That’s how he was hyped up at Georgia and during the draft. But he was playing behind at least three other linebackers here, not one of whom I recognized. And as bad as all of them were, Allen might have been the worst. Slow, slow to process, couldn’t tackle anyone in a phone booth. It was bad.
I don’t see how the Colts can possibly put him in with the starters, and apparently they know that or he wouldn’t have been behind all these other no-name guys, but they have to start someone and I don’t see a single good option. And whoever they start is going to team up with Akeem Davis-Gaither who got cut from the awful Bengals defense for being so bad…
The Colts spiral continues: https://x.com/TexansCommenter/status/2053905800087716295?lang=en
-- Sauce Gardner and Deforest Buckner are going to have to make up for a lot of sins it seems like, and if they can’t carry the day this is shaping up to be one of the worst defenses in the league. There haven’t been many things this preseason that have grabbed my attention, but the Colts defense really stood out in a bad way.
-- Now that we’ve discussed how bad the Indy defense was, that should provide some context for the Jack Strand performance. I’ve seen some people online suggesting he could start at some point this year or perhaps be the future franchise QB. Please just stop. That is NOT going to happen. We have got to stop jumping on every random QB that doesn’t immediately look terrible, in a preseason game no less, and try to imagine them as a franchise savior.
Strand ain’t it. I will say that for a rookie from Moorhead St he was impressive. The moment didn’t look too big for him. He knew what to do. Ran the playbook. Took what the defense gave him (which was everything). Showed a little mobility. But if you watched you could see the cracks. It was all checkdowns, simple rollouts, and one read deep passes. He made the plays he needed to make against the softest defense I’ve seen this preseason. But he is in no way, shape, or form ready for a starting NFL defense. If Strand starts a game for the Falcons this year you’ll know the season has gone completely off the rails in Atlanta.
-- Zachariah Branch caught a nice 15 yard pass against this pathetic backup Indy unit. That’s something I guess. He’s still running solidly with the 2’s and doesn’t look like much to me. Wasn’t a fan before the draft and nothing he’s done so far has made me think otherwise.
-- Riley Leonard started for the Colts ahead of Anthony Richardson. They both look terrible, so Indy better hope and pray Daniel Jones’s Achilles is fine. It’s really a shame with Richardson because he is very talented and you see the flashes of what he could do, but he hasn’t developed at all and in fact looks worse than he did as a rookie in my opinion. His career is basically over at this point.
-- Seth McGowan is the RB2 for the Colts. I’m not hanging onto DJ Giddens any longer. I liked him when he came out, but he’s been perpetually hurt and not making an impression. No sense trying to fight an uphill battle. McGowan isn’t all that impressive, but at least he runs hard and is consistent.
-- Deion Burks is another rookie WR I saw get hyped up a lot because of his measurables, but he’s not a real wide receiver. His on field movements don’t match the testing numbers and he’s not a good route runner. I doubt he even makes the final 53 man roster.
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