Doyel: After building 19-point lead in Baltimore, Colts played scared and blew it
The Indianapolis Colts lost this game.
That’s not what they’ll be saying in Baltimore, of course. They’ll be saying the Ravens won this Monday Night Football thriller, and they’ll be correct. The scoreboard shows the Ravens with a 31-25 victory, and the statistics show Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson producing more than 500 yards of total offense and directing four long touchdown drives on the Ravens’ final four possessions. In Baltimore they’ll say the Ravens won this game, and that’s fine.
But we don’t live in Baltimore. Here, we can say this:
The Colts lost this game.
Want to be nice? Talk about the kicker, Rodrigo Blankenship, the lovable nerd with the Lego’s hobby and the hip injury and the three kicks he missed, any one of which that could’ve won this game.
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Want to be even nicer? Talk about the attrition in the secondary, with the Colts beginning this game without one starting perimeter cornerback (Rock Ya-Sin) and his backup (T.J. Carrie), and ending it without the other starting outside corner (Xavier Rhodes) as well as two safeties (Khari Willis, Andrew Sendejo). The Colts were leading 25-9 when Rhodes went out in the fourth quarter. He actually knocked himself silly, smashing into Ravens tight end Mark Andrews and coming up wobbly and stiff-legged. He was led off the field, and to the locker room. The Colts’ defense was never the same.
That final sentence is one you say, if you want to be really, really nice to the Colts.
The Colts’ defense was never the same.
You could also quote Colts coach Frank Reich, when he said this of the Ravens:
“They did what it took to win this game,” Reich said.
Yes. But the Colts did what it took to lose it.
Colts DC Matt Eberflus dared Lamar Jackson to beat them; how dumb
First person I’m blaming for this loss is defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus. Don’t ask me how to stop Lamar Jackson with cornerbacks named BoPete Keyes and Anthony Chesley, but that’s not my job. It falls to Eberflus, and clearly he has no idea. With a 22-3 lead late in the third quarter, he channeled his inner Chuck Pagano, his inner Ted Monachino, his inner Greg Manusky, which is to say:
Eberflus got scared.
Terrified of losing this game, he forgot he was trying to win it. With exhausted linebackers and awful defensive backs who couldn’t cover anybody, Eberflus played it safe. He wasn’t daring Lamar Jackson to beat the Colts; he was conceding that part. Eberflus was daring Jackson to beat the clock.
You know how that turned out.
Jackson passed for 442 yards, which is bad, but how he did it? So much worse. Jackson came into the game having the least accurate season of his career (60.9% accuracy), and having posted games of 51.6% and 59.5% in his past two outings. Jackson’s passer rating this season is a career-low 89.3. Well, it was. All of those numbers – his accuracy, his passer rating – will rise after he went 37-for-43 (86%) for a passer rating of 140.5.
Eberflus did that by giving Jackson whatever he wanted. Turns out, Jackson wanted the game.
Now then, the players get some blame here too. The aforementioned Sendejo is bad at football, which makes his current occupation in Indianapolis odd. He can’t tackle. He can’t even touch the guys he’s trying to tackle – he whiffs like Dave Kingman – and the one time he did make contact, he led with his head and knocked himself silly on the Ravens’ touchdown drive in overtime. He was helped off the field, and didn’t return.
What Eberflus needed to do was bring pressure. Blitz, stunt, show every member of the Colts defense a picture of his contract next to a paper shredder – I don’t care how he caused the pressure. He just needed to cause it. But he didn’t, and an exhausted defense was helpless.
Frank Reich didn’t help matters any by waiting until the Ravens had driven to the Colts’ 7-yard line to call timeout in overtime. Now, you’re giving your defense a break?
Thing is – and it’ll get lost after the way they choked this game away – the Colts actually showed something. They’re 1-4, but they might not stink. They have a quarterback who can throw, receivers who can catch and runners who can run.
If only they had a kicker who could kick.
Rodrigo Blankenship was injured, but it's still a Colts choke job
If Blankenship is healthy, the Colts win this game. You have to know that. He missed a 47-yarder on the final play of regulation, and before that he was 5-for-5 on kicks from 40-49 yards, and was 11-for-12 on all kicks inside 50. The only miss in there was the 37-yarder that Calais Campbell blocked late in the fourth quarter.
A healthy Blankenship makes that 47-yard kick, I’m saying, and in Indianapolis we’re writing how the Colts won this game, and in Baltimore they’re saying the Ravens lost it. Which is just so typical. Poor losers over there.
Blankenship injured his hip early in the game, and the Colts tried different things – they had punter Rigoberto Sanchez attempt a 42-yarder (he missed), and they went for it on fourth-and-11 at the 37 rather than have anyone try a 55-yarder. Sanchez’s miss, which followed a conversion on that fourth down, was nullified by a Baltimore penalty. Five yards closer, Blankenship tried from 37 and made it. But he pulled an extra point and didn’t get enough lift on his later 37-yard attempt, though there’s another goat there.
Colts guard Mark Glowinski missed Calais Campbell. Don’t ask me how an NFL offensive lineman misses a guy as large as the 6-8, 300-pound Ravens defensive tackle, but Campbell turned himself sideways – getting skinny, they call that – and Glowinski must have confused the huge Raven wearing No. 93 for an 8-by-11 piece of paper, and Campbell slid past him for an easy block.
Even with the injured kicker and the depth-shy secondary, the Colts had a 98% chance of winning this game, according to the statistical websites that study win probabilities. They had that chance because Carson Wentz was having one hell of a game: 25-for-35 for 402 yards, two touchdowns and a 128.5 passer rating. Jonathan Taylor was running for 53 yards on 15 carries and catching three passes for 116 yards, including an electric 76-yard screen-turned-TD.
Rookie tight end Kylen Granson made two catches and looked legit. Michael Pittman Jr. had six catches for 89 yards and looked almost No. 1 receiver-like. Ashton Dulin and Zach Pascal were just fine. So were tight ends Mo Alie-Cox and Jack Doyle, though Doyle got away with a stupid, immature move late in the game, shoving Ravens cornerback Tavon Young’s head into the turf after a play, then getting rewarded by Young’s retaliatory hit, which the referees punished with the 15-yard penalty that made Blankenship’s final miss possible.
We love Jack Doyle around here, but on ESPN, analyst Louis Riddick was calling that head-shove “super cheap,” and Riddick wasn’t wrong.
Nope, the only wrong folks on this night were Colts. Their coaches didn’t coach well enough, their general manager didn’t provide them enough secondary depth – Andrew Sendejo? BoPete Keyes? Seriously? – their starting right guard didn’t see the 6-8, 300-pound giant trying to block a kick, and their kicker missed twice in the last 4½ minutes of regulation of a game they lost in overtime.
Just don’t tell me about Blankenship’s injury. That almost sounds like an excuse, and there is no excuse for blowing a 16-point lead in the fourth quarter, something the Colts had never done since relocating to Indianapolis in 1984.
The last time the Colts blew a 16-point lead in the fourth quarter? On ESPN, they were saying it was 1983. Their final season in Baltimore.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.
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