Opinion: Colts got their '(expletive) kicked' and it's possible they're not a good football team
INDIANAPOLIS – The 2021 Indianapolis Colts don’t appear to be very good, and it’s possible they’re bad. Truth be told, it could be worse than that. It’s reasonable to conclude, after watching this 28-16 loss to the Seattle Seahawks in the season opener, that the Colts do, in fact, suck.
Colts coach Frank Reich wasn’t willing to say any of that. He wasn’t willing to say even that his offensive line was bad – “I have to watch the tape,” he said when the first question of his postgame news conference addressed that group – but you and me, we saw how the Colts looked on Sunday. We saw their defense get shredded by Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson (18-for-23, 254 yards, four touchdowns). We saw the Colts' receivers fail to get open. We saw some weird coaching decisions. And we saw an epic failure by the offensive line.
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Afterward, we heard philosophy from the Colts. We heard that owner Jim Irsay, who has demanded since the first day of training camp that his team win its 2021 regular-season opener, had become philosophical in defeat.
“It’s a marathon,” Irsay told his team in the locker room afterward, referring to an NFL season, “not a sprint.”
From Reich, we heard another of life’s lessons.
“Life is full of disappointments,” he said. “And (this loss) was extremely disappointing.”
From new quarterback Carson Wentz, we heard the sound of Kumbaya. Asked about an offense that scored just 16 points and gained just 298 yards, Wentz reminded us that the offense actually scored on their first (field goal) and last (touchdown) drives of the game.
“We can take those two drives and see what we can do, what we are made of, and build from there,” Went decided.
All of it was nice and encouraging – hey, maybe the Colts don’t suck – but then Darius Leonard started talking.
“We got our (expletive) kicked,” he said.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Jim Irsay really wanted Colts to end season-opening skid
Maybe you knew the Colts had lost their last seven season-openers. Me, I had no idea … and I’ve been here for six of ‘em. The season’s a marathon, you know, not a sprint, and that bizarre, mostly meaningless streak of first-game failure hadn’t resonated with me. Probably hadn’t resonated with much of this locker room, given that the only player who has been here for all seven losses was T.Y. Hilton, and he’s out with a neck injury anyway.
But Jim Irsay made a big deal of it when the 2021 Indianapolis Colts came together for the first time at training camp in Westfield, where Irsay demanded – not requested, but demanded – that his players win the season opener for the first time since 2013.
Irsay kept banging on that drum, sending text messages to players – Darius Leonard said he received a text earlier this week at 1:57 a.m. – to remind them of their owner’s wishes. Seemed strange in real time, and seems even weirder now that the game is over. All that attention on a negative trend, and it didn’t work? Go figure.
The Colts weren’t fired up to start this game. They came out flat, giving up touchdowns on Seattle’s first two possessions. They trailed 14-3 early in the second quarter, and it was 28-10 before they scored on their final real drive of the game.
Weirdly, some of their best players were some of their worst on Sunday.
Braden Smith, the right tackle who signed a four-year, $72 million extension this offseason, was dominated like we’ve never seen. Because believe me, if we’d seen this sort of thing before, he wouldn’t have received a $72 million extension. One Seahawks defensive end sprinted around him to smash into Wentz, and later in that drive another Seahawks defensive end, Darrell Taylor, bull-rushed right through Smith on his way to sacking Wentz.
That was fourth-and-2 from the Seattle 18. The Colts trailed 21-10 with 10 minutes left. They needed a field goal and a touchdown sandwiched around one defensive stop to force overtime, which is why it seemed awfully strange – even cynical – for Reich to go for it rather than kick the short field goal to pull the Colts within 21-13.
Then again, he’d been watching his defense. Maybe he suspected they were no match for Russell Wilson, who did in fact drive the Seahawks 73 yards in seven plays to make it 28-10. The game was over. The fans were going home.
I’m wondering, knowing this fan base as I do, if they went home grumbling about the guy who’d later say, “We got our (butt) kicked.”
Because Darius Leonard’s rump had Seattle footprints all over it. But Colts fans love him. So maybe they didn’t notice.
Darius Leonard was not good
Leonard made the biggest play of the game for the defense. That should be noted. Attacking from the side, he punched the ball from the hands of Seahawks running back Chris Carson with 5½ minutes left in the third quarter and the Colts trailing 21-10.
Maybe this was the start of the turnaround. Wentz immediately completed a 15-yard pass to running back Jonathan Taylor to get the Colts onto the cusp of field-goal range, and after three runs gained nine yards, the Colts faced fourth-and-1 from the Seattle 31 and gamblin’ Frank Reich was going for it and Carson Wentz was crouching behind center Ryan Kelly and …
Fumbling the snap. Seattle recovers.
Darius Leonard made one play all game, and it had just been wasted. He managed only five tackles on the day, and didn’t notch his first until there were less than three minutes left in the first half. And he made that one 13 yards downfield after he’d been unable to stop Seahawks receiver Dee Eskridge from getting the corner on a jet sweep. Later he’d have another lackluster meeting with Eskridge on a jet sweep, missing a tackle as Eskridge turned a nothing play into a nine-yard gain.
When Darius Leonard is not good, the Colts’ defense has no chance. Especially on a day when the Colts’ two-deep coverage package featuring safeties Khari Willis and Julian Blackmon manages to play no-deep, allowing Lockett to split them for a 69-yard touchdown in the final minute of the first half.
Same goes for the Colts’ offense on a day the offensive line isn’t very good. Left tackle Julien Davenport started well but crumbled, whiffing as Seahawks defensive end Rasheem Green went around him for a sack on the final play of the first quarter and then forcing Wentz to run for his life for most of the final three quarters.
But it wasn’t just Davenport. Braden Smith was a turnstile, remember. And All-Pro center Ryan Kelly was thrown aside on one play by 6-3, 345-pound defensive tackle Bryan Mone, who flattened Wentz to force an incomplete pass. Wentz, who was 8-for-9 to start the game, finished 25-for-37 for 251 yards and two touchdowns to Zach Pascal. The second TD made it 28-16 with 2:08 left, and the Colts needed the PAT to get within 11 points. Reich went for two, though, and didn’t get it when Wentz rolled out and was smothered by the left side of the Seattle line.
Asked a second time about his offensive line during the postgame interview, a leading question that suggested everyone knew the answer, Reich demurred again.
“I’m not ready to dump this thing and say the offensive line played bad,” he said. “So forgive me for that. I need to see the film. I’m not saying they can’t get better; we all can. I’ll dive into the film and make a full evaluation after that.”
We don’t have the film, but we don’t need it. let’s dump this thing and say it: The offensive line played bad. The defense wasn’t that much better, aside from defensive tackle DeForest Buckner (a sack, another quarterback hit, and a tackle for loss). The running backs rarely made something of nothing, the receivers weren’t getting open enough – or maybe Wentz just wasn’t seeing them – and the special teams didn’t do anything special.
The Seahawks, who won 12 games last season and have averaged 11 wins since 2012, could be very, very good again. They probably are. That explains some of what we saw from the Colts on Sunday, but not everything. Doesn’t explain the offensive line’s misery. Doesn’t explain Darius Leonard’s lack of impact. Doesn’t explain that 69-yard touchdown by Lockett, or Reich’s repeatedly unnecessary aggression given the score.
Life’s full of disappointments, but remember this: The Colts scored on their first and last drives of the game. That shows what they can do – it shows what they’re made of – so try this: Ignore everything that happened in between. Sing Kumbaya. You’ll feel better, and if you don’t? At least it wasn’t you that got your (butt) kicked.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.