Indianapolis Colts' surprising top-ranked defense has the respect of its opponents
INDIANAPOLIS — This is not a place like Pittsburgh or Baltimore, Chicago or New York.
There have been no Monsters of the Midway, no Purple People Eaters. No Steel Curtain or Legion of Boom.
The city of Indianapolis simply hasn’t seen a lot of great defenses.
There have been great individual defenders, to be sure. Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis. The shooting star of Bob Sanders. When they were here, those stars were rarely surrounded by the sort of cohesive, deep defense it takes to be considered among the elite.
In the 36 years since the Colts got in the Mayflower trucks and headed west, the franchise has produced just one defense that finished in the top five in total defense, the Tony Dungy-led group in 2007 that finished third and earned Sanders the Defensive Player of the Year award. Only four Indianapolis teams in that time frame have finished in the top five in scoring.
Maybe the time has come.
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The Colts just might have a defense that belongs among the elite this year. Indianapolis ranks first in the NFL in yards allowed, third in scoring, among the top 10 in every major defensive category other than third-down conversions and red-zone rate. Baltimore’s running game, the NFL’s best, just sputtered and stalled to a grinding halt in Lucas Oil Stadium.
But the Colts aren’t ready to place themselves among the elite.
“It’s too early to say,” defensive end Justin Houston said. “I think we need to continue to play and focus on us and continue to get better.”
The rest of the NFL disagrees.
DeForest Buckner gave Colts a superstar
The Colts defensive line jumps out on tape.
Ask anybody that has played them. From the moment opposing coaches and quarterbacks turn on the film, they start worrying about the deep, aggressive, talented group general manager Chris Ballard has assembled.
“You know that’s a defensive front that really loves to rush the passer,” Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford said after getting sacked five times at Ford Field two weeks ago.
Ballard obsesses over the defensive line. Always has. From the moment he arrived in Indianapolis, the general manager has thrown his resources at the defensive line, spending in free agency to fill the spots left thin by second-round draft picks that haven’t produced a bona fide star just yet.
This offseason he took his biggest swing.
DeForest Buckner was the player the Colts defense needed to take the next step. Ballard sent the San Francisco 49ers a first-round pick and dug deep into his wallet, confident he’d finally landed the defensive tackle he needed, “the 3-technique” that “drives this thing.”
The kind of superstar who can make Ravens coach John Harbaugh gush.
“We saw him last year, so we have a little bit of a feel for him,” Harbaugh said last week. “He’s just a very disruptive player, really a powerful guy. He’s not the biggest guy in terms of thickness and all that, but he has a great ability for his length to bend and punch.”
Wait.
Harbaugh’s not done.
“He’s heavy-handed, and can shed, and get off blocks, and hold at point and all of those things,” Harbaugh said. “Also an athletic 3-technique. With the stretch stuff, it’s hard to cut him off, hard to reach him. He does a good job of rushing the passer in there. He has to be considered one of the premier 3-techniques in the league, for sure.”
If Buckner was the only dangerous player on the defensive line, or if he had just one or two players flanking him, the Colts defensive line might not be such a problem.
But he was the finishing piece, not the starter. Emerging nose tackle Grover Stewart is starting to command respect as one of the NFL’s better space eaters against the run, and the Colts can send waves of rushers after the passer, the way Ballard has always envisioned.
“Denico Autry, Buckner, those guys have great length,” Titans coach Mike Vrabel said. “Houston’s power, instincts, he’s always been very good inside. Obviously, (Al-Quadin) Muhammad is a player that plays extremely hard on the edge. Tyquan Lewis has versatility to play outside, to play inside. They have a lot of bodies that they can throw at you.”
Darius Leonard is a 'downhill guy'
When an opposing coach breaks down the Colts defense, gets past the defensive line and starts looking at the rest of the unit, one word always seems to come to mind.
“Speed,” Browns head coach Kevin Stefanski said. “I mean, they are flying around the field. The linebackers are running all over the field, the defensive backs are keeping everything in front of them, making tackles all over the yard. It’s very impressive.”
Ballard saw the defense this way.
More accurately, he followed Tony Dungy’s blueprint, reasoning that speed mattered most on the Lucas Oil Stadium turf. Dungy might not have been able to completely replicate his Tampa Bay defensive success with the Colts, but he still directed four defenses that finished in the top 10 in scoring, a feat that’s only been pulled off five other times in Indianapolis.
Ballard found the player he needed to start building that sort of defense in his second draft.
The modern version of Derrick Brooks.
Darius Leonard.
“One of the best inside linebackers in football in Leonard,” Harbaugh said. “He’s really made a name for himself the last couple of years. He’s rangy, but also runs through gaps. A downhill guy.”
Leonard, the centerpiece of the back seven, has slowly but surely been surrounded by linebackers and defensive backs who also fit the scheme, and the additions of cornerback Xavier Rhodes and rookie free safety Julian Blackmon this season have helped erase one of the defense’s biggest weaknesses.
The past two seasons, Indianapolis was often criticized for not making enough plays on the football, for dropping back into their zones and failing to break on the ball.
That’s not showing up on tape this season. By placing Rhodes (9 passes defended) and Blackmon (6) in the same defensive backfield as ball-hawking nickel Kenny Moore, the Colts are tied for the league lead with 11 interceptions and rank third in passes defended with 45. For comparison’s sake, Indianapolis had only 50 passes defended in the entire 2019 season.
“I think in the secondary, even at the linebacker level, they contest a lot of throws,” Bears offensive coordinator Bill Lazor said. “Even when they’re playing zone, they do a nice job of matching up to the routes and contesting throws, so they don’t really give you the easy ones.”
'They play hard'
Talent is not enough.
Not for a defense to become truly elite. NFL history is littered with defenses that had four or five stars but failed to be a consistently dominant presence.
Leonard thinks he knows why.
“What makes our defense special is we’re selfless guys. We’ve got so many guys risking their bodies just for the next guy to make the play. No one on the defense is saying, ‘Oh, we’ll do our own thing.’” Leonard said. “You see that when you watch film of other defenses. They’re not together. We’re together, no matter what.”
The Colts’ cohesion is evident on tape.
The Tampa-2-inspired defense that coordinator Matt Eberflus installed two years ago has drawn criticism at times for its simplicity and its predominantly zone coverages.
That criticism hasn’t been echoed by Indianapolis opponents this season. When other coaches go through film of the Colts, they see a defense that plays as one, leaving little room for exploitation.
“They play smart, they play really well as a group, they play off of each other,” Bengals coach Zac Taylor said. “They’re consistent. They have really sound fundamentals. They shed blocks. They tackle. They create turnovers in the pass game – that’s really how they’ve blown a couple of these games open. They’re just really disciplined.”
Eberflus has always put a premium on taking away the explosive play.
And although Indianapolis has gone through a couple of halves getting carved up in the passing game, the strategy has more often led to frustration by opposing quarterbacks.
“They start out playing some shell, some Cover-2, and they are going to protect with the shots, and when you do that and you play Cover-2, you've got to be able to run to the ball,” Bears head coach Matt Nagy said. “Now, they will still come down and play one-high and certain times try to mix up coverages because they have to keep you honest.”
The problem is nobody can run the ball on the Colts. Not even Baltimore, the NFL’s most bulletproof running game the past two seasons, a holy matrimony of traditional NFL power concepts and college-style option plays made possible by the speed of Lamar Jackson.
The Indianapolis blueprint in 2020 has been simple.
Suffocate the running game. Force teams to the air.
“The linebackers are fast and play fast,” Lazor said. “I think when the defensive line stunts, they’re very good at it, in how much they go lateral and still penetrate into the backfield. For the offensive line, it appears that things are happening really fast.”
Even the teams that have had some success against the Colts defense for a half or so frequently find themselves frustrated in the next half.
Indianapolis just keeps coming.
“They are not a, very flat out, complex, disguise, different looks (kind of defense),” Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield said. “But they execute well, and they play hard.”
Can this defense handle the quarterbacks to come?
If the Colts defense senses all of this praise, if it’s feeling the exhilaration of hitting the season’s halfway point as the NFL’s No. 1 defense, they’re not letting it show.
At least not publicly.
“You feel the confidence, you feel the swagger, you feel the togetherness of that unit,” Colts head coach Frank Reich said. “They take a lot of pride in the way they’re playing right now.”
But this Colts defense has enough guys who’ve been a part of elite defenses, veteran defenders like Buckner and Houston and Rhodes, to know that they have to play this way for a full season, and they have to prove it against the passing games remaining on the schedule.
Indianapolis hasn’t played any of the NFL’s top 10 offenses in passer rating yet, and the back half of the schedule is littered with dangerous quarterbacks: an MVP candidate (Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers), a cagey veteran (Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger), a supreme talent on a struggling team (Houston’s Deshaun Watson) and two veterans coming into their own (Tennessee’s Ryan Tannehill, Las Vegas’ Derek Carr).
If the Colts can navigate that gauntlet down the stretch, take the fight to those quarterbacks and make life tough on them — even if they don’t shut them down completely, a near-impossibility in today’s offense-oriented NFL — they’ll make good on what their opponents are already calling them, a recognition that they’ve taken the step so many Colts defenses haven’t been able to take.
“A top defense,” Harbaugh said.
The kind the city of Indianapolis has rarely seen.