Five Observations: Indianapolis Colts Vs. Jacksonville Jaguars

The Indianapolis Colts played their final game against the Jacksonville Jaguars this Sunday and again walked away with a convincing win. It took the Colts a little while into the game to show up but they did and won convincingly. The final score was 23-3 but the score doesn’t tell the entire story of what happened in this game.

Slow Starts

The Indianapolis Colts have shown a tendency to start slow in games since Chuck Pagano took over. During the start of this season, that was a problem that looked to be behind this team. Unfortunately the Colts reminded the fans of those slow starts last Sunday. The Colts offense only managed to score six points against the Jaguars in the first half of the game. Most of the offensive issues had to do with the offensive line and the protection of Andrew Luck. Luckily the Colts corrected their problems and came out scoring in the second half. After putting up two touchdowns in the third quarter, the Colts were able to cruise to victory but these slow starts are still an issue. Against a better quality of opponent, the Colts would have most likely fallen behind by too much in the first half to even make a win possible.

Defense is capable of shutting down bad offense

The Indianapolis Colts need to get better on defense. Many people will point to how this team is overmatched against quality opponents and think that a coaching change is necessary. However, when you look at how this defense plays against bad offenses, they can look dominate. The largest score allowed against a bad offense is 28 points to the Texans but some of those points came from the Texans’ dominant defense. The point I’m trying to make is that maybe the Colts do possess a good defensive coaching staff but they don’t have the talent to compete yet. If you want to put that on the front office, that’s fine but it is very hard to blame Chuck Pagano for how poorly this defense looks at times.

T.Y. makes good on his promise  

What a day for T.Y. Hilton who has been climbing up into the conversation for one of the best WR’s in the NFL lately. For those that don’t know, T.Y. Hilton daughter was born on the morning of last Sunday’s game. T.Y.’s agent had said that T.Y. would play and was going to score a touchdown for his new baby girl. In the third quarter, T.Y. made good on that promise and with that touchdown he basically put the game away. It was an emotional day for T.Y. and you can see how much this all meant to him in this post-game interview:

Should the Colts force the ball to Reggie?

Reggie Wayne currently has the longest streak with three or more receptions in a game. Nearing the end of the game against the Jaguars this record was in jeopardy. With only one reception all game, the Colts decided to throw two garbage time receptions to Reggie to help him keep the streak alive. Many people have claimed that this was a bad idea and that the franchise shouldn’t be doing this. However, the thing is that Reggie Wayne means so much to this franchise, not only for what he did before Luck came to town but the fact that he came back in free agency to help turn the Colts around. If anyone deserves this it is Reggie and because of that I have no problem with how the Colts handled the situation. I will say that by teams doing things like this to keep records alive, it makes the record seem less impressive. Why not let the records naturally start and finish without forcing anything?

The Refs

There have been a few times this season when I have either written, said, or tweeted my anger with the refs. You could bring up the Eagles game when the ref saw T.Y. getting held but made no call. Or we can look at last week when the refs were equally horrendous for both teams. Overall, the Colts have seen a lot of incompetent officials. This game was different and we got to see what a good officiating crew looks like. The refs did a good job of choosing when to throw a flag and when not to. They also were able to let the players play without letting the game get out of hand at any point. It really was a job well done and the type of officiating that I would like to see on a more consistent basis.