NFL: Why the Indianapolis Colts are set up for success
We are entering the final five weeks of the 2018 NFL season and we have seen some teams really set themselves apart from the rest. You look at the Saints, Rams and Chiefs, who are all putting up north of 35 points per game as the league’s three highest-scoring teams and have lost a combined four games.
Then there are teams like the Texans, Bears and Seahawks who are stringing together winning streaks right now and on Sunday night we will see a matchup of two other highly talented teams in the Chargers and Steelers, who only have three losses on their resume.
I don’t want to undermine what some other teams have done and obviously this is the time of the year a sleeping dragon like the Patriots starts waking up, but I just want to say there are a lot of actual contenders right now. However, I think there is one team that not only looks very dangerous right now, but I believe is on its way to becoming a perennial threat to compete for the Super Bowl – and that’s the Indianapolis Colts.
To explain why I believe they are set up for a bright future, I will talk about different key factors for them going forward.
The investment in the offensive line
Basically ever since the Colts drafted Andrew Luck first overall back in 2012, he has carried this franchise on his back and taken a load of hits to do so. Through his first five years in the league, Luck took an average of 116 hits per season – the highest mark of any team in the league – and his rushing attack wasn’t in the top 20 once during that stretch.
Since their defense was below-average in all but one of those years as well, Luck had to throw the ball a ton to keep up with the opposition as well. While he held on to the ball for too long, trying to create big plays, and didn’t protect his body enough early on, their offensive line was horrendous for pretty much his entire rookie contract.
This took a toll on the young signal-caller. He dealt with a sprained shoulder, a lacerated kidney and abdominal injuries in 2015, about a month into the 2016 season he frayed his labrum and had to play through pain the entire year. Once the season wrapped up, he had initial surgery.
However, he never returned for the upcoming season and even went to Europe to see specialists. It wasn’t until the middle of June of 2018 that he first threw an NFL-regulated football for the first time and now he finally looks like the old Luck again. The organization decided to never let that happen again, by investing heavily in the guys protecting him.
First-round pick Anthony Castonzo was pretty much the only dependable starter for Indy at left tackle since they drafted him a year before Luck and he got rewarded with a big contract in 2015. However, the Colts also spent first round picks on center Ryan Kelly in 2016 and just last April Notre Dame guard Quenton Nelson.
Those three guys make for as good a left side of an O-line as there is in the league. While I understand he is just a rookie, I believe Nelson is on his way into the Hall of Fame if he can stay healthy. I thought it was pretty much a coin toss between him and Saquon Barkley for the best prospect in the draft and both are already clearly top five at their respective position. The guard has also made those two first-rounders next to him better.
So with three excellent starters in the line-up it was time to secure the right side of the line. With the talented yet often injured Jack Mewhort deciding to retire after the Colts had just re-signed him for 2018, there was work to be done.
Chris Ballard had already claimed former Seahawks fourth-round pick Mark Glowinski off waivers a week before last season ended and then signed Matt Slauson early on this offseason to compete for the right guard spot. While he had Le’Raven Clark and Denzelle Good rotating through at right tackle, he realized that Auburn’s Braden Smith had tackle size and decided to bring him in and develop him to stay on the edge full-time.
Slauson did a good job at right guard before he got hurt five weeks into the season, but Glowinski has stepped in and been fantastic for them ever since. Right now he is earning the fifth-best PFF grade among all players at the position. With Castonzo missing the first five games of the season, it was Clark, Good and Joe Haeg splitting time at the tackle spots, but since week five their other rookie Braden Smith has been out at right tackle for every single snap with Castonzo back on Luck’s blind-side.
Now they have their two book-ends, a veteran who has finally found a home at one of the guard spots, an excellent center and a once-in-a-generation type guard in Big Q. However, not only are they all very talented individually, they are communicating exceptionally well and have been outstanding since coming together as a unit.
We all heard about those four straight games in which they didn’t allow a single sack and at times keeping their QB completely untouched before holding the Dolphins to one of those on Sunday, but even more importantly for this offense, they get after it in the run game.
We have all seen that video of Nelson levelling the Jaguars’ Barry Church and my first notes on Smith in the draft evaluations were about his nasty attitude. The Colts can run power and zone equally well, they can pull out on the edges as well as up inside on linebackers and all that opens up easy opportunities off play-action for them.
I will get into their running schemes a little more later on. Luck finally has a reliable rushing attack to complement him and with the natural power they have on the interior, he has room to step up into the pocket. The Colts are tied for the least number of sacks surrendered (11) and they are averaging the best mark of yards per carry in the run game (4.5) since Andrew Luck was drafted.