Offensive line
 

I've watched and rooted for this team since Unitas was our quarterback. Watching this line block, especially run blocking, thrills and amazes me more than anything I can remember. The only thing that even comes close was watching Bert Jones (before his injury) throw a long ball. It was a freaking 50 yard line drive (or so it seemed to me) that came out of a throwing motion that had to be seen to be believed.

We had a couple of very nice O-linemen during the Peyton era. Tarik Glenn, Adam Meadows, Jeff Saturday, Ryan Diem, Jake Scott. Guys who did well.

And, in the early Edge years, they ran blocked about as well as they pass blocked. Edge was a generational talent but he had some big fricking holes to run through.

However, I don't think they were anywhere near as dominating run blockers as our current batch are. They did not just punish opposing defenders for having the gall to play on the same field as they do. Peyton's O-Line did it through skill and finesse rather than just brute powerful confrotation.

These guys are fun to watch.

Walk Worthy,

I never used to pay attention to line play until I joined this site many years ago.

Now I love watching how this line dominates the opponents.

Once you realize they'll just replay any big plays anyway you no longer fear missing something important and are free to watch the lines and take in more than you ever knew was going on in any given play.

Glenn was the only first round pick. Meadows was a 2, and Diem was a 3?? Saturday was a walk on, Llija was a last day pick and we stole him from KC and Scott was a late round pick. All smart, all had good feet. A Howard Mudd group of guys who could play anywhere.

Old #7 is, and always will be my favorite Colt QB. And I LOVED Unitas and Peyton.

And yeah, this O-line has the makings of something special. I've always heard that the longer a line plays together, the better they play. With two rookies, a third year player, a fourth year player, and Castanzo. They're just getting started.

o


Curtis Painter ???

Just kidding.



http://www.rantsports.com/nfl/files/...haelhickey.jpg

o

C and O did you wait until you could be post #7 to jokingly to make this comp. by posting Painters pic?

Fuck Bert Jones

o


Same to you, you miserable bastard.


o

Ohhhh...you go too far!

o

It was weird seeing Painter wear the #7 as the Colts' quarterback.

o

I tried not to look.

It was WRONG seeing Painter wear the #7 as the Colts' quarterback.

geezers.

You misspelled beautiful.

Without Curtis, we don't get Luck

Thank you Curtis “Blow” Painter!

o

That Manning-less team would have been bad enough whether it was Kerry Collins, Curtis Painter, or Dan Orlovsky taking snaps behind the center.

Jim Caldwell made a solid contribution to that 2-14 season, also.

o

Aright you old fuckers, my time with the Colts didn't start until Indy. So I dug around the youtubes and found some highlightds

https://media.giphy.com/media/1n4I0r...ohyv/giphy.gif

His release on this pass is not like anything I have ever seen, compact, powerful, the ball comes out almost next to his ear. He says he had 4 broken ribs at this time.

You got it. Thanks for the memories from this old fucker (and thankful to be one). He was beautiful to watch.

Didn't we try Kerry Collins and he died or something? I use that season as an example of everything Peyton did. I also started to wonder if Polian was losing it. He had one of the quickest release QB's in the league in Manning who was the most hit QB after release. He decided to replace him with Kerry Collins who had the slowest release of any starting QB. That would never end well.

I remember one play, Colts opened the game at their own 20. Jones dropped back to the 13 and launched a rocket that Roger Carr caught in stride at the opponents 10 yard line. Beautiful.

Roger Carr. Now there was a deep threat

o

The problem with Collins is that the Colts signed him at the last minute.

If Collins had been signed several months earlier, he at least would have been somewhat familiar with the offense ........ he wasn't.

In fact, Reggie Wayne was critical of the signing for that reason. As much as a drop-off as Manning to Painter would have been, Painter (according to Wayne) was at least familiar with the Colts' offense, having been with the team for all of the 2009 and 2010 seasons plus all of training camp in 2011.

Wayne was correct ........ they either should have signed Collins several months earlier, or not even bothered at all. As it was, it was a waste of the $4 Million that Polian spent on him for that ill-fated season.

o

Roger Carr 1979 45 catches 11 tds average yards per catch 25.9 For a career he averaged 18.7 yards per catch

o


I saw that game. It was on Monday Night Football.

In fact, Mike Curtis was playing for the other team (the Redskins) in the final season of his career. On one play Jones slid near the sidelines to avoid getting hit, but Don Meredith asserted that Curtis still wanted to hit him.


o

It's really nice to see that there are some fans here who have also persevered thru decades of shitty teams to arrive where we are now. One time I actually had a girl at a convenience store counter in Reno laugh at me when I bought a Colts lighter. Good for you guys. I'm sure you are enjoying this big time.

Wasn't that also the lockout off-season? So the colts doctors couldn't monitor Peyton. And all of free agency happened the last week of July.

o

Even the fans who didn't come on board until 1984 have sustained a lot of crappy seasons ...... believe it or not, the Colts have now been in Indianapolis (1984 - Present) longer than they were in Baltimore (1953 - 1983.)

o

Well, depending on who's doing the fucking, I'm up with that.:)

In my time I've seen just about all the great Quarterbacks play. As far as
arm strength/velocity the only other QB I can think of in his zip code was
Elway. That was 3 years of magic from '75 to 77'.

o

Plus an additional 2 solid seasons of quarterbacking in 1980 and 1981, after having recovered from consecutive injury-plagued seasons in 1978 and 1979.

Many presume that Bert's shoulder injuries spelled the end of his career ...... they didn't. A ruptured disc in his neck while playing for the Rams in 1982 is what ended his career.

o

Technically, true.

However he was no where near to the same after the injuries that limited him to seven games in 1978 and 1979. His stats for a '80 and '81 look similar to his earliest years, but if you saw him, it wasn't the same. Neither was the team.

In fact, it's not a huge stretch to say that if Jones was healthy straight through, and Drunk Bob doesn't start selling off some of the team defense, then the Colts never leave Baltimore.

o


I completely disagree.

I believe that Jones was every bit as good in those 2 seasons as he was previously, but the teams around him were not as good (especially the 1981 team.)

Jones almost single-handedly had the Colts in playoff contention throughout the 1980 season, as they were 7-6 after 13 games, including a 2-game sweep over the eventual division champion Buffalo Bills. He engineered what should have gone down as one of the greatest comebacks ever in the 14th game of that 1980 season against the Bengals. The Colts were losing by a score of 31-6 at the start of the 4th quarter. Jones engineered 4 straight touchdowns to give the Colts a 33-31 lead. The referees then bailed out the Bengals by making a horrible pass interference call, which allowed them to keep driving and set up for what was the game-winning field goal.

Instead of an 8-6 record and one of the greatest comebacks in pro football history, the Colts were robbed by the zebras and dropped to 7-7, which eliminated them from playoff contention. With all of the wind taken out of their sails by that controversial loss, the Colts dropped the final 2 games of the season to finish at 7-9.

The following season (1981), even Jones could not rescue what was an historically bad Colts team that finished at 2-14 overall, with both wins coming against the Patriots on the first and last games of the season. In both of those season, Jones had over 3,000 yards passing at a time when doing so was still a considerable achievement.


8 years after his career ended, Bobby Beathard of the Chargers actually tried to talk Jones out of retirement at the age of 39 when he saw Bert win a Quarterback Challenge passing contest (Jones was still heaving the ball 75 yards while he was pushing 40.) Jones declined after consulting with doctors who confirmed what he was told 7 and-a-half years earlier, which was that he was risking serious injury (possibly paralysis) if he tried to return.

o

Yeah. Well, that's just your opinion man.

And what the hell do I know? I was really young then, unlike some, apparently. And my impression and memory tells me that he was not the same when he came back.

Still loved him and how he played, though.

And yeah, the team around him was getting weaker by the year. Something, something Joe Thomas, something something Bob Irsay...

Of course, we could argue back and forth with increasingly longer posts about this. That seems to be a thing.

I vote not.

His career wasn't what is should have been for whatever reason. He was, however, amazing to watch While his arm may not have had any more power than Elway or a young Bradshaw for that matter, his long balls certainly had way much less air under them than anyone I have ever seen then or since. It was amazing that he could get his timing right with so little room for error (the ball just GOT there with little time for the receiver to adjust) Watching this offensive line destroy and end up on top of people is just as amazing to me. If we don't get injuries, this could be years of enjoyment.

If my memory is correct, wasn't one of those wins in '81 played in a monsoon, and didn't Joe Washington set a record for catching a TD lpass, running for a TD, throwing a TD pass and returning a punt for a TD ?

Also, only 2 wins were against the fuckin Patriots...........Priceless!!

o

The Patriots also went 2-14 that season. They were a considerably better team than were the Colts, as most of their losses were close. They went 10-6 the previous season (1980), and went to the playoffs with a record of 5-4 in the strike-shortened 1982 season the following year.

The Colts, on the other hand, went 0-8-1 in the following strike-shortened season of 1982.

o