Quote:
Originally Posted by ChoppedWood
No, I don't think there's a single team we can't beat, a team we can't destroy even, AFC or NFC IMO. That's my whole issue! We shouldn't be a 6-6 team on playoff life support right now. There's too much potential here even with all the injuries.
If we lay an egg against Texans or if NE kicks our ass, keep this poll open and see what the results look like.
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Yes, we should have a better record but things haven't worked out for us as well as they could have so far. Sometimes that's prone to happening in a sport where teams only play 16 (now 17) games a season. A few unlucky breaks and your record can get distorted. But Reich isn't getting fired - he just signed a five year extension this last offseason!
I don't mean to suggest that Reich is infallible or perfect, or that the Colts are merely the victim of bad luck. Certainly mistakes have been made. But the offense is plenty good enough and the decision to pass 26 or 27 times (which is a bit unfair as 6 or 7 of those were run pass options which Wentz chose to pass on) was driven by circumstances and, absent turnovers, was working just fine. That's just a fact. And who's to say that the Colts wouldn't have fumbled the ball on the run plays that everyone thinks they should have called? It's easy to fantasize that everything would have been different had the Colts called more run plays, but that's just...a fantasy. Maybe those run plays would been stonewalled, in which case everyone would be complaining that Reich should have stayed with the pass because it was working so well to that point.
Anyway, Reich is always going to generate some friction because he takes a lot of chances, and when it doesn't work out it can look pretty bad (i.e., the first few games this season). Someone posted a stat on twitter a few days ago which measured each coach's relative 4th down success - not just their percentage success rate, but their rate of success relative to their EXPECTED chance of success in each circumstance (i.e. 4th and 10 had a much lower chance of success than 4th and 1). And Reich was the 3rd or 4th most successful in the league if I recall, so he's not a bad gambler even if we cringe sometimes at these decisions.
The Colts lost the TB game mainly because of uncharacteristic turnovers. The defense had its failures certainly, but the turnovers were the backbreakers as the Colts lost the opportunity to score more points while simultaneously giving TB more time to catch up. Yet the game was still close.