Unofficial Colts vs. Bengals Pre-game thread

[ChaosTheory]

Originally Posted by CletusPyle

I think most teams played their starters in game two rather than game three. To me that makes more sense, playing your starters against 2nd and third stringers and looking like shit is not much of a moral booster! Plus if you do well, you wonder if it was only because it wasn't against their starters. Anyway, 17 days until the first game is too long in my opinion, I'm not sure what to expect against Houston, but I will be surprised if all of a sudden we are really good when we haven't looked so great so far! Another wasted preseason, I'm not sure how much our starters benefitted from any of it?

It's like pulling teeth trying to find how many practices we've had/how many we have remaining (per the CBA) before the Texans. But they, especially AR, need full speed, game-like reps. They get 14 total in the preseason.

Originally Posted by Hoopsdoc

I suspect AR will do a lot more running in the regular season, which will change how the offense looks.

Steichen can do magic. It doesn't take much for things to look way different. With the full arsenal available, there's a lot of clay for him to work with.

If you haven't, check out Brett Kollman's breakdown about the difference between the defenses PHI faced vs. what IND faced because of Minshew. We should see something we haven't before. I'm excited to see how it goes.

Originally Posted by omahacolt

dude needs to get his feet right. not sure if he will ever fix it but yeah, he will probably always be annoying with inaccuracy

still I think he will be really fun to watch. McNabb was annoying with his accuracy but as fun to watch

For sure. That Mitchell pass I was talking about was exactly that. Just fundamentals making him sail an easy pass. He has the ability to make stupid difficult passes.

If he could just nail down the easy shit, he can be lights out good.

[Discflinger]

Coats!

[Racehorse]

Originally Posted by ChaosTheory

If you haven't, check out Brett Kollman's breakdown about the difference between the defenses PHI faced vs. what IND faced because of Minshew.

Got a link?

[ChaosTheory]

Originally Posted by Racehorse

Got a link?

Ah, don't make me work on a Saturday. I think it was somewhere in the beginning of their Bootleg Football preview of the team. It was called "Colts are very, very good" or something on YouTube.

One of us posted a thread for that vid here.

[ChaosTheory]

@Racehorse, this is the gist of it (I'll try not to butcher it)...


The Frank Reich tree had the three teams (Colts, Eagles, Panthers) that had the highest rate (over 50%) of running any single formation. In this case, it's 2x2, so 2 receivers on each side of the field.

2x2 leads to seeing a lot of Cover-3 theoretically, so they line up 2x2 trying to see Cover-3 because RPO's work best against that defense. IND and PHI are #1 and #2 in RPO.

BUT, the Colts and Eagles actually saw very little Cover-3. Eagles got Quarters and the Colts got Man-Coverage. Because Minshew was not a running threat, the coverage could turn their back on him and stick to receivers. You can't play Man against Jalen Hurts or Anthony Richardson, generally.

So the idea is, what Steichen actually wants to do, is face Cover-3 and Quarters like he saw in PHI. So he needs the running threat to avoid Man and also the deep ball threat to beat creeping safeties.

Minshew had neither of those qualities. AR has both. So what we run should look different because what defenses we show us should look different. And Steichen is very good at adjustments and using motion, which PHI struggled with after he left.