I will always take a win and hopefully we have solved or discovered some important offensive questions. First, the first half of this game was a total dumpster fire. The Colts defense is good, no doubt there, but we were as undisciplined and sloppy as I have seen maybe since the Chiefs game earlier this season. The offense still was not able to execute in the first half and I have no idea why we were running the awful plays that we were. I am not an offensive guru so maybe some here who have watched the film is why is Lamar not recognizing the open receiver versus predetermining where he is going with the ball. In the second half, it almost looked like the coaches took the Colts playbook and called those exact plays against them. The quick slants and quick ins were amazingly working brilliantly. Then we started to run the ball effectively as we incorporated the short game with runs. After that all worked, it seemed the open lanes for Lamar miraculously started to open. My biggest frustration is that we are trying to establish the rest of the offense off of the Lamar runs when in reality, the rest of the offense needs to be established to open up the Lamar lanes. I hope the lightbulb went off and we have identified the problem and we stick with this philosophy. The defense was very impressive again even without Calais Campbell and Marlon Humphrey which makes me feel very comfortable. Granted the Colts offense is very limited and once we identified the 6 plays they run over and over we shut them down and bottled them up. Rivers is clearly very challenged and looks to be at the end of the career road. Overall the win was necessary and we have to beat these teams in order to remain in contention. I hope they continue to work on the offensive continuity and fine tune our bread and butter behind the makeshift line we will have to live with the remainder of the season.
As a Steeler's fan, I'll take an ugly win more than a pretty loss. The Ravens did what they do. They find ways to win when they're not firing on all cylinders. Looking forward to Thanksgiving night.
I'll say this, it was nice to see actual second half adjustments on offense. The first and second half play was night and day. They picked up the tempo in the latter half and it seemed to help a lot. Nick Boyle seemed to run far nore routes than he usually does. If that's the case then I'm cool with it since it'll make defenders respect him as an option and maybe open things up for another player. The defense is amazing. Yes, it was an old Rivers, but people need to remember that as said above, they were without two of their best players in Humphrey and Campbell, plus another 3 or 4 CBs on IR. Considering what they also did last week against Pittsburgh defensively, this unit is looking special.
