INDIANAPOLIS – The newly redesigned turf at Lucas Oil Stadium was a personal experience for Colts defenders on Sunday as they picked themselves up after one missed tackle after another.
The Colts lost their season opener 29-27 to the Texans, allowing 212 rushing yards, the most in a game since the Jeff Saturday era, and allowed Joe Mixon to rush for 159 yards, more than any running back since Derrick Henry in the 2020 season, when there were no fans in the stands.
They allowed the Texans to achieve their most rushing yards in a game in five years.
And they did it by running between guards, out of tackles, on reverses, and on quarterback scrambles, at a level where four different ball carriers averaged at least 4.6 yards per run.
After the game, it was just as difficult to find answers to the reasons as it was to the run stops.
“They did a good job of putting us in difficult situations,” linebacker Zaire Franklin said. “… We at least did a good job of keeping the explosive plays under control.”
Linebacker EJ Speed said, “I don’t even know why they had so many yards. I didn’t even notice. I was just trying to take advantage of all my third-down situations.”
Defensive tackle DeForest Buckner said: “That was a good game from them. We just need to get out of the blocks better.”
Only Kenny Moore II seemed to provide a theory on how the opposing unit could dominate.
“They gave us a lot of different things,” Moore said. “Hats off to them for figuring out where they need to be, where a certain guy needs to be or how a certain guy is going to play. Good concept by them.”
Into the stunned silence came the answer that is most obvious after such a performance:
“When we went into the game,” Franklin said, “we wondered why they wouldn’t beat us.”
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This is the year of the “run it back” Colts, who are betting that buzzwords like continuity, chemistry and culture matter more than the hype of signing a player on the level of Danielle Hunter or Quandre Diggs, just as other AFC South teams are doing with quarterbacks on rookie contracts to maximize their moments.
Indianapolis is building a team around the ultimate vision of general manager Chris Ballard, who wants it to live in the trenches. It will struggle in some obvious areas like the secondary and the passing game.
But the Colts don’t want to let other teams take them up front, so they re-signed nose tackle Grover Stewart and defensive end Tyquan Lewis and extended Buckner for a total of $75 million guaranteed.
That’s why they made backup nose tackle Raekwon Davis their only free agent addition on defense, and why they picked up Kwity Paye’s fifth-year option worth $13.4 million even after drafting Laiatu Latu.
And that’s why they’re keeping 10 defensive linemen on the 53-man roster, instead of just five cornerbacks. The Colts left all 10 players active on Sunday, representing more than 20% of the game-day roster, and designated Dallis Flowers as a healthy backup. That decision left them with just two cornerbacks who could play outside nickel.
In that sense, the lack of explanation for what went wrong is perhaps the only acceptable explanation. Because for the Colts to be taken seriously in 2024, this will have to become a Week 1 anomaly, simply a crazy occurrence in an unpredictable league where everyone is a pro and any underdog can have their day. That even goes for a Texans running back, on a team that ranked 29th in run efficiency last season and responded to those abysmal numbers by trading away a fullback and trading for Stefon Diggs to focus on throwing.
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This is where the Colts defense should be attacked. It’s hard to counter Diggs, Nico Collins and Tank Dell with a quarterback like Stroud who can make quick passes out of zone coverage or throw man coverage into the mixer. And the Texans did some of that on Sunday, as Stroud completed 24 of 32 passes for 234 yards, two touchdowns, zero interceptions and a 115.9 rating.
This part of the Colts should be a give-and-take with the pass rush, which can create its own explosive plays through this army of defensive linemen. And that’s exactly what happened on Sunday, when the Colts also recorded four sacks and 10 quarterback hits.
But only one of those sacks came in the second half, when the Texans ran 45 plays, two more than the Colts offense ran in the entire game. Those 45 plays allowed the Texans to control the ball for 24 of the final 30 minutes. The Texans came into Indianapolis’ building and took the blueprint the Colts used in wins over the Steelers and Raiders last season and shoved it down their throats.
And they did it with a running game developed by Chris Strausser, the offensive line coach they fired because of his performance in the 2022 season.
“Our O-line dropped their (expletive) when they needed to,” Diggs told Texans reporters after the game.
As TJ Watt and the Steelers learned in this building last December, even the strongest pass rush can’t win if it can’t dictate the terms.
Likewise, a young quarterback who makes up for inaccuracies with explosive plays can’t make up for 24 minutes of lost time in the second half. Anthony Richardson scored a 60-yard post route touchdown to Alec Pierce and a 54-yard touchdown pass to Ashton Dulin, showing he’s capable of scoring a touchdown on a single play.
But the Colts can’t get to a point where the NFL’s youngest starting quarterback feels like he has to do that all the time. That’s when the bad habits start to form, and that could mean the end of taking care of your body and living to see another game.
History suggests this will be a mirage. Buckner is a three-time Pro Bowler. Stewart is one of the league’s best nose tackles. Franklin has set the franchise’s tackle record two years in a row. Paye, although he has lost weight, is still considered one of the best edge setters in the sport.
But whether the Colts can correct course enough to turn Sunday’s weakness into a major strength is the question that will determine how Ballard plans to win in 2024.
For his sake, for her sake, and for Richardson’s sake, this has to be one of those things that just happens here at the start of the season – something that can’t be rationally explained, a part isolated from the whole, and then gone forever.
Contact Nate Atkins at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @NateAtkins_.
