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INDIANAPOLIS – They finished the 2018 season 10th in takeaways and 5th in points per game, but the Colts want more this coming year.
Averaging just 2.7 points off turnovers last season had Chris Ballard bringing that stat up, unprovoked, at the start of Training Camp.
Ballard wants the Colts to be more opportunistic when those chances occur in 2019.
“That’s a big deal and we are not where we need to be in that area,” Ballard says of the points off turnovers number. “I think it was 2.7 last year and it needs to be over 3 in our minds.
“You can’t just say, ‘Let’s go create a turnover.’ You have to practice it. It’s contagious. It’s effort. Those type of things, all attribute to turnovers.”
Of course, Darius Leonard was a huge contributor in being an individual creator of those turnovers last year.
The Colts GM sees an incredible knack from Leonard in forcing turnovers.
Obviously, producing a more adequate number in this category involves both sides of the ball.
From the defense generating the chances and short fields for the offense, Frank Reich knows a lot falls on his shoulders to cash in from there.
“We talked about it at times last year, but then you get the whole year and like, ‘Yeah, Okay we weren’t as productive as we needed to be,” Reich says of the points off turnovers stat from 2018.
“So what does that mean? I know we’re trying to score every time we touch the ball, so we just need to be better. We need to be better. I think some of that was early, but you know when we get a short field, we have to take advantage of it.”
Part of that onus is on Reich, knowing when to take a shot as a play caller following such a game-changing type of play.
“We have to look at that from a play-calling standpoint,” the head coach, and play caller, says. “I know a lot of times people think, you know, you get a turnover, you get a short field, you see a lot of offensive play callers take shots and we’re going to do that from time to time, but we also like to try to mix that up.
“We’ll continue to evaluate that, but that would be an area of improvement that we can definitely have.”
