5 Things Learned: Colts Valiant Effort Ends In Another Loss

1. Commendable Philip Rivers

When grading Philip Rivers on a 44-year-old/Grandpa off the couch/after not playing in 5 years scale, hat tip to the future Hall of Famer. The Rivers’ experience on Sunday went about how you thought. He got the ball out rapidly fast, stayed away from negatives, yet the Colts offense had a clear ceiling on it in terms of challenging anything down the field. With Rivers finding Ameer Abdullah out of the backfield a couple times, it drew up some “2020 Nyheim Hines” vibes, as he led the Colts in receptions in that season with Rivers under center. With Rivers at quarterback, you had the expected and obvious limitations though. That was rooted in taking shots down the field, with Alec Pierce’s home run ability hardly even a thought. That eliminates one of the Colts best weapons this season. Rivers finished Sunday 18-of-27 for 120 yards, 1 touchdown and 1 interception. His 4.4 yards per pass attempt is easily the worst of the season for the Colts, and one of the lower in the NFL this year. And the question is fair to ask if rookie Riley Leonard would have fared any better? Given that Leonard practiced fully all 3 days this week, with no brace on his injured knee, would he have provided another dimension the Colts offense sorely lacked, whether through his running or at least more of a threat to do something down the field? Again, the Rivers’ effort was more than commendable. But the limitations with him under center are glaring, and it caught up to the Colts in the end on Sunday.

2. Colts Defense Fails To Finish

Following Blake Grupe’s 60-yard blast to take the 16-15 lead with 47 seconds left on Sunday, the Colts needed one final stop. And the Seahawks had no timeouts to try and work their way into that range. Yet, Seattle needed just 25 seconds to get to Jason Myers game-winning range from 56 yards out. Similar to the Kansas City loss, the Colts defense did so much right on Sunday. The Colts run defense set the tone with one of the most impressive run defense performances of the season. Playmaking from the defensive front showed up early, and often, on Sunday, helping the Colts control field position and keep their own offense from having to grind out 80/90-yard drives. And they were doing this without 3 of their best defenders in DeForest Buckner, Sauce Gardner and Charvarius Ward. But the inability to get that final stop is how Sunday will most get remembered. Sam Darnold found Rashid Shaheed for completions of 17 and 8 yards, without much stress level. It was all too fitting, as the Colts have more often than not been unable to slam the door shut in such closing situations. You want to praise Lou Anarumo’s group for so much of what they did on Sunday. But with the game on the line, and the season starting to fade, the ending was all too familiar.

3. Colts Nearly Execute Necessary Blueprint

A winning blueprint, no matter who your 3^rd string QB, is has to look something like this: strong run game, defense winning the money down and finding extra yardage on special teams. For the Colts on Sunday, that meant asking something out of areas of the team that hadn’t recently been delivering in such departments. And for the most part, the Colts checked so many of those vital blueprint boxes. Jonathan Taylor (25 carries for 87 yards) and Ameer Abdullah (4 carries for 15 yards) helped the Colts play a ball control game. Defensively, the Colts made play after play early on to help build a multi-score lead and control field position throughout. On Sunday, the Colts finished the game with their 3^rd string QB (if you want to call Rivers that), their 3^rd and 4^th string offensive tackles, their 3^rd and 4^th string outside cornerbacks and no DeForest Buckner. To even have a chance at the end of this one is pretty remarkable. But when you are sliding like the Colts are right now, it’s impossible to celebrate this one. That’s what happens you have lost 5 of 6, and just dropped two massively critical divisional games the last two weeks.

4. Kicker Shoutout

Not often you put a kicker in a losing effort in an individual category but Blake Grupe deserves it for what he did on Sunday. Grupe was good from 42, 54 and 60 yards (with a few years to spare) and made his lone extra point attempt. On a day where everything around the Colts limited offense was going to be magnified, the new Colts kicker did his part. Grupe is replacing Michael Badgley, who had definite distance constrictions. None of that is there for Grupe, as he eclipsed his own career-long by 3 yards, and made this one outdoors. Grupe exudes confidence and he backed it up by splitting a kick that should have won the game.

5. Playoff Hopes Take Multiple Hits

Not only did the Colts own loss hurt their dropping playoff chances, but they also had a really rough Week 15 in the opponent watch category with the Jaguars and Texans wining, along with the Chargers and Bills. That’s now 5 losses in the last 6 Colts games. The Colts last win was in Germany on November 9th. You have to go back to October 26^th to find their last win in regulation, or in the United States. In starting 7-1, the Colts are now 8-6. Anything short of a 2-1 finish (49ers, Jaguars, at Texans), and the Colts are likely to miss the playoffs for a 5^th straight year. The results from Sunday were particularly damaging to the Colts fading AFC South hopes, as both the Texans (9-5) and Jaguars (10-4) won easily. If this late-season slides continues for the Colts, it will mark one of the biggest in-season collapses we’ve seen in the NFL.

6. QUICK HITTERS

–Injury Report: The following Colts were inactive on Sunday: CB-Sauce Gardner (calf), WR-Anthony Gould (foot), LB-Jaylon Carlies, S-Reuben Lowery III, RB-D.J. Giddens, TE-Will Mallory. The following players got injured and did not return: OT-Bernhard Raimann (elbow)

–Key Stat: The Colts lost on Sunday despite not allowing a touchdown. That marks the first time for the franchise since a 2018 loss in Jacksonville, 6-0.

-What’s Next: The Colts (8-6) will return home for a rare Monday night game in Week 16. It’ll be the San Francisco 49ers (10-4) playing inside of Lucas Oil Stadium at 8:20 next Monday.