Indianapolis Colts Must Fix Small Mistakes to Bounce Back After Week 1 Loss

The Indianapolis Colts didn't want to start the season this way.

No team wants to start the season with a loss.

But starting off with a 24-0 deficit in an eventual 27-14 whooping against the Buffalo Bills is particularly alarming, at least at face value. This was a sentiment that owner Jim Irsay reiterated after the game, as noted by the Indianapolis Star's Zak Keefer:

Local media was aghast at the team's showing in Buffalo, using the performance to complain about the Colts being the same old Colts. Gregg Doyel of the Indianapolis Star, for example, took the opportunity to say the Colts' offseason was a waste:

"

But the only way this game resembled last year was that it was reminiscent of the times the Colts played some of the toughest teams on the schedule – New England, Dallas, Pittsburgh – and decided the best way to handle being punched in the face was to lie down and bleed.

After the season, the Colts reacted by throwing around money – but not at their problems up front. They threw money and draft picks at skill players. A fancy team got fancier.

Did a soft team get softer? Looked that way Sunday.

"

Unfortunately for critics looking for the easy narrative, it doesn't quite match the results from Sunday's game. 

It's easy to look at the Colts and say they were run over on defense again, just like the New England games. But they didn't. Instead, this was a game of a few small mistakes that snowballed into big differences.

Let's look at the stats, starting with the big rushing day for Buffalo.

Simply saying "the Bills rushed for 151 yards" is completely disingenuous here. This wasn't a case of the Bills sticking it down the Colts' throats, it was two big plays that turned the tide of the game.

Here are the plays in question, both of which came on the Bills' final drive of the first half:

• A 31-yard scramble by Tyrod Taylor on 3rd-and-4, one of the few plays when the Colts didn't have a QB spy or shallow zone safety to protect against that.
• A 26-yard touchdown run by rookie Karlos Williams in which the defensive line played it right, but Jerrell Freeman got clipped by his own teammate and was unable to fill the hole. A broken defensive play, essentially.

Fifty-seven yards on two plays, which directly led to seven points to end the half, a huge momentum shift after the Colts had just missed a field goal. A stop on either one of those plays would have led to a much better situation for Indianapolis.

A stop on the first play would have gotten the defense off the field, and perhaps given Luck and the offense a chance for another field-goal try (1:09 left). The Colts were pretty good on third down for the most part, limiting the Bills to a 38 percent conversion rate for the day. A stop on the second play would have likely limited Buffalo to a field-goal attempt with just 20 seconds left in the half.

On the other 31 rushing plays of the day, the Bills averaged just 3.03 yards per carry, and that's including keeping Taylor corralled in the pocket for most of the day.

There was one stretch that hurt in the third quarter, when the Bills ran the ball six times from the Indianapolis 18-yard line and closer to punch it in to the end zone, wasting nearly three minutes in the process, but other than that the Colts did a very good job against the run.

Looking at the passing defense, it's a similar story.

Tyrod Taylor threw for 195 yards and a touchdown on over 10 yards per attempt, but it was largely on two poor plays for Indianapolis:

• A 51-yard touchdown to Percy Harvin when Darius Butler got stuck in man coverage on the outside (where he doesn't normally play) with no safety help.
• A 26-yard play-action pass to TE Charles Clay when D'Qwell Jackson got sucked up too far forward in zone coverage, leading directly to a long field goal for Buffalo.

Outside of those two plays, Taylor averaged just 6.9 yards per attempt.

Now, taking out any team's most explosive plays makes their offense look worse, and it's not totally fair to do. But we're looking at the overall context for the Colts defense here. This wasn't a case of them getting consistently beat in either area of the game. This was a few concentrated execution and personnel errors that turned into game-changing plays.

Those four plays turned into 17 points for the Bills, all in the first half. Better execution on any one of them puts the game into a completely different context.

The offense also struggled from an execution standpoint, and it started with Andrew Luck.

Category	Attempts	Yards	Yards Per Carry	Long
QB Scrambles/Runs	6	45	7.5	31
RB Runs	26	97	3.73	26
Gadget WR Run	1	9	9.00	9
Totals	33	151	4.58	31

It was clear from the first few snaps that this was going to be one of those games where Luck's accuracy simply wasn't there. His ball placement was sloppy throughout the game, and it was especially grievous on a few deep balls that had a chance to be big plays, but instead turned into interceptions or near-interceptions.

The rest of the team wasn't blameless.

The team had four key penalties that dropped them back 34 yards on a few promising drives in the first half, essentially killing the drives altogether. Donte Moncrief had a first down nullified because of a careless hop of the foot. Andre Johnson dropped two costly passes.

Ironically, the unit that received the most blame after the game really didn't play that poorly. The offensive line only allowed 11 pressures on 53 dropbacks, according to Pro Football Focus. The Bills were forcing the Colts into quick plays, but it wasn't because the offensive line was getting manhandled. Buffalo simply kept sending big blitzes from all over the field, and the numbers occasionally left free rushers lanes to get to Luck.

This was not a case of the line not being good enough, it was Rex Ryan being Rex Ryan. The Colts had opportunities to take advantage of those blitzes, but small mistakes derailed those opportunities (Luck's bad pass to Frank Gore on an early screen play, Luck missing T.Y. Hilton deep with throws that floated in the wind twice, etc.).

Against a defense as talented as the Bills, who were sending blitz after blitz after blitz, the Colts simply couldn't afford that many executional mistakes.

So who do we blame for the loss? That's what it boils down to, doesn't it?

Blame everybody, but at the same time, don't blame anybody.

The game plan was solid by the coaching staff, aside from a few minor hiccups. If you want to get on the coaches for the Colts lacking discipline or focus, leading to those few, critical mistakes, I understand the logic. It was far too sloppy of a game for the season opener.

On the other side of the coin, the Bills put the Colts in situations where sloppy play cost them. Buffalo might be the most talented defense in the league, and they were at home with zero applicable film available to prepare with, on either offense or defense. Rex Ryan is a very good schematical coach who did a phenomenal job preparing his defense to come out and put all the pressure, both literally and figuratively, on the Colts to execute perfectly.

Against a nightmare matchup, on the road, with poor field conditions (how many plays did the Colts suffer from lost/unsure footing or losing a grip on a wet football?), the Colts were unable to do so. That's a coaching problem, but it's also a player problem.

More importantly, it's something that happens to every team, often on the road.

The Green Bay Packers went into Buffalo and lost 21-13 last December, with two Aaron Rodgers picks and a few timely offensive plays from Buffalo killing the team from Wisconsin. The New England Patriots got steamrolled in Kansas City last September, losing 41-14 before bouncing back to win 10 of their next 11 games and eventually win the Super Bowl.

Just yesterday, the Seattle Seahawks, the two-time defending NFC champions, went to St. Louis, fell behind 24-13 in the first three quarters and eventually lost in overtime.

Sometimes good teams have bad games. We shouldn't overlook it completely, especially if this lack of refinement from an execution and coaching standpoint continues on a weekly basis, but this was a game that was always going to be an enormous test to start the season.

What will be more interesting now is to see how the Colts bounce back against the New York Jets next week, another team with a stout defense and an offense that needs just a few big plays to put points on the board. The Colts have traditionally bounced back under head coach Chuck Pagano, but we'll see.

For now, let's just take this Week 1 result for what it was: a few mistakes snowballing against a very talented Buffalo team, not the same old lack of big bodies in the trenches.