Offensive Line Woes Leave Colts with Serious Questions About Running Game

Indianapolis Colts offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton has a philosophical belief in power football. He believes in being able to bowl defensive linemen off the line of scrimmage, eating up huge chunks of clock along the way.

He believes this so much that, despite having the best young quarterback in the NFL, all of his rhetoric revolves around establishing the run game:

The Colts didn't accomplish this last season. They traded for Trent Richardson, and he did Trent Richardson things such as fall down, grasp blindly in front of him and make his cuts so slowly that unblocked, weak-side edge defenders could snatch him from behind.

Colts head coach Chuck Pagano once called Richardson a "rolling ball of butcher knives." Butcher knives do tend to get stuck in the ground if the blade dives into the dirt.

But Richardson was only one part of the issues Indianapolis had running the ball last year. Despite the investment the Colts placed in Richardson—he was acquired for a first-round pick—he's not irreplaceable.

Indianapolis could easily find a better running back if Richardson continues to struggle, be it Ahmad Bradshaw, Dan Herron or somebody off the street.

Richardson is a problem. A problem that has had immense consequences on most of what the Colts have tried to accomplish. In the end, though, he's a self-inflicted problem at a position where undrafted free agents and late-round picks routinely become assets.

The truth of the matter is that the poor running game in Indianapolis has multiple root causes, and the non-Richardson factor was poor interior line play.

As we've established before in this corner of the Internet, last year's starting guard tandem of Mike McGlynn and Hugh Thornton both led their respective positions in blown blocks per Football Outsiders Almanac 2014. McGlynn was allowed to leave in free agency, and the Colts spent a second-round pick on his replacement, Ohio State lineman Jack Mewhort.

With that said, the line has continued to be unsettled in the preseason.

Projected starting center Khaled Holmes—who has virtually no experience at center in the NFL anyway—hasn't gone through a full practice since spraining his ankle in Week 1 of the preseason. Donald Thomas re-injured the same quad that forced him to miss almost all of last season, and he hit the injured reserve in the preseason.

It's not just them. Backup tackle Xavier Nixon joined the IR. Backup lineman Joe Reitz is nursing a high-ankle sprain.

There's injury attrition, and then there's injury attrition so bad that it leads the general manager to consider adding Richie Incognito to the mix. Ryan Grigson appeared on WFNI 1070 AM on Tuesday and admitted (h/t ESPN.com) that the team is mulling over the possibility.

The Colts have brought in injury reinforcements. Former Colts center A.Q. Shipley was claimed off waivers from Baltimore, and the Colts also signed guard Jamon Meredith, who was displaced in Tampa when the Buccaneers traded for Logan Mankins.

Unfortunately, the caliber of linemen available at this juncture of the NFL season isn't very high.

Shipley and Meredith may be capable of higher floors than the completely unproven players on this line, but the Colts should still firmly be in the basement. Both players were objectively terrible in 2013—especially as run-blockers:

	Snaps	Blown Run Blocks -- FO	Blown Pass Blocks -- FO	PFF Rating
Meredith	475	5.5	7.0	-11.5
Shipley	707	5.0	6.5	-17.1

Indianapolis is dealing with one of the worst problems an NFL team can have: a focused rash of injuries at one position group.

Outside of perhaps at running back, there's simply not enough quality depth to go around in the league. Once a team has to dip into free agency or the waiver wire to solve its needs, the results typically aren't good.

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As it stands, the Colts will start three interior linemen with no track record of NFL success in Week 1. Teams break in new linemen all the time. Inexperienced players have to start somewhere, and there's still a chance that one of these players winds up being much better than we thought.

It's one thing to roll the dice on one spot. When a team rolls it on three, the odds of snake eyes coming up grow exponentially.

If Hamilton is really prepared to play that game again, expect Andrew Luck's 2014 season to look a lot like his 2013 season: one in which he has to bail out the rest of the Colts at every conceivable opportunity.

Rivers McCown is the AFC South lead writer for Bleacher Report. His work has also appeared on Football Outsiders and ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter at @riversmccown.