Is Tonight's Game A Must Win For The Colts?

Absolutely.

Well, almost absolutely.

The Colts need to win this Monday night or its dominance of the division is all but over. For the last five years, the three other teams in the division (Jacksonville, Tennessee and Houston) all knew that their best shot at the playoffs was via the Wild Card.

That’s because Indianapolis has put a stranglehold on the division and was one of two or three elite teams in the NFL. Coming into this season, people still felt that that was the case. After seven weeks, it’s plain to all that it’s not.

Prior to the 2008 season, the only major news out of Indy was that Peyton Manning was forced to have a minor operation on his knee and would be held out of the pre-season while he recovered.

Aside from that, everything seemed in place for another run. But during the last pre-season game, injuries began to take their toll, and when long time center Jeff Saturday went down with an injury, the offensive line began to look out of sorts.

People who don’t follow the game so closely would think that a team with offensive weapons such as Reggie Wayne, Marvin Harrison, Dallas Clark, and Joseph Addai would still be able to get the job done, but in football, that’s just not the case.

If a pass play calls for a ball to be thrown to a specific spot on a timing route, the line needs to give the QB time. Otherwise, the receiver won’t be where he needs to be (often resulting in an interception) and the QB won’t be able to execute the play which was designed on the clipboard.

Also, for a passing game to be effective, which is something the Colts have excelled at for years, there needs to be a solid running game to complement it.

When the line is consistently getting beaten off the ball as it has been this year for Indy, holes become smaller for shorter amounts of time and teams find themselves stuck in a lot of 2nd and 10 and 3rd and 9 plays, which are very difficult to convert.

On the other side of the ball, a team needs its defense to make stops/plays in order to get the ball back into the hands of the offense. Unfortunately for Indy, and this has been alluded to before, the loss of star safety Bob Sanders has been catastrophic to the unit. He’s the wild card.

The Colts love to move him around as he’s equally adept at stopping the run as he is playing in pass coverage. Now, without his presence in the middle of the field, teams pretty much run at will on the Colts and this leaves Manning and his play makers on the sidelines for long periods of time.

The problem with this scenario is when the offense does get on the field, often times they’re cold and out of rhythm after sitting for so long.

So as the Colts head into this Monday Night showdown against the 6-0 Titans, they’ve gotten a little healthier, minus Bob Sanders and possibly RB Joseph Addai for tonight, but this game has extra importance for them.

Maybe not to their overall playoff cause, because this is the most open year in nearly a decade in the AFC, but definitely to their division cause. And that’s why I think Indy will play with an added sense of urgency because falling four and a half games back at the half way point will be a nearly insurmountable lead to overcome.

source: www.profootball101.org