As with my college selections please don't wire the baby's college fund to Antigua in anticipation of doubling up this weekend. However, for entertainment purposes here's my feelings on Saturday's games:
New Orleans -10/44
Alright, the Seahawks should be ousted faster than Chuck from Happy Days, but what about the number. Sure playing at rowdy Qwest Field means the Saints have to run a gauntlet only slightly less daunting than The Warriors trying to get back to Coney Island, but baseball wielding clowns aside this is not the rookie-laden Rams coming in here, but the veteran-led Super Bowl Champs. The last similiar team to play in Seattle, the Giants, bombed Pete Carroll and crew 41-7. We don't expect as much from the run challenged defending champs, but even with Hasselbeck expected to play we'll say Saints and the Under and hope Seattle doesn't score 17 at which point we'd be unable to win both sides.
Indianapolis -2.5/44.5
The Jets, with their staunch run D and shutdown corner (Revis), would have a field day against the run heavy/one receiver (Bowe) Chiefs. Here they get a much more difficult test in Peyton Manning. After watching the Jets get dumped by the Bears in Chicago it appeared they're vaunted D had become as vunerable as a recently fired exotic dancer with Daddy issues. In their last 3 road games (NE, PIT, CHI) they allowed 8 TD passes and 2 hundred yard rushers. So Peyton should get his points. But then so should the Jets. NY is much more balanced this year with a near 50-50 pass/run split and the WR corp is significantly upgraded with postseason stalwart Santonio Holmes. Indy has not held an opponent under 20 pts. in the last 7 weeks and that includes 3 games vs. the TD-challenged Jags and Titans, as well as, being pole-axed for 38 at home by Jon Kitna and the Cowboys. Putting this altogether or more likely just losing strength in my hunt-and-peck finger I'll wrap it up with Over and the JETS. Good luck and enjoy the games.
Showing posts with label NFL Playoffs Colts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NFL Playoffs Colts. Show all posts
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Indianapolis Colts
GENERAL: On a winter night in 1984 the Irsay family packed the then Baltimore Colts up like the Clampetts heading to Bev-er-lee and stole away into the night as if they were Randy Quaid off to Canada with a posse of "Star Whackers" on his tail (http://theweek.com/article/index/207293/what-happened-to-randy-quaid). Since then the club has gone from the Art Schlicter/Jeff George sporting laughingstocks of the league to the Peyton Manning-led model of consistency we see today.
Still if the recent history of the Colts were a High School romance Peyton Manning would be Phoebe Cates and the Colts' fans Judge Reinhold walking around with balls bluer than a Smurf in the Polar Bear Club. In 11 of Manning's 13 seasons Indy has reached the playoffs yet only once have they taken home the hardware for a Susan Lucci meets Alydar-like record of close, but no cigar. Of course this is a record of success any Pittsburgh Pirate fan could/will only dream of, but it does point out the difficulty of "putting it all together" in the NFL where one superstar does not a Lombardi Trophy make.
Whether the Colts have enough to grab another brass ring in their current state or the window of opportunity is closing faster than that on the career of a post "I Will Survive" Gloria Gaynor (ironic, really) is unknown. This weekend versus Rex Ryan and Gang Green could go a long toward seeing if we have a changing of the AFC guard on the horizon.
OFFENSE: Even with Peyton the Great at the helm this offense struggled to find any kind of consistency in 2010 which is what happens when you sport a ground unit reminiscent of the Iraqi Republican Guard (which by the way differed from the late Ted Kennedy in that Kennedy had actually killed an American) and a receiver corps that looks like Little Roundtop after Pickett's Charge. Joseph Addai appears worn and slow, Donald Brown has underachieved, Dallas Clark is done for the year and Austin Collie's suffered more head trauma this season than Billy Mays and Natasha Richardson combined. In exactly half their games this year the Colts rushed for under 80 yards total and only 1 of those affairs (vs. SD) was a blowout. They just simply had more trouble opening holes than Muhammad Ali's House of Piercings going 3-5 in those games. Manning is now 34 and has never been mobile, Pierre Garcon is inconsistent, Collie/Clark won't be back and at 32 Reggie Wayne can't do it all by himself. The emergence of Jacob Tamme helps, but this group needs to run the ball to take the pressure off Peyton and an increasingly middling defense. Unfortunately in a 6 team tourney featuring the run stuffing Jets, Ravens and Steelers it seems hard to imagine a repeat of 2006.
DEFENSE: As I mentioned Indy's defense is an average bunch that finished #22 overall and is susceptible to the run giving up over 2000 yards and 14 TDs via the ground. Instead let's take a second to address the Cover-2, a defense associated with Tony Dungy and thus by proxy with the Colts. In the mid to late 90s when Dungy was employing this style to great effect in Tampa Bay it was looked at as some sort of miracle scheme that allowed safeties to roll coverage toward dangerous WRs effectively bracketing and neutralizing them. You still hear this type of talk in Fantasy circles where analysts fear superstars who get little help from teammates will get some sort of undue attention from opposing defenses. And yet year after year wideouts like Roddy White, Andre Johnson and Calvin Johnson put up monster numbers despite have the cast of the Big Bang Theory manning receiving spots alongside them. Problem is the Cover-2 is predicated on clogging the short zones with cornerbacks and linebackers and getting enough of a pass rush to force a throw before receivers can flood the deep areas. If the QB has enough time offenses are smart enough to simply run multiple receivers at the safeties (the advent of athletic TEs and slot receivers being an effective weapon here), wait for them to commit and throw the other way. With teams like Tampa in the 90's where a talented D-Line was stuffing the run and harrassing the QB this worked to perfection, in Indy the results have been more sketchy. Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis are still causing more backfield havoc than Elton John on a drunken rampage, but a shaky run D has undermined the overall effect and the Colts finished in the lower third of the league in sacks in 2010. Can they hold down Tomlinson/Greene enough to force Sanchez into 3rd and longs and then get enough pressure to force hurried decisions? That's the question that should be critical to potentially the best matchup of Wild Card weekend.
You can add your own bad seaman/semen pun here:
Still if the recent history of the Colts were a High School romance Peyton Manning would be Phoebe Cates and the Colts' fans Judge Reinhold walking around with balls bluer than a Smurf in the Polar Bear Club. In 11 of Manning's 13 seasons Indy has reached the playoffs yet only once have they taken home the hardware for a Susan Lucci meets Alydar-like record of close, but no cigar. Of course this is a record of success any Pittsburgh Pirate fan could/will only dream of, but it does point out the difficulty of "putting it all together" in the NFL where one superstar does not a Lombardi Trophy make.
Whether the Colts have enough to grab another brass ring in their current state or the window of opportunity is closing faster than that on the career of a post "I Will Survive" Gloria Gaynor (ironic, really) is unknown. This weekend versus Rex Ryan and Gang Green could go a long toward seeing if we have a changing of the AFC guard on the horizon.
OFFENSE: Even with Peyton the Great at the helm this offense struggled to find any kind of consistency in 2010 which is what happens when you sport a ground unit reminiscent of the Iraqi Republican Guard (which by the way differed from the late Ted Kennedy in that Kennedy had actually killed an American) and a receiver corps that looks like Little Roundtop after Pickett's Charge. Joseph Addai appears worn and slow, Donald Brown has underachieved, Dallas Clark is done for the year and Austin Collie's suffered more head trauma this season than Billy Mays and Natasha Richardson combined. In exactly half their games this year the Colts rushed for under 80 yards total and only 1 of those affairs (vs. SD) was a blowout. They just simply had more trouble opening holes than Muhammad Ali's House of Piercings going 3-5 in those games. Manning is now 34 and has never been mobile, Pierre Garcon is inconsistent, Collie/Clark won't be back and at 32 Reggie Wayne can't do it all by himself. The emergence of Jacob Tamme helps, but this group needs to run the ball to take the pressure off Peyton and an increasingly middling defense. Unfortunately in a 6 team tourney featuring the run stuffing Jets, Ravens and Steelers it seems hard to imagine a repeat of 2006.
DEFENSE: As I mentioned Indy's defense is an average bunch that finished #22 overall and is susceptible to the run giving up over 2000 yards and 14 TDs via the ground. Instead let's take a second to address the Cover-2, a defense associated with Tony Dungy and thus by proxy with the Colts. In the mid to late 90s when Dungy was employing this style to great effect in Tampa Bay it was looked at as some sort of miracle scheme that allowed safeties to roll coverage toward dangerous WRs effectively bracketing and neutralizing them. You still hear this type of talk in Fantasy circles where analysts fear superstars who get little help from teammates will get some sort of undue attention from opposing defenses. And yet year after year wideouts like Roddy White, Andre Johnson and Calvin Johnson put up monster numbers despite have the cast of the Big Bang Theory manning receiving spots alongside them. Problem is the Cover-2 is predicated on clogging the short zones with cornerbacks and linebackers and getting enough of a pass rush to force a throw before receivers can flood the deep areas. If the QB has enough time offenses are smart enough to simply run multiple receivers at the safeties (the advent of athletic TEs and slot receivers being an effective weapon here), wait for them to commit and throw the other way. With teams like Tampa in the 90's where a talented D-Line was stuffing the run and harrassing the QB this worked to perfection, in Indy the results have been more sketchy. Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis are still causing more backfield havoc than Elton John on a drunken rampage, but a shaky run D has undermined the overall effect and the Colts finished in the lower third of the league in sacks in 2010. Can they hold down Tomlinson/Greene enough to force Sanchez into 3rd and longs and then get enough pressure to force hurried decisions? That's the question that should be critical to potentially the best matchup of Wild Card weekend.
You can add your own bad seaman/semen pun here:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)