I am going to apologize in advance for what I’m about to say. I’m not even sure I believe any of it but I have to let off some steam or my head is going to blow up! I was literally throwing things and breaking things last night I was so livid! If you want to be considered a legitimate playoff team, you cannot lose to a 1 win team. Under no circumstances can you lose to a 1 win team. Bad officiating or not, I repeat, you cannot lose to a 1 win team!!!The officiating was awful! Terrible!! It was near scandalous. The two main penalties that most fans are complaining about are the two separate roughing the passer calls that were so bad even Colts fans had to be scratching their heads. It just seemed every time the Texans made a play on defense they were getting flagged. And it wasn’t just the calls against the Texans, it was the non calls against the Colts. Mathis slapped TJ in the head on one of the sacks and on another TJ got popped in the head helmet to helmet. If you are going to call that weak ass penalty, you HAVE to call it both ways!!
That said, there is so much blame to go around, singling out bad officiating would be almost unfair. You won’t beat many teams if you don’t convert a single 3rd down until late in the 4th quarter. And that one was a fluke! 1 for 10 on 3rd down against a 1 win team is inexcusable!! Utterly inexcusable!!! Many people are putting this loss on TJ today, but TJ wasn’t the problem. He only had 3 incompletions and one of those was a hail mary. The problem is Gary Kubiak and Rick Dennison. They have absolutely no faith in TJ and its obvious! Last week TJ only threw the ball deep down field 3 times, this week only twice, and again one of those was a last second hail mary.
If you won’t even attempt to stretch the field then you have to operate with 8-9 in the box every down. Credit Arian for still being very productive in that environment but against a good Jets or the Steelers defense it won’t work!! Yes TJ played a bad game against Carolina, but he’s a rookie! He is going to make mistakes but that’s part of the learning process. If you won’t let him get some confidence with those downfield throws now against a team like Indy, then when are you planning on doing it? When we’re down by 21 to Pittsburg in the playoffs? Yates showed he can play well against a good defense, if you let him. So let him!! The 1st round bye is gone. Stop being so damn conservative! I thought that would make me feel better but I’m still so pissed today! Inexcusable!!
I agree with every single one of your comments above. The blame should be evenly spread around to coaching, officiating, and on-field execution. This is further compounded by the fact that Indy had the momentum in that game. They just beat Tennessee and they were playing at home which is a huge advantage in this sport.
ReplyDeleteKubiak does need to let the kid throw. He absolutely needs to have that confidence going into the playoff environment but I think you were going kind of harsh with who was at fault for the lack of long passes. TJ is so new to the big league and we do not have really great route runners on the field right now with the absence of the great A.J. So Kubiak called fewer long pass plays and then when there was a designed long pass play going, Indy's secondary and our lackluster receivers made TJ throw the easy pass to Foster. If we can get Andre back, he will demand double coverage and relieve the pressure off of Kevin Walters and Jacoby Jones.