While the Indianapolis Colts achieved a handful of objectives during the 20-17 loss against the Houston Texans on Thursday night, there was one aspect of the game they failed miserably in.
With the run game giving a physical outing to the tune of 175 yards as a team, the Colts needed to find some chunk plays mixed in. However, those plays never came, and it limited what the offense could do down the field.
Head coach Frank Reich said there were some factors that led to the lack of chunk plays but it ultimately comes down to the collective effort of the coaching staff and the players failing to get it done.
“They were playing soft zone coverage a lot of the time forcing the underneath throw and that’s OK. Jacoby (Brissett) did a good job of hitting some check downs in that game that gained good yards and moved the sticks,” Reich said Friday in a conference call. “Then we’re running the ball well on top of it and that’s good, that’s all good but we still have to find ways to make big plays and if you are going to run the ball for 175 yards, that has to be accompanied by four or five chunk plays in the passing game that are set up because of how well you are running the ball. Collectively as coaches and players – as an offense – we just didn’t get that done last night.”
The Texans played a lot more zone coverage on Thursday night than they typically do against the Colts. Part of the reason Indy has had so much success against the Texans in recent seasons has been due to their ability to beat man coverage with scheme.
However, the Texans showed many soft zone looks, which makes it difficult to get the deep ball going.
The biggest problem the Colts had Thursday night was their inability to find some type of big play. Their longest passing play was 14 yards. In today’s NFL, that simply can’t happen.
There are many reasons the Colts didn’t see many plays downfield. Part of it was the scheme shown by the Texans. Some of it is Jacoby Brissett’s decision against forcing a ball into a tight window. Part of it is the wide receiver’s lack of separation on routes.
All of those factors led to the Colts having just 129 passing yards against a defense that was allowing the fourth-most passing yards per game entering the Thursday night matchup.
The Colts offense hasn’t been one predicated on chunk plays. It’s a problem that has been masked somewhat by the rushing success and red-zone success.
But it was on full-display in primetime, and it led to an ugly loss on the road against a divisional opponent.