I agree. Some more aggressive play calling earlier in the quarter would make this all moot.
What is really annoying is how effective we were, and why would we get away from it when we're doing so well?
Kudos to the Colts for not quitting, but I think our biggest enemy moving forward is ourself. If we can learn to not relent, we will beat anyone. And if we don't, it's going to be a short season.
Bingo.
What bothers me is that we haven't learned from the past.
We were predictable on offense and passive on defense against the Jets and lost 16-9 after leading 9-7 at the half, scoring 0 2nd half points.
We were predictable on offense and passive on defense against the Broncos and lost 20-17 after leading 17-7 at the half, scoring 0 2nd half points.
We had the Ravens down 17-7 at the half and let them back in the game with critical turnovers, and were lucky to get a win.
We had the Dolphins down and didn't put them away, and let them come back to take the lead 17-16 before finally putting them away.
We dominated the Colts for almost 50 minutes by being aggressive on defense and mixing it up on offense, and then got conservative on both sides of the ball and threw the game away. We turned the ball over twice on scoring drives in the 3rd quarter, coming away with 0 points. And we got passive when in the red zone in the 4th quarter and only got 3 points.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
When this team plays aggressively on both sides of the ball, and uses play action mixed with a balanced running attack, we are the best team in football. No one can hang with us, not Indy, not NO. When we get passive and predictable we fool no one and aren't good enough on either side of the ball to beat the good teams.
It's really up to the coaching staff to take the brakes off and keep them off. We're only holding ourselves back.
As far as I'm concerned, poor coaching has been a major factor in all 3 losses this year. We could easily be 9-0 if we didn't stop ourselves.