After 5 years of building, Colts are nowhere on defense
INDIANAPOLIS – The coach spent three decades burnishing his defensive credentials and vowed to bring his time-tested principles to the heartland. The general manager has spent nearly five years tinkering with the defensive personnel looking to build a title-worthy unit. Defensive players have come and gone, big names and less familiar ones alike, in a seemingly eternal search for the right fit. The break-but-don’t-bend thinking of the past would be supplanted by a much more aggressive posture.
These were to be the ingredients of a defense that, at long last, would make the Indianapolis Colts a more balanced football team.
“Star Wars” offense? Pfft. The Colts would be a team that could get a stop when they absolutely needed one. Tampa-2, meet press-man coverage. Out with the passive 4-3 scheme, in with a multi-faceted 3-4 system.
It all sounded so believable. The Colts believed it. You wanted to believe it, too.
But today, the numbers unmask it all as a myth.
Since the Colts underwent their sea change in 2012, with the hiring of coach Chuck Pagano and general manager Ryan Grigson and the installation of a new defensive scheme, this season’s defense is arguably this regime’s worst. This comes at a time when you’d think the Colts would be finding their footing on defense, finally fielding a unit able to complement an offense that is led by one of the NFL’s finest quarterbacks.
“We’re still sorting it out,” Pagano lamented.
The hard truth is the Colts have never been anything better than average on defense, and now they appear to be miles from even that modest standard. The Colts are allowing 411.2 yards per game heading into Sunday’s AFC South contest at Tennessee. That puts Indianapolis 30th among 32 NFL teams, with a staggering 936 yards allowed in their past two games.
Chuck Pagano: Crazy? No. I'm encouraged
But these issues should not be viewed in a vacuum. They are years in the making, something that suggests their solutions might also take time.
So, how did the Colts get here anyway?
Scheme hasn’t translated
The Baltimore Ravens have been a defensive standard bearer for years. It’s the team for which Ray Lewis and Ed Reed enjoyed likely Hall of Fame careers. That the Ravens won Super Bowl XXXV with Trent Dilfer at quarterback tells you all you need to know.
Pagano spent the four seasons before his arrival in Indianapolis in that culture. When Pagano was hired by the Colts in 2012, the plan was simple: Bring the Ravens defense to Indianapolis.
What would it look like? That, too, was simple.
“A defense that stops the run, is very, very aggressive and attacking,” Pagano said when asked recently to reflect on his hopes. “A defense that wreaks havoc and makes it very, very difficult to operate as an offense and dictates the tempo.”
That certainly sounds like a winning defense. But that’s not a description of the Colts’ current unit.
Put the question to defensive coordinator Ted Monachino, also formerly of the Ravens, and he explains his vision for this defense thusly: “This is a team that can stop the run, that can make teams one-dimensional and then, when they do that … take advantage of quarterbacks. That’s what I would hope (others) would say. We are not there yet.”
In the NFL, no two situations are exactly the same. The Ravens’ 2011 defense, for which Pagano was the coordinator, and the Colts’ current defense have many differences. But Pagano simply hasn't lived up to his reputation.
It’s hard to make the case when his defenses have consistently been on the wrong end of blowout losses. The Colts have given up many eye-popping point totals in his tenure: 59 points against the Patriots in 2012 (Pagano was being treated for cancer at the time); 42 and 43 points to the Bengals and Patriots, respectively, in 2013; 51 points to the Steelers in 2014; another 51 points to the Jaguars in 2015.
Those are numbers that are liable to keep any coach awake at night, much less one who made his name coaching defense from coast to coast, from Southern Cal to East Carolina and everywhere in between.
To be fair, Pagano has been up against it. Has been from day one. He’s never had the sort of personnel he did in Baltimore, and he likely never will. Ray Lewis isn’t walking through that door. But the front office has certainly struggled to acquire defensive talent (more on that later).
Still, in the end, Pagano’s defense has fallen woefully short of what he envisioned. And that’s a fact he can’t run from.
Colts' Sunday night collapse worst ever?
The (lack of) pass rush
Perhaps the Colts’ best defensive season under Pagano came in 2013. In four of the team’s 11 wins, the defense held an opponent to seven points or fewer. The Colts also were ninth in scoring defense, allowing 21 points per game. There were signs, even if isolated, that the defense had promise.
Maybe the most impressive thing the Colts did in 2013 was rush the quarterback. And it’s no secret why.
His name is Robert Mathis.
The five-time Pro Bowl outside linebacker registered a stunning 19½ sacks that season, putting him in the running for Defensive Player of the Year. It was one of the best single seasons ever by a Colts defender. Put simply, he was phenomenal.
In retrospect, what Mathis’ 2013 season taught us is the value of a pass rush. It can cover up so many other ills, like the fact the Colts allowed 4.5 yards per carry that season or, for example, that Aubrayo Franklin was their nose tackle.
Robert Mathis battles injured foot, 'Father Time'
This year – and in most recent years, really – the Colts defense has been devoid of a pass rush. They are on pace for 21 sacks as a team in 2016, hardly more than Mathis had in that single, magical season. The current lack of a pass rush is one of the biggest issues the defense faces, and there are no easy answers. Problems that took this long to develop aren’t fixed on the fly.
The Colts have been chasing their collective tail on this front since drafting Bjoern Werner in 2013. We won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say the first-round choice flailed for three seasons, flopped and was sent packing.
Since then, Grigson has tried to make do with late-round picks (Jonathan Newsome), an aging, expensive vet (Trent Cole), and, of course, Mathis. Newsome got arrested and cut, Cole got hurt, Mathis got old.
The Colts knew where they stood going into 2016. If the offensive line was the No. 1 offseason need, pass rush was 1A. But resources being what they are, the Colts opted to deal with their offensive line issues first and postpone the pass rush until 2017. It was a very conscious, and somewhat understandable, decision.
“There are no utopias,” Grigson said after the draft in April. “You can’t address every single need in the draft.”
But that calculation is now costing them.
Only two teams have fewer sacks than the Colts. Only three teams allow more passing yards per game.
And just about every team has a more legitimate pass rush.
Player acquisitions
The pass-rush search – to the extent there’s been one – has involved just one significant foray into free agency (Cole). But as it relates to the defense as a whole, free agency for years has been the lifeblood of the unit.
You know the names: LaRon Landry, Greg Toler, Ricky Jean Francois, Erik Walden, D’Qwell Jackson, to name a few. Some have been more successful than others.
But the idea was this: After 2012, when the Colts surprisingly made the playoffs, the team decided to get aggressive in its rebuilding effort. A long-term plan became a win-now plan. But with the change in scheme and the major offensive draft investments aimed at surrounding Andrew Luck with talent, the Colts had to take some shortcuts on defense.
That’s how the Colts wound up signing Landry to a $24 million deal, for which he gave them 23 games in two seasons, a PED suspension and approximately zero big plays.
Colts activate Art Jones; status for Sunday uncertain
The problem is while the Colts were leaning heavily on defensive free agents, they failed to find young prospects in the draft who could succeed them. In their first two years under Grigson and Pagano, the Colts used just one selection in the first four rounds on a defensive player.
That player: Werner.
The few late-round picks they made included the likes of linebacker Tim Fugger, safety John Boyett and linebacker Andrew Jackson. That’s not what you might consider the makings of a talent pipeline. Outside of Pro Bowl cornerback Vontae Davis – the Colts acquired him by trade using a 2013 second-round pick in a stroke of genius – the Colts have no defensive starters from their 2012-14 drafts. Worse yet, none of the seven defensive players drafted in those years remains on the roster.
It wasn’t until the 2015 draft, when the Colts picked defensive tackle Henry Anderson, safety Clayton Geathers and nose tackle David Parry, that the draft bore fruit in the form of defensive talent.
Even while the Colts were struggling to make defensive inroads in the draft, the free agency strikeouts piled up. Ricky Jean Francois played two years of a four-year contract. Art Jones, now in his third year of a $30 million deal, had a great stretch in 2014, but has been hurt and suspended for most of the past two years. Cole had three sacks last season and is now on injured reserve.
Even those who panned out — Walden, D’Qwell Jackson and Mike Adams among them — are now some of the oldest players on a defense that needs a major youth movement.
So, again, how did the Colts get here? The reasons, as you can see, are varied.
How do they fix the problem? As Pagano said, the Colts are “still sorting it out.”
That’s a process now five years in the making. Five years of drafting, signing, scheming – and falling short.
Follow IndyStar reporter Stephen Holder on Twitter: @HolderStephen.
No defense
The Colts have surrendered 40 or more points 12 times in the 78-game Grigson-Pagano era. In the 985-game history of the franchise, it has surrendered 40 or more points 55 times. (PA —points allowed, PF – points for).
Swing and miss
From 2012-14, the Colts drafted seven defensive players. None remains on the team:
Offensive defenses
Through six games, the 2016 Colts are on pace to be the worst defense of the Indianapolis era. Below is the team's rank in each of those categories. Total is the sum of those rankings with points allowed counted twice.