I suspect it’s my lack of status within my own organization that sees me dumped with both the Dolphins game last week and the Colts this. That said, a week ago today, after watching Miami take a pretty decent Giants team to the wire, I remarked in reference to the Andrew Luck Derby, “Down the stretch, when faced with the type of stiff opposition that Indianapolis Colts can bring to bear, my bet is they’ll fall well short of the required standard to win that race.”
Far be it from me to toot my own non-too-sizeable horn but by about half-time in this encounter I was cursing myself for not being vehement enough in my assessment.
Boy, do the Colts STINK! Big time, and Bill Polian should feel thoroughly ashamed of himself. There was hardly a single unit that looked like it could compete with any other NFL team and I came to the stark realization that Peyton Manning has almost certainly been the MVP of every season he’s ever played. If he can make this team competitive; never mind taking them to the play-offs year-in, year-out, he is clearly the best player who ever walked onto a field.
As for the Falcons, well let me put it this way, when grading we don’t factor in the quality of the opposition because we believe, when you take into account the whole season, this will even itself out. The Colts push that assumption to breaking point and I think you’ll need to caveat the comments below (and indeed most other similar views this year) with the phrase “but it was only against the Colts”.
Atlanta – Three Performances of Note
Back to his best
Jonathan Babineaux has had a strange season. A partial MCL tear midway through the week one game against Chicago saw him sit out 3 weeks before he returned with a rather underwhelming performance against the Packers. The estimate on the injury was three to five weeks so perhaps he had pushed himself back too early. Next up, against the Panthers he seemed more like himself and got consistent pressure on Cam Newton before then looking sub-par against the Lions the game after. So how would he go here? Pretty well, (+4.3) as it turned out. He got pressure against both guards (although his sack was just of the “mop-up” variety) and also beat both of them regularly in the running game. His best play for me came at the end of the second quarter, with the Colts backed up and trying to run out the clock (1:31 remaining) he beat Mike Tepper to the inside with such speed he was able to get back and across to submarine Donald Brown for a one yard loss. The Colts scorer, who all game was as inept as his team, gave the tackle to Curtis Lofton.
Coverage woes cracked?
After a rather lackluster rookie campaign Sean Weatherspoon (+2.5) is rounding into the player the player the Falcons thought they had drafted. He made six tackles; all of them stops, and was particularly good in coverage. In one three play spell (starting at 11:11 left in the third) he broke on a ball to almost intercept it, knocked another pass out of Austin Collie’s hands and then tackled Jacob Tamme short of a first down. Three and out, all courtesy of Mr. Weatherspoon. It wasn’t all roses as he over-pursued once, was blocked by a crawling Mike Tepper on another occasion and was caught out of position on a couple of pass plays, but outside of that his Pro Bowl credentials are starting to look very genuine.
Lies and Damned Lies
Matt Ryan (+2.1) had a superb QB rating of 120.7 but (as often is the case with him) the numbers were not indicative of his performance. As the game wound down, Ron Pitts (who was doing play by play for Fox) remarked “he had been nearly perfect for most of the game”. Most of the game clearly didn’t include the last drive of the first half, where he could have been intercepted on back to back throws after overthrowing Roddy White so badly a vendor in the stands had a better chance of making the completion than his veteran wide-out. It certainly didn’t take into account his awful interception that was returned for six or the fact that a lot of his downfield throws, that were caught, required leaping efforts from his receivers to get them. Add to this that he didn’t complete a single pass when under pressure and a more accurate picture comes into view. The bottom line is his stat line was mostly a result of good play from his receivers and he was lucky the Colts rush was so anemic.
Indianapolis – Three Performances of Note
If it looks like a linebacker …
Along with Indianapolis, someone else not having a great game was commentator Jim Mora. He seemed to have done as much pre-work as my nine year old son before he went to his first NFL game a few weeks ago. Referring to most people other than the stars by their positions and having a penchant for simply reading out stats he also came up with this in reference to Pat Angerer (-5.1): “This guy’s fun to watch, look at the tattoos on the arm, he’s got what looks like an American flag. This guy loves to play football. That’s what you want a middle linebacker to look like right there”. But, as my good friend Khaled Elsayed pointed out, not what you want one to play like. That may be a little harsh on Angerer on the basis of his general play this year (which has been just below average) but in the context of this display it was more than fair. He missed a season high three tackles (now 14 on the year), was pushed about by Todd McClure at the second level and badly lost the battle with FB Mike Cox in the hole; the first Falcons offensive play of the game being as good an example of this as any. He needs to up his game to match his ‘grading in the green’ appearance.
Curtis falls flat
This was by some margin Curtis Painter’s (-5.9) worst game of the season and that’s not damning with faint praise as he’d already built himself up quite the portfolio of worthy competition in earlier weeks. His numbers look bad but if anything he was worse and nothing tells this more than the fact his QB rating without pressure was 44.3. He served up a huge plethora of overthrows, forced the ball into coverage but was probably at his worst when throwing behind his receivers as he did on his interception. Only luck saved him from more picks and he was eventually benched at the start of the fourth quarter.
Pat on the back
It would not be entirely unreasonable to look to another awful display as my third “performance of note” given the vast array of options. However, if any Colt fans have made it thus far that could be deemed cruel and unusual punishment so I’ll focus on one of only two areas of quality in their entire performance – the punting and kick-offs of Pat McAfee (+4.1). He was excellent throughout with a net punting average of 45.8, a long of 60 and having both his kick-offs drilled deep (very deep) for touchbacks. However the highlight was probably his 53 yarder that went out at the 1 yard line and led to the only Colts points of the day.
Game Notes
– Was Pat Angerer injured or benched? Adrian Moten took over with three plays left.
– Someone certainly not benched was Jeff Saturday (+2.3) who played well but was rested in garbage time and missed his first snaps of the year giving way to Mike Pollack with 4:10 left.
– William Moore left the game with an injury after 12 defensive plays. He was replaced by James Sanders who played pretty well. His stat line read thrown at once, zero passes allowed , two throws defensed.
PFF Game Ball
According to our editor I’m supposed to have made reference to our game ball winner earlier in the piece. Well I didn’t think you’d mind as I’m sure nearly everyone has already seen the reason why I’m giving this to Julio Jones (+3.2) a few times already on every highlight show going. What they won’t have shown you was some pretty good run blocking thrown in for good measure.
Follow us on Twitter: @ProFootbalFocus
© 2025 PFF - all rights reserved.