Colts 4th & 1 Struggles

My breakdown this week is going to look briefly at the Colts play calling on 4th & 1, and why I believe that while Pagano should be applauded for taking chances on 4th and short, the play calling and execution is not giving the Colts the best chance to succeed.

Let’s take a look at the 4th & inches against the Texans.

The first thing to note is that the Colts are lined up in the shotgun, which I’m generally against for a number of reasons:

1) It totally takes away the QB sneak as an option. The Colts had tried the sneak the play before and failed, but I really dislike not making the D at least respect it.
2) When you’re just trying to gain inches, snapping the ball back 4 yards means you’re immediately creating a need to get those back, against a D that will be aggressively defending the 4th down marker.
3) It makes a run more difficult. If you line up under centre with a back behind you, then the back is collecting handoff at full speed moving toward the line, which is often enough to get the inches you need. When you run from shotgun, the back has to wait for the snap and then is going from a standing start, 4 yards behind the LOS (see point 2).

The second thing is that given how well Gore was running, I don’t understand how you don’t give him the ball on 3rd and short OR 4th and short.

Anyway, let’s look at the play they did call.

Right from the snap, you can see that Luck wants to go to Chester Rogers running the slant to the inside, using Hilton to create a natural pick play to get him open against the man coverage. A couple of things go wrong immediately.

The first is that Rogers doesn’t do a good enough job getting off the jam. You can see below that he is barely into his route and the Texans corner has already shot across the line and gotten his hands on him.

The other big problem is Jadeveon Clowney. As you see above, he has put himself right in Luck’s passing lane, and has his arms up in the air like he’s guiding in an aircraft. This next shot shows it even better.

Anthony Castanzo has to do a better job engaging him to stop him doing that. You obviously have to respect Clowney’s quickness, but by not putting a hand on him, he’s free to read Luck’s eyes and get in the lane. It’s not like the line had to protect Luck for an age, so Castanzo backing off so much doesn’t make much sense, especially as Clowney barely made an effort to get to Luck, knowing it was likely to be a quick throw.

So, Rogers gets bumped and Clowney blocks the lane, so Luck has to pull the ball down. Because the corner got across the line so fast, the pick with Hilton doesn’t work and both receivers that Luck is reading are smothered.

The final issue is the pass protection. Despite the Colts leaving 7 men in to protect and the Texans only rushing 4, Whitney Mercilus ends up being blocked by Jack Doyle and Frank Gore, and he smacks Luck from the backside before he can scramble out. Doyle and Gore have to do a better job, but it seems strange that the protection was setup in such a way that Castanzo has a 1 v 1 and the entire rest of the o-line are blocking 2 DTs.

Credit should go to the Texans D for playing this perfectly, but the Colts have to do better in multiple facets here. I don’t like the play call initially. I don’t believe a shotgun play with a slant route, where you’re asking a rookie WR to beat press coverage is putting the Colts in the best situation to succeed. I’d be ok with this play call if Moncrief were on the field, as a more physical receiver has a better chance of beating his man at the line.

But if you are going to call this, the receivers and pass protection have to do a better job than they did here. Doyle and Gore protected badly, and Castanzo let Clowney dictate the play far too easily.

As is often the case, the Colts struggled with both coaching and execution with this one.