Here’s a great story by Paul Kuharsky about the Colts defensive tackles.
A couple of quotes:
“It’s designed specifically to get us back to where we were when we had Booger McFarland and Corey Simon,” Colts president Bill Polian said. “Corey, I don’t know what the hell he was, he might have been 320, Booger was between 307 and 310. And that’s what you need to play, you can’t play at 265.
“We’re not looking for the space eater, we’re not looking for the guy who’s just going to sit there and absorb blocks. The idea is not to keep blockers off the linebackers, that’s not the design of our defense. But we needed to get people who could stand a gap over 16 games, and that’s what we have when we were at our best.”
I love that one because it highlights the fact that this is NOT a philosophical change by the Colts to get bigger. They’ve been TRYING to field man-sized DTs for a while now.
Johnson wants to do more than just take up space:
“Penetration is the key,” he said. “If you can make the running backs stop their feet in the backfield, that helps everybody else on the defense out. Now they are playing slow while we are still attacking. Everybody gets to the ball faster, everything is easier for everybody. On pass plays, we have some great pass rushers and I am sure teams will try to throw the ball at us on first down from time to time. That’s something we’ll just have to work on.
“Me and Fili and some other guys, we’re not just big guys who can’t move, we can rush the passer, we can run very well.”
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