By Tom James
INDIANAPOLIS — While realizing the Indianapolis Colts defense needs some fine tuning before the 2008 season resumes with an Oct. 5 road game with Houston, the team’s hierarchy — namely team president Bill Polian and head coach Tony Dungy — don’t believe that bringing in new players at this point is going to be a difference maker.
“There are two things you can do when things are going poorly. As [former coach of the Houston Oilers and New Orleans Saints] Bum Phillips used to say, you can get better people or you can get the people you’ve got better. We prefer to get the people we have better, because there aren’t any better people out there. That’s what this week [was] dedicated to — working hard to get our people better in certain situations,” Polian said earlier this week.
His belief, as well as Dungy’s, is that those players already on the Colts’ roster are the people best capable of getting Indianapolis’ porous run defense turned around quickly.
“Anybody that you would bring in who would be in a position to step in and play is a gigantic injury risk because they have a long injury history and because they’re a little long in the tooth. When you hit these kinds of situations, people long for familiar names. We’re all that way, but when you really analyze it, in terms of use of salary-cap dollars, the functionality that you’re going to get from a player you bring in, you’re far better off [with the players that you already have on the roster],” Polian said.
“We chose [to sign free agent defensive tackles] LaJuan Ramsey and Dan Muir over far many others at the cut to 53 because we felt they were the best players out there. We’ve never been far wrong in terms of our evaluation. They will fit in. We’ll get a chance to get them used to what we do. We’ll get better as time goes on.”
With only three games played this season, the general feeling is that time is on Indianapolis’ side.
“As Tony said [Monday], it’s a function of doing what we do, not trying to be something we’re not, because we’ve lost four key players on defense. Let’s go back and look at it analytically. The bottom line is through no fault of our own, we do not have either [second-year defensive tackle] Quinn Pitcock or [second-year defensive tackle] Ed Johnson, each of whom played major roles in helping us be the No. 2-rated defense in the league last year. We don’t have [safety] Bob Sanders. We’re used to that. He does not play a full season traditionally. He’ll be back soon enough, probably good as new,” Polian points out.
“We do not, through no fault of our own, have [veteran strong-side linebacker] Tyjuan Hagler, who played a major role [last season]. There are four guys that are missing. Tyjuan will be back for Green Bay [Oct. 19], but those are four guys missing from the lineup who are major, major players in last year’s defense. Now, we have to replace them. We’ve been doing it on kind of ad-hoc piecemeal kind of basis, because we didn’t expect to lose any of the four. Certainly, in Bob’s case, we’re very well aware of his longevity history, but Melvin Bullitt was there to step in and he did a great job Sunday. No problem there. But the other three, we never expected to lose. We lost them in a 1-2-3 as we sort of entered the season. So, that takes some adjusting. It takes some adjusting scheme-wise. It takes some adjusting from a cohesion standpoint. It takes some adjusting from a standpoint of how to call the game and things of that nature. I think we’re beginning to get comfortable with the new players we have. Ramsey did a good job Sunday and showed us signs that he can step in and play that role of the big man inside. [Muir] has been a little bit nicked the past couple of weeks. He is going to come back and he’s a 315-pounder. We believe he has the capability to step in. Tyjuan will be back very soon. Bob will be back very soon. The graph should go up defensively and once we get those players fitted in and feeling good about what they do, then we can go back to doing what we do, which is basically playing the Cover 2 defense and not having to worry about eight-man fronts and moving the front because we’re a little small there and things of that nature. We can improve there. No question about it.”
Dungy agrees and remembers advice that he’d gotten from former Pittsburgh Steelers coach Chuck Noll.
“It’s always the same. It’s hard to resist that [making personnel or scheme changes]. That’s where Coach Noll was always so good. He would just say, ‘This is what we’ve done. This is what we’re going to do. This is what we’re always going to be about.’ The easiest thing to do when you’re not having success is say, ‘Well, here’s the new way we’re going to go.’ Most of the time it doesn’t work and the time we’ve had to pull out of these kinds of periods have been when we’ve just zeroed in on our fundamentals and our details and we’ve started to play better,” the Colts coach said.
“It’s not something I tend to worry about. I try to look at the tape and find out what’s gone wrong. People say, ‘These guys aren’t big enough,’ or, ‘This is what’s happening.’ You’ll see what we call Power O and they run it nine times and seven times it makes two or three yards. One time it breaks out because we don’t play it quite right. You understand that all we have to do is play it right every time and it’s going to be fine. That’s hard to explain to people. They say, ‘Don’t tell me about the problem. Just fix it.’ That’s what we have to do. We have to get it fixed.”
The Colts have been through this situation a couple of other times in the seven years that Dungy has been with the team. And he plans to handle this year’s problems the same way.
“We had it Halloween 2004 after [losses to] Jacksonville and Kansas City. It’s just the fact that if you have a good memory, and you remember those conversations, and you remember how you got out of those situations, and you remember what happened, and you evaluate and don’t fall into the panic mode, you see what’s needed and many times, it’s pretty much the same,” he said.
“You just look at the whole thing. I’m sure San Diego was getting that before Monday night, what’s wrong with them? They’re 0-2. Who’s fault is it? We’re not getting any pressure. Jacksonville, I’m sure, was getting it last week, everybody who has high expectations. I’m sure the sky is falling in New England a little bit [after losing to the New York Jets last week]. They’re not going to let that be a factor. Those guys know what they’re capable of and what they have to fix and what the problems are. I think most good teams will do that. They’ll stick to what they know and do well. That’s what we have to do.”
