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October 20, 2008

Colts need to fix things and fast

After crashing vs. Packers and with 6-0 Titans up next, Colts have to …Fix it, Fast

By Tom James

INDIANAPOLIS — The time for the Indianapolis Colts to start turning their National Football League season around begins this week.

Indianapolis has put itself in a rather precarious position after getting the 2008 season off to an uncharacteristic 3-3 start. The Colts’ current woes are due, primarily, to inconsistent play on both sides of the football.

Throw in sloppy play which has resulted in an increased number of penalties over the last two weeks and the Colts certainly have their work cut out for them, especially considering their next opponent — the Tennessee Titans — have an NFL-best 6-0 record.

This week’s practices, however, will concentrate more on what Indianapolis needs to do rather than what problems that the Titans may offer.

“We’re going to have to bounce back [from losing to the Packers]. We’re going to Tennessee this week. [The Titans] are playing as well as any team that I’ve seen in the NFL. We can’t have a repeat type of performance. We’ve got to improve and get better,” Colts coach Tony Dungy said Monday.

“It’s something that we’re probably not used to around here, playing so up and down. I’ve been with some teams in the past, not here, but some of the teams I had in Tampa, we had some of this type of problem early in the year. We just have to practice through it, work to get it corrected, move forward and play much better in the middle of the year and the second half of the year than we have at the beginning.”

Putting a finger on what exactly the problems are is another matter entirely. While the Indianapolis run defense has taken its fair share of the blame, it’s been more than that. A sluggish offense, inopportune (as well as too many) penalties, not playing with a sense of urgency on either side of the ball.

It’s a situation that Dungy is not happy about and one in which he is trying to figure out.

“We’ve always been a team that’s prided ourselves on not getting penalties. We work on it. We believed that if you use the proper techniques, you won’t get the penalties. And we’ve gotten 22 in the last two weeks. You’re not going to win that many games that way,” he said.

“It would be one thing if it our young guys, our rookies, getting those penalties. But it’s everyone. Some of the pre-snap penalties, the false starts and the offsides on defense, those things are just concentration. We’ve got to work on them. And then there’s some technique stuff that you just have to have your hands in the right place and do things the right way.”

“It’s just basic, fundamental training camp football. Some of those [penalties], they happen and you want them not to happen, but you can live with them. But the automatic-first-down holding penalties, hands to the face, those kind of things that’s what we’ve got to eliminate.”

Even though Indianapolis has had plenty of success in recent years — a run of five straight 12-plus win seasons, five divisional titles and a Super Bowl crown — the Colts now are trying to find their identity, which has somehow gotten misplaced along the way.

“That’s always your hope, that you clicking into high gear and doing things exactly right all the time. And this year we haven’t. Usually by this time of year, we’re playing pretty solid football. But we’ve been up and down. We’ve had good quarters or good drives. But we haven’t had the continued improvement and the playing better every week that we need to have. So we just have to practice well, practice hard, practice sharp and hope we develop that,” Dungy said.

“When you aren’t playing well, everything effects you. Whether it’s the field, the officials, any little things that goes wrong seems to be a catastrophe when you’re not playing well. Right now we’re 3-3, we’re a team that wins one, loses one, plays well part of the time, not well part of the time. We’re just not a consistent football team right now. We have the makings of a good team. We have enough individual components to be very good. But right now we’re not clicking on all cylinders.”

n It’s a team thing — While the Colts’ offense struggled in Sunday’s loss to Green Bay, the Indianapolis coach said that he’s not worried about quarterback Peyton Manning. Manning hit on just 21 of 42 passes for 229 yards and had two passes intercepted, both of which were returned for touchdowns. He had a season-low 46.6 efficiency rating, his worst since a 44.0 rating against Jacksonville (a 10-3 win on Sept. 18, 2005) four seasons ago.

“I don’t know that [the offense’s problem] is just him. I think it’s our whole team. Most players, including Peyton, kind of reflect what’s going on around them. He’s played great for us at times in the past and seemed like he was able to carry the whole team. But that’s never really the case. When we’re all functioning well, that’s when we play our best.

“We put a lot of pressure on our offense by not taking care of business on defense, by getting bad field position with special teams penalties,” Dungy explained.

“Falling behind [in games]. It’s hard to play from 10 points down, 13 points down all the time on offense. I think that’s what’s happened. We’ve got a lot of guys trying a little too hard, trying to make things happen, and having to play one-dimensionally. So we’ve got to play better all the way around. Offensive, defense and special teams. And then I think we’ll see what some of our individual guys can do.”

n Backs to the wall — A win against Tennessee this week and the Colts will be right back in the race for the AFC South title. A loss, though, and the battle will most likely be for an AFC wild-card spot in the playoffs.

“We’ll find out. I thought that we had real good concentration two weeks ago [against Baltimore] and we’re going to need that. I think our players will watch the tape and they will see how well Tennessee is playing. I think we’ll know that if we don’t win this game, we really won’t have a chance to win the division, I don’t think. We should have ourselves ready to play our best game of the year, for sure,” Dungy said.

n Injury list — There were no updates on the availability of running back Joseph Addai (hamstring), cornerback Kelvin Hayden (knee) or tight end Gijon Robinson (ankle) for the Titans game.

“Don’t know for sure. Kelvin has been running and rehabbing a little bit. In talking to [assistant athletic trainer] Dave Hammer, he was doing well. I think we have to go in [to this week] feeling like we won’t have any of them and everybody else has to get ready to go,” Dungy said. “[Addai] kind of wanted to try to go [against Green Bay]. We felt having this week and an extra day, we’ll see how he is on Thursday.”

Hayden, though, said Monday that his recovery from surgery to repair the meniscus in his left knee went well and that he hopes to be back soon.

“Just really taking it day-by-day right now. Got a little bit of stiffness,” he said. “I really can’t say much because I can’t do much. Just progressing everyday and hoping for the best. We’ll see.”



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