This time there was no disaster.
Advertisement
No miracle play went against the Lions. This could have been a big reason for the Lions putting together a quality late drive in the fourth quarter to give them the late lead, as well as the final drive where they would kick the game winning field goal.
After Prater’s miss, Luck drove the Colts 75 yards and hooked up with Jack Doyle on a 6-yard TD pass with 37 seconds left.
INJURIES HURT: The Colts went into the game already down three key players in the secondary.
With so many injuries on the defensive side of the ball, the Colts defense was already outmatched coming into the game against a unsafe Lions offense, but Indy didn’t help themselves by missing a number of tackles and giving the Lions plenty of second chances.
The Lions would lay the last blow, though.
10 – Are Lions running backs Ameer Abdullah and Theo Riddick the second coming of Ickey Woods and James Brooks? After a single game, assessing the Colts defense as bad is premature, but potentially accurate. It was the opposite.
Matthew Stafford wanted Matt Prater to have a chance for redemption.
Riddick should continue to contribute when Stafford looks to pass, while Abdullah followed up his solid rookie season with a positive showing Sunday.
The defense? That part was bad. When it mattered, it was like stealing candy from a baby.
They rushed for more than 100 yards just once in their first nine games – getting 155 against in a win over the Bears after opening the season with five losses – and their running game was the worst in the National Football League with an average of 83.4 yards per game.
The Lions came out of the gate quickly, achieving a few goals that seemed unlikely prior to the opening of the season. Then the Colts rally and make the game interesting, when they should have been doing this from the start. Abdullah and Riddick averaged more than seven yards per carry combined during the first half.
At Arlington, Texas, Eli Manning threw for three touchdowns, including the go-ahead score to Victor Cruz in his first game in almost two years, and the New York Giants beat the Dallas Cowboys.
Stafford had plenty of time to throw.
A lot of the credit for Sunday’s performance belongs to the offensive line.
Caldwell acknowledge mistakes the Lions made on their final drive, most notably Jones failing to get out of bounds after a long gain.
The Lions’ offense was balanced. It shouldn’t be hard to watch film and see what the offense is and isn’t doing when they actually move the ball. The most disturbing thing for the Lions moving forward was the lack of production from their front seven. “There’s too many algorithms and things of that nature to kind of weigh all of those things in your head and that’s why you prepare ahead of time all these different situations”. He was an undrafted free agent signed by the Jets in 2014, who was also on their practice squad. Defensive players need to be able to tackle, plain and simple. Linebacker DeAndre Levy was back in form.
Osweiler’s day started with a hiccup when he threw an interception on the first drive, but soon got going and looked comfortable after that. On Sunday he found them over and over again, continuing his streak from previous year when he was a top-10 quarterback during the second half of the 2015 season.
Advertisement
The Colts also did a nice job on kick coverage, limiting the Lions to a negative yard on punts and one 22-yard kickoff return.
