500 while continuing to lead the weak AFC South.
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The Colts were shut out in the first half for the third time this season in Sunday’s 27-21 loss to the Saints at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Two weeks ago, coordinator Rob Ryan insisted the New Orleans Saints defense was “on the verge of breaking through”. That helped us a lot. “Whatever it is, we work too hard (to have things go south)”.
With the victory, New Orleans improved to 3-4 on the season, while Indianapolis slipped to 3-4. The Colts were not prepared to play and that falls squarely on Pagano, who was thoroughly out-coached by Payton.
Bowen’s Analysis:The time span that had Pagano’s attention from Sunday was the 20-0 lead the Saints built through a 3:55 frame, from the end of the first quarter to the start of the second. “Playing this offense was a tremendous challenge”. Rookie LB Stephone Anthony had seven tackles and a key interception.
Replacing Philbin was Dan Campbell, who in his first press conference came out on a mission, with talk of having players “go at each other’s throats” in practice. “This is a big win”.
Frank Gore was running great, finding huge gaps to run through.
Willie Snead was able to find a home as a Saints wide receiver after bouncing between several teams.
With New Orleans struggling to claim any sort of momentum Sunday, Payton channeled his inner Mad Hatter, stealing one out of his college compadre’s playbook.
“We’re obviously disappointed, especially in our play in the first half, which was completely unacceptable”, Indianapolis coach Chuck Pagano said. “It’s hard enough to win football games when you don’t shoot yourself in the foot and you’re not going to win many football games in the National Football League when you turn the ball over and you have penalties and you have miscues and you have the errors that happened with special teams, and inability at times to stop the run and we couldn’t run it”.
“I was proud of the guys after halftime, because you can say it is because of this or that, or a hangover (from losing to New England), but that is all bull crap”. This is all on us.
“We got to get it fixed”, Pagano said. We can’t continue to beat ourselves. Hilton caught four passes for 150 yards and the two scores.
Andrew Luck missed the first two games of his career with an injured throwing shoulder and still doesn’t look right. Luck then directed an 80-yard drive late in the fourth quarter, hitting Donte Moncrief for an 8-yard score to make it 27-21 with 3:05 left. In that period, the Colts gave up a fake field goal, threw an interception and fumbled a kickoff return, allowing the Saints three touchdowns off very short fields.
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“I couldn’t get into any kind of rhythm in the first half”, Luck said. Since then I have regularly sold about half the season (making a nice profit during the prime Manning years) after getting in before there was a season ticket waiting list and enjoying a few football at a fraction of the price as a result.
