The final score was 39-35 after Detroit forced a safety against the Colts on the last play of the game. They were handed their third consecutive opening loss – they’re 1-4 in Luck’s career – when Matt Prater knocked down a 43-yard field goal with 4 seconds to play. The Colts moved the ball but Joe Reitz gave up a sack, which was followed by a pitch play to Robert Turbin on 3rd and 15 which forced the offense to punt, but when you have the best punter in the National Football League in Pat McAfee, it is not always a bad thing as the punt was a touchback.
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“Disappointing as heck”, Pagano said. He completed 31 of 47 passes for 385 yards and four touchdowns with no interceptions. “Honestly, I was thinking they gave us too much time”.
“Look, guys are getting paid because they’re capable, so we expected them to step up and do their job”, Adams said. “Certainly that two-minute drive at the end of the half was good for everybody”.
Luck hit Jack Doyle with the go-ahead touchdown on that play. The Colts’ offensive struggles continued on the next drive when the Colts gained a total of 2 yards, going 3-and-out.
No miracle play went against the Lions.
“Anytime you can have timeouts in your back pocket, it’s big”, Stafford said. Given this was the 15th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, that was a welcome absence of distraction.
“It’s a pretty delicate balancing act”, Caldwell said of using time-outs late in games. His coach, Jim Caldwell, had put him in worse situations before during practice. It’s one of our strong suits, and we had three timeouts left. (When) you can come out and move the ball like we moved it towards the end of the first half and then move it in the second half and get off the field.(but) it has to be better. Only time will tell if Grigson will get a quality defensive player in the draft.
“We felt like it was more important at that time to get back, get gathered, get a call in and get settled because we still needed the touchdown”.
Luck refused to second-guess his coach. I’ve always believed that and not only that, you have a right to be. “When you miss like that, the second one can be hard”. The Colts took a timeout with just over a minute to play in order to get their preferred package in, but could have taken an additional 20 seconds off the clock in the process.
The Lions pushed back and answered with a touchdown of their own, but then missed the extra point. Pagano could have opted to bleed the clock a little more – it was still running – before taking a timeout with less time on the play clock.
The scoring drive included a 51-yard pass to Phillip Dorsett.
Tight end Eric Ebron was confident Prater would not miss a second crucial kick.
They have a game plan that is generally run heavy and more concerned with ball control.
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. Another nine seconds lapsed after a short pass by quarterback Andrew Luck to wideout T.Y. Hilton got the Colts nowhere, before Indy chose to spend a timeout of its own.
“The tackling sucked”, he said.
It’s clear Abdullah and Riddick will be Detroit’s workhorses this season, as quarterback Matthew Stafford was Detroit’s third-leading rusher Sunday. “Honestly, I was thinking they gave us too much time”, Lions running back Ameer Abdullah said.
“Tired of talking about slow starts, ” Luck said, essentially spitting the words out. Two more Colts were knocked out of the game – cornerback Patrick Robinson (concussion) and safety T.J. Green (knee sprain).
The only other healthy corners are Darryl Morris and Rashaan Melvin, both of whom were signed this week.
But the Colts led 37-35. They had a tertiary.
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8 – What will be the Colts biggest need to fill with a top 10 pick in the 2017 draft? But he hasn’t worked a game at Lucas Oil Stadium, and the usually low-key Caldwell acknowledged this time will be different.
