But something went off the rails. In 22 games with Smith at the helm, Tampa Bay is 4-18, including a 1-10 mark at home.
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Safety Mike Adams returned to full participation for Friday’s practice after he was limited earlier in the week with a hamstring injury.
This season, the Panthers have a healthy Newton and a swarming defense. “We feel like we need to take that pressure off Andrew so that he does not feel like he has to go out and make the Superman play”. As if Jim Irsay popping pills in a Toyota Highlander isn’t enough, per USA Today, the growing friction between head coach Chuck Pagano and general manager Ryan Grigson is causing a split in 2015.
He sat back, took a deep breath, and trusted his people. At 6-0, even Vegas can’t slight the Panthers anymore.
How, exactly, did they do that? We kept talking about, “Hey, the opportunity is in front of us, the situation is in front of us” and nobody was running away within our division.
“We have so much going on in the building, we’ve got to focus on what we have to do”, linebacker D’Qwell Jackson said. Often, the best offensive coordinators are just memories of a former coach most fans couldn’t stand when he was actually with the team.
Getting the top overall pick does not equal instant success, but the Buccaneers fell to 2-4 after their collapse in Washington.
The shaky start in Indy, from Luck’s unstable play and banged-up body to coach Chuck Pagano’s suspect special teams decisions, is a far cry from the consistent rise in performance the Colts enjoyed over the last three seasons, including an AFC championship game appearance last season. But that ladder of improvement lost a few rungs last season.
We broke it all down on Horseplay, which airs Mondays at 12:30 on theindychannel.com/horseplay and the RTV6 app. Watch each of the clips above for the discussion around those topics. “I also have a lot of respect for Coach Rivera, Coach McDermott, Coach Shula – bunch of good guys”.
I would be careful betting on this one because even though I expect the Panthers to win and for it to seem like they had control throughout the game, the final score could easily be something like 24-20.
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“(There’s) no point in my mind in playing that game with really anything”, Luck said Wednesday on a conference call with Carolina media. If Luck can get back to focusing on winning the 10-yard war, he will rediscover his rhythm and get the Colts’ attack back on track. You fall behind and you get one dimensional so to speak and you struggle. The defense isn’t the unit that I would place all of the blame on for the sluggish start to the year, which is odd to say. “Shoot, we won a playoff game. That’s what happens. That’s the nature of the beast”. Keeping Stewart in check, alone, is a big task. “I was very fortunate and we just kept working and kept working”.
