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Shane Steichen on Why the Colts Are Giving up Sacks, and What He’ll Do About
(By Nat Newell)
https://www.indystar.com/story/sport...s/87203436007/
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Colts head coach Shane Steichen said Monday he “doesn’t have a huge level of concern” over his offensive line and quarterback surrendering 12 sacks, three QB fumbles and a tipped-ball interception in its last two games.
“I think when you see the stat line of sacks, I think every sack has a story to it, and I always look at myself first,” Steichen said Monday, a day after his team gave up seven sacks to the blitz-happy Falcons defense, following a seven-game start to the season that included just six sacks of Daniel Jones. “There are certain calls I could have called better to put our guys in better position so those don’t happen.
“So that’s on me. Those things happen in the game. I’ve got to do better for those guys.”
For all the historic positives produced by Indianapolis’ run game Sunday in Berlin – 323 total yards on the ground, 244 of those from MVP candidate Jonathan Taylor, the second-most in his career and the team’s history – the passing game saw a series of highs and lows. At his best, Jones, who threw for 255 yards on 19-of-26 throwing the ball – the second quarterback to eclipse the 200-yard mark this year against the NFL’s top passing defense – was spot-on for three big-game throws.
His 37-yard connection to Alec Pierce in double-coverage, placed in a spot only the fourth-year wideout could high-point it, gave the Colts an early 13-7 lead. Jones' pair of late-game connections to rookie tight end Tyler Warren – an all-or-nothing fourth-and-2 with Warren facing blanketed man coverage and another in overtime for a leaping 23-yarder that sparked the game-winning touchdown a few plays later – were highlight reel-worthy.
And Jones found his way out of the pocket for runs several times that extended drives or gave them hope – the most pivotal a 19-yard scramble on third-and-21 sandwiched between a sack and the ensuing 10-yard fourth-down strike to Warren. Jones totaled 53 yards on seven rushes – nearly double his previous season-high (four rushes for 27 yards in Tennessee.)
But a team that had fumbled just once, thrown three picks and surrendered nine sacks in its first eight games in 2025 now has four fumbles, seven picks and 21 sacks two games later.
“I think (Jones) has been doing a really good job. I mean, we talk about moving the football up and down the field. I think, obviously, just having two hands on the ball in the pocket moving forward is a big part of it for us, and he understands that,” Steichen said. "We just got to keep improving and getting better.”
Of the Colts’ next four opponents – road trips to the Chiefs (Nov. 23), Jaguars (Dec. 7) and Seahawks (Dec. 14) and a home matchup with the Texans (Nov. 30) – only Seattle ranks in the top-half of the league in pressure percentage on drop-backs (7th). The Seahawks are tied-for-second-best in total sacks (32.)
Earlier in the season, the Colts offense largely faired well against a sack-happy list of opponents, surrendering one to Denver (tops in the league in sacks), one to the Chargers (7th-best) and two to the Rams (9th-best), but that metric has tailed off over the past two weeks against the two of the top-5 defenses in the league this year in taking the quarterback to the ground.
“I think it just depends on the play type – what’s going on around (Jones), how the pocket is, if it’s collapsed on him, if he has space to get out and make a play. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you do,” Steichen said of the disparity in his quarterbacks successes on runs out of the pocket and his high number of sacks Sunday. “There’s some situations that I could’ve done a better job of putting him in on some of those plays.”
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