My Favorite Thing Going Into Week 1

[ChaosTheory]

Almost nobody thinks we're going to do anything this year. Maybe I hear it more because I'm in Texans Land, but outside a select few that cover the league, everyone I hear from has the Colts lined up for a Top 9-11 pick in the '25 draft. That's my favorite place to be.

Frankly, I think most of these takes are retarded. Like "AR is a running back", "he panics in the pocket and runs every chances he gets", and of course, "the Colts did nothing in the offseason."

The ones that aren't retarded, are skewing heavily towards AR getting injury. It's not if, it's when. That's a more understandable take. However, they pretend like '23 didn't happen. This roster already had the backup play almost 90% of the snaps and was a bad short pass away from the Division title. We now have Flacco at backup QB, who was arguably one of the few backups better than Minshew.

Beyond that, our best offensive weapon (JT) only started 7 games and was injured. We were still Top-10 in rushing and Top-10 in scoring without JT and AR. Now that understandable take is drifting back towards retarded. How does more AR, more JT, and Flacco as backup = a worse situation? Maybe that's me, but we'll see.

The only other non-retarded critique is the secondary. Again, understandable. But again, there's a however... At CB, Gilmore wanted out of his contract, Rodgers got suspended for gambling, Flowers played three games before he tore his Achilles, and Brents only really played 6 or 7 games.

It's much more stable this year going into the season. We didn't bring in the FA's like people always want, so you can always argue that. But I'll just remind you that everyone said the same about the OL last offseason. Same personnel a year removed from a disastrous '22 (far more disastrous than our DB's could have hoped to be in '23) and the coaches/Ballard were comfortable bringing them back. They trusted their judgment and it worked out.

-----

The short of it is that our boys are being slept on en masse. Personally, I think that's fun. I think a lot of people have a generic, lazy assessment of AR and, more importantly, don't realize how good Steichen is. It's similar for our defense (and secondary in particular). Also... I've watch a ton of Latu since we drafted him... I'll just say I won't be surprised if people don't know what they're in for with this kid.

I'll be around a bunch of Texans fans this Sunday and I can't wait. You know... they won the Super Bowl already, if you haven't heard.