We watched a lot of film on Indianapolis last week. We knew what they were trying to do with routes and running the ball. Their offense is not really that complicated. They do a few things, but they do them really good. The biggest thing with the Colts is their down and distance tendencies. They were pretty strong. After learning the down and distance tendencies, they only did a few things in certain situations, so we were able to hone in on what they were trying to accomplish.
Peyton (Manning) is a quarterback that does a lot of stuff on the line with hand signals and pointing. It's kind of for show, but it is part of his plan to make the defense uneasy. He tried to get us to show our hand. He was trying to buy as much time as he could to figure out the defense we were in. He watches an extremely large amount of film. He knows exactly what you are going to be doing, so through disguise on defense, we were trying to throw him off. It was just a chess match on who was going to move first. Our linebackers and secondary moved around a lot to disguise the coverages. We were trying to throw off his looks.
Our secondary did a good job in the game. Bruce (Thornton) came in and did an awesome job. He held Marvin (Harrison) to two catches and got a pick. Guys played hard. Once we do the things that we are supposed to do on defense, we can become a great unit. We need to be more exact as a defense. This will help us go to the next level. We are playing good defense, but we need to be more disciplined in our alignments and assignments.
They are a team that likes to establish their running game right from the beginning. To combat that, the whole defensive front has to stay square. Right at the first of the game they got us going sideways for a long run at the beginning. After that, we got into a groove and started staying more square and they had a tougher time getting rushing yards.
On my interception it was a third and long situation. On the series before, they tried to sneak Brandon Stokely behind me. I had a curl flat drop and they were trying to dangle a guy in front of me so they could throw the deep route behind me. The first time I played it deep, but not deep enough. However, I was able to knock it out of his hands. They tried the same exact play the next time we went in. I baited him and tried to get deep. Peyton had his attention on the safety and he didn't expect me to be there so he threw it. I didn't even have to jump that far. It just happened.
We can get some confidence from the game in the fact that we did some things well. We have to get better at the other things that were right there, but not exact enough. When we get to the point that we are exact on every single thing, we can be a great defense.
