Ugh.

I’ve been saying all season that rush defense will be this team’s downfall. That’s been true the last several years. But Dungy and Bill Polian refuse to do much of anything to beef it up in the offseason.

But holy hell. This game is a joke. We have the 31st ranked run defense in the league. Five yards per carry. That’s dead last. But this game? We’ve given up 248 yards. In the first half. That’s 15.5 yards per carry. One series had Jacksonville running for 17, 17, 19, and 21 yards in succession. My dog could get 100 yards against this defense. The old one. The one that’s had both knees replaced.

I’m sure people will again blame Peyton Manning for the late season collapse. But when your defense is that porous, it puts a hell of a lot of pressure on the offense.

POST GAME UPDATE: So just how bad was it? Consider: Jacksonville running back Fred Taylor more than doubled the entire Colts rushing offense. In one play — his first play from scrimmage. Jacksonville’s third-string running back more than doubled the Colts’ entire rush offense, 71 yards to 34. The Jags had the third, fourth, and 19th top rushers today, all in the same game.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 10th, 2006 at 2:26 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.