I don’t recall seeing him in the limited amount of monday night football I saw last night.. Is he injured?

but it was made from a disappointment to a disaster by the #4 corner (starting because the #2 CB is still limited coming off an ACL tear last year, and the #3 CB missed the game with a groin pull) giving up a bunch of 3rd and mid-longs letting the Phins stay on the field for FOREVER. The Colts offense striking ridiculously fast (Peyton averaged over 20 yards per completion) didn’t help the D either.

I’ll know more about my level of concern when the details on Kelvin Hayden and Gary Brackett’s injuries last night and the status of Powers (CB#3) and Sanders for Sunday come out.

I think Caldwell is an NFL caliber head coach. However Tony Dungy is an amazing teacher of young players, I think that’s where the impact will come in. Playing “next man up” with one of the youngest rosters in the league is going to get harder over the next couple years without Dungy there to instruct.

I think the Colts did the right thing by making tweaks to the D. They’ll never run the Tampa-2 was well as they did with one of the two masterminds behind it, teaching it to the new players, so go for a newer flavor of T-2 that doesn’t rely so heavily on deep understanding and great execution of the simple scheme.

Should Clark still be considered a TE?

While Gonzalez is out, maybe not. He’s a hybrid player, especially now that his blocking has improved with experience. In 2006 after Brandon Stokley went out early in the year Clark played WR almost exclusively, but the last two years he’s played with his hand on the ground plenty. I’m going back over the tape from last night over the next couple days and just in the first quarter (which had about 10-12 offensive plays for the Colts) Clark lined up in-line, in the backfield (shotgun splitbacks), in the slot and out wide.

if you had to defend him would you use a corner?

If I had a big corner to spare I would, but that’s rare since Reggie Wayne is the clear #1 target and you don’t want to run a nickel against a set that can go from 3 WR to 2 TE in the hurry-up without subs (meaning the D can’t sub or Peyton will quick snap it and collect a free 5 yards).

It’s going to be too split up between added workload for Wayne/Clark and additional playing time for Garcon, Collie and Tamme. Garcon will play the most if you are really hard up for a WR, but he’s a risky guy to start. His strengths are deep speed and blocking which doesn’t make for consistent production.

The Colts top 3 CBs are all hurt. The #1 CB Hayden left in the 4th quarter of the Dolphins game with hamstring soreness (he missed most of preseason with a hamstring pull), Marlin Jackson is still getting his conditioning back after almost a year off his feet from an ACL tear and is only playing as a nickelback for now. Jerraud Powers suddenly showed up on the injury report with a groin injury and missed the Phins game.

The Cards WR corps is intimidating anyway, but they might have to face it with a undrafted rookie and a guy we were all hoping was related to the dime package or deeper.

Who can you rule out of Sundays game?

Anthony Gonzalez

Or who will likely miss the game?

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Bob Sanders and Tom Santi still out

How’s the health of your linebackers?

The OLBs are fine, but MLB Gary Brackett (a.k.a. the one player on the D there’s no competent backup for) when down late and the Colts haven’t released any info on the injury.

Do you consider your number 1 ranked pass defense due to your D line or your secondary?

The Colts being #1 for the season so far is almost entirely the opponents (Phins and Jags) not being passing teams and not bothering to pass much when they can have success on the ground. In general the pass D being good is from a scheme designed to stop the pass with two elite edge rushers and a secondary that is very good at playing that specific scheme.

Which of your two young running backs is better?

I think it’s Addai, mostly due to being a elite pass blocker and receiver from the RB spot, but Don looks good and a sizable portion of the Colts site would be more than willing to crown him the best back.

Do you believe Peyton Manning will play the rest of his career with the Colts? Or end with another team? a la Brett Favre.

I think he’s a lifer. They are already talking about a new extension that would run to the end of his career, but if he sticks around so far past his prime like Brett has I think the Colts O would make the painful cutting of ties once it was the best thing for the franchise. At that point I may or may not cry for hours.

you mean the team that averaged over 10 yards a play right?

it’s not how much you have the ball it’s all about what you do with it.

don’t turn the ball over or get impatient and try to lob a bunch of deep balls (The Colts scheme and personnel are built to not allow the deep pass, and it shows), get the ball into the endzone. The Dolphins moved the ball great, but a big part of their downfall was that when the field shortened, the zones tightened and the safeties could stay closer to the line they got stopped and had to settle for 4 mid to long FG attempts.

On D: Pressure Peyton, don’t allow big plays (yeah that’s kinda hard to do at the same time) cover Reggie Wayne well, take Clark out of the game (best way I’ve seen it done is to convince the Colts they need two TEs in to block. The Ravens did it last year, but still got blown out because they couldn’t cover Reggie and The Hollow Shell of Marvin Harrison), don’t let them run the ball to set up easy 3rd downs.

The weird thing about this is that the line has moved from Cards +2.5 to Cards -2 meaning that Vegas is just begging for Colts action.

Yes, the Colts will have traveled quite a bit for this game (Indy → Mia → Indy → AZ) and they are coming off a Monday nighter, but still. We have been very good at home over the past few years, but we are definitely not untouchable. The Vikings whooped our butts at the end of last season. The Giants beat us without too much trouble. Sure we went bonkers in the playoffs, but most of our recent history suggests we can’t beat a team of Indy’s calibur.

I hope I’m wrong. I don’t want to be too negative here, but I just don’t see how the Cards can be favored this week.

but the last two years, playing while Marvin Harrison was hurt and in the 3 WR sets he put up crazy efficiency numbers. I think he’ll be a really good #2. He played that role for most of his rookie year when Marvin hurt his knee 5 games into the 07 season and was awesome.

The drops are puzzling. He’s caught a especially high % of the passes thrown at him, but also has had a number of drops. He doesn’t run Welker-esque short routes, so it’s not that his routes get him a especially high number of catchable balls. He might just have a talent for getting his hands on tough passes, and/or drops the occasional easy pass while reeling in a lot of hard ones.

I don’t think Garcon is a major threat to him from what I’ve seen right now. He could be in the future because he has a lot of talent (though pre-season drops cost him a job in the 3 WR package, leaving him just the backup to Gonzalez and Wayne).

but I think he’s more Sorgi’s (and right now ex-emergency QB Hunter Smith’s) replacement than Peyton’s.

Peyton is signed through 2012 and there is already talk about a new extension for him. He’s playing his 12th season right now, and has in various sources talked about playing 16 to 18 years. So I think he’ll be around a while longer. I think keeping a #3 prospect QB from now on is a good idea for the rest of Peyton’s career.

Not just Peyton throwing 49 TDs and 4,500 yards in the first 15 games, Edge James went for over 1,500 yards and 9 TDs on the ground (over 2,000 total yards for Edge adding in the nearly 500 receiving)

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/clt/2004.htm

They averaged 2.93 points per drive, they were more likely to end a drive with a touchdown than with a punt, they had the 6th highest scoring season in NFL history (522pts) with the 2nd least drives that season.
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/drivestats2004

Colts GM Bill Polian made a comment on his weekly radio show to the effect of “there will be a few guys that won’t be able to go at all until Friday, which means they will have to be 100% focused on game planning sessions, which isnt always a bad thing in my opinion”.

Still nervous.