Hear me out, because I know even the thought of this article will offend many people.
Daniel Jones did not play good football. I realized that. When you’re the quarterback of an NFL franchise, especially on a new contract, you’re paid to deliver. It’s November, and he only delivered firesale.
I’m not naive to how bad he’s been. He has 9 INTs and 2 wins, 32nd in passer rating, has the second-worst TD-to-INT ratio and EPA/dropback in the league, and is in the 25th completion percentage.
But I really believe that quarterbacks get too much praise when things go well and too much blame when they don’t. I’m not taking Jones away from his play, but proper criticism needs proper context, and a lot of the criticism he’s getting is none.
Let’s start with how the Colts built this roster in the first place.
The idea behind Jones’ play last year was that he was in a better ecosystem than New York. Then the Colts paid him and put him in there with ten other guys who now look like what he had with the Giants. Why are we surprised?
Going into the year, the Colts essentially turned it back on offense, trading out Pittman and Braden Smith for Keenan Allen and Jalen Travis. Shouldn’t be too bad, right? Well, it has been.
Without AD Mitchell, there was no depth on the roster, and Alec Pierce’s injury proved to be devastating. Josh Downs should soften the blow by playing more heavy-handed looks. Obviously, that didn’t work out.
Not to make it about Downs, but when you give up great WRs, do a lackluster job of restocking the room, and bet on guys taking on expanded roles they probably aren’t suited for, this is what happens.
Base to 11 is a major part of what’s ailing the Colts right now. What is Base to 11? When the Colts go out with three WR sets or 11 men, defenses leave their base defense on the field.
Why would they do that? They don’t respect the speed of the offense. Why bring out corners if you know none of these WRs are going to run with you. We can just leave the bigger bodies and sell against the run, because if they pass, we’re fine.
The Colts are battling some very difficult looks whose personnel deficiencies make it impossible to overcome. Every defense is compressed. Safes play top down and nail anything underneath.
In my opinion, this is the issue with the Colts right now.
They cannot lose sight of these. They don’t have enough speed on the field.
Base-to-11 and aggressive coverage strategies are one thing, but they’re also consistently shooting themselves in the foot.
They are averaging 7.5 penalties a game the last two weeks, back-to-back weeks of holding penalties negating big kickoffs and leading to back-up scenarios, missed field goals, dropped passes turning into pick 6’s.. the list really goes on.
The Colts have a laundry list of problems and the biggest accusation against Daniel Jones is that he hasn’t been the solution.
He’s a guy battling an Achilles issue, playing behind an offense that can’t defend, and asked to carry a roster that has failed to support him at every turn.
The Colts need a quarterback who can elevate the entire roster, and I mean elevate it to the level that most teams have reached over the past five years… the postseason.
But has Daniel Jones ever been that kind of QB? Nope. We just saw that in New York.
So why did the Colts pay him just to ask him to shore up a bad WR room, while he was coming off an achilles injury. It just doesn’t make sense.
Not to mention that the defense is one of the worst in the league, if they were average of the league, the discourse of Daniel Jones would not be strong, because the Colts would probably have more than 2 wins.
Week after week we see defenses sell out to stop the run as Daniel Jones tries to get behind the sticks in environments that aren’t optimized for a QB like him to be successful.
So yeah, Daniel Jones didn’t play great football. But if you’re going to hate him for the way he plays, hate the front office first. Because I think Daniel Jones can play better than him, and maybe if he’s traded he’ll have a chance to show that again.