The Indianapolis Colts scored 35 points and received four touchdown passes from Andrew Luck, including the go-ahead score with 37 seconds left, but it still wasn’t enough to produce a Week 1 win.
Winning isn’t easy when you play defense as poorly as the Colts did against the Detroit Lions during Sunday’s season opener.
“If you expect to win in this league, you can’t give up that many points,” linebacker D’Qwell Jackson said, via ESPN. “Any other team, that would have been a blowout. Defensively we played like s— and we have to play better.”
The Colts gave up 448 yards and 28 first downs, with just one sack of quarterback Matthew Stafford and zero takeaways. Stafford completed 31-of-39 passes for 340 yards and three touchdowns, while running backs Ameer Abdullah and Theo Riddick combined for 228 total yards, including 120 receiving.
Indianapolis couldn’t stop the run, pressure the quarterback or tackle.
“The tackling sucked,” safety Mike Adams said. “We have to get better at that, we have to tackle — bottom line.”
After Luck hit tight end Jack Doyle for the go-ahead touchdown with 37 seconds left, Stafford calmly led the Lions 50 yards in five plays to set up Matt Prater’s game-winning field goal. His final completion was almost too easy, as he hit a wide open Marvin Jones for 22 yards to give Prater a chance with four seconds left.
It wasn’t any better early in the game, when the Lions scored touchdowns on three of their first four possessions.
The Colts were playing without several key members of the defense, and two other starters in the secondary left with injury during Sunday’s contest. But it’s still hard to excuse a loss when your offense scores 35 points.
“I just think we played a lot of plays on the defensive side of the football in the first half and we just ran out of gas and couldn’t make one more play that we needed to make,” coach Chuck Pagano said, via the Indianapolis Star. “The offense did a heck of a job going down and putting the ball in the end zone. We’ve got to learn how to close these things out.”
The Colts won’t have long to lick their wounds, with a trip to Denver to play the defending Super Bowl champions looming in Week 2. Indianapolis will be 0-2 if the defense plays like Jackson’s perfectly accurate description again.
