At one point in Sunday’s eventual win over the Titans, the Indianapolis Colts held a 38-7 lead. But over the course of the second half, that lead quickly evaporated and missed tackles were a big reason why.
Unfortunately, missed tackles aren’t anything new for the Colts defense. They entered Sunday’s game against Tennessee leading the NFL in that category and only added to it with their second half performance.
According to Pro Football Focus’ charting, the Colts missed 18 just in this one game alone. Even for a team that has the most missed tackles in football, this was their worst performance of the season, eclipsing the Colts’ 16 missed tackles against Jacksonville in Week 5.
When that many tackles are missed, there isn’t any one player at fault–it’s largely everyone. PFF had eight different Colts players missing at least one tackle with five defenders missing multiple tackles.
Holding that massive lead, the Colts–like many teams do–wanted to make sure that they didn’t give up the explosive play and quick score so emphasized keeping everything in front of them. However, if you’re going to take that approach defensively, you better tackle, otherwise as we saw the Titans do, Mason Rudolph will happily take the easy underneath completions and then maneuver their way down the field with yards after the catch.
While the missed tackles may have been a big contributor to the Colts’ second half issues defensively, it wasn’t the only one. As just alluded to, Indianapolis got conservative with their play calling a bit early in this game. Also, the pass rush didn’t disrupt Rudolph nearly enough.
At the end of the day, a win is a win and the Colts were able to make just enough plays at the end of the game, particularly that third down completion from Anthony Richardson to Michael Pittman, to hold off Tennessee’s late charge. But to state the obvious, the missed tackles are something that must get cleaned up.
