New England Patriots linebacker Matt Judon wrecked the game and whatever future former head coach Frank Reich had with the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday afternoon.
To be fair, trouble had already been brewing for quite some time, and Judon’s game-wrecking performance took things over the top. His three sacks and four quarterback hits were included in a total of nine sacks and 12 QB hits for the Patriots.
It was a complete demolition job with the Colts being held to a pitiful 121 total yards of offense on a day when they went 0-for-14 on third downs. Reich was ultimately fired on Monday, but leading up to his firing, he had some heavy praise for Judon playing spoiler for what many saw as a must-win game for the Colts.
“He’s a really good player,” Reich said, via NESN’s Sean T. McGuire. “We had a lot of focus on him. We were trying to put the back to his side but they were running games with him. They beat us on some games, they executed some games pretty well that we didn’t execute on. He’s a great player. Obviously, he leads the NFL in sacks. We knew that coming in. We had to try to get him a lot of attention coming in, chip him and slide to him when we could. But, obviously, we didn’t do a good enough job.”
Reich was fired as Colts head coach on Monday after spending four-plus seasons with the team, and Jeff Saturday was hired as the interim head coach.
It’s clear that Reich wasn’t the first to struggle against Judon and the vaunted Patriots defense, and if things keep trending in the right direction, he surely won’t be the last.
