The score is 7 to 21, the Patriots are coming out with the ball in their home stadium and the Colts need to make plays on offense quickly if they want to stay in the game. Well, that doesn’t end up happening.

Operation: Doomsday

This isn’t where the Colts envisioned the game would be at when they were preparing for the AFC Championship game. They thought they could find some space for their deep passing game and when they didn’t, that Luck could have enough time to get to his underneath routes. Nope.

When they came back on offense, the Colts first play was an attempt to follow the openings they found in the Patriots man defense.

On this play, WR #13 Hilton, TE #80 Fleener and TE #83 Allen clear out all the space behind them for WR #87 Reggie Wayne to come through and be wide open for an easy catch. However, the Colts shifted their line to the left and as a result LDE #50 Ninkovich has a free unblocked rush on Andrew Luck. I guess that solves the problem of RT #76 Reitz getting beat over and over again but it doesn’t stop Ninkovich.

Here, it’s Moncrief’s Skinny Post blocking Dwayne Allen’s man, leaving Allen open for an easy throw to the outside. These plays worked for the underneath and the Colts kept using them throughout the second half but they’re also only short yardage gains and eating up time.

They continue using these Underneath picks but they still mix in their deep routes in-between each play. It’s necessary in order to keep the Patriots from coming up and because they need to try and hit a big play to get the game back under control but it’s a bit of a doomsday strategy, since they know they likely aren’t stopping the Patriots drives on offense and they’re just trying to keep the drives alive for long enough to hit one big play.

However, they did discover one play where they got exactly what they wanted, a wide open deep receiver against Cover-1 Man.

The Combination of two In Routes from the right side and Hilton’s Slant release turning into a Post completely breaks down the Patriots Cover-1 man. As already explained, the Patriots Cover-1 uses a lot of passing off when the player being covered breaks inside, leaving that player to take man on another player that crosses to the opposite direction or just sit in zone.

Here, Hilton does a release into the middle of the field and then starts up vertically- Arrington sees him breaking inside and bumps him. Once he sees Allen coming down, he takes on Allen along with Hightower. Then the delayed In route from Herron at the top of the screen pulls Ninkovich down from his zone. So who’s on Hilton? No one. Luck doesn’t see it and chooses to scramble instead.

Even If It Worked Out

As chronicled in Part 1, Luck and Hilton couldn’t connect no matter what the situation. On the last play, Hilton’s wide open and Luck doesn’t see it. On this play, the underneath pick works exactly as drawn up but Revis doesn’t care.

Moncrief slants inside before taking a vertical, plowing into Revis and Arrington and making Hilton wide open. Revis reads this play perfectly, peels off of Moncrief and cuts the throwing lane. This isn’t Revis’ duty on this play, he just makes a quick decision and cuts it off.

They Might Be Rushing

Even when the Patriots are ahead they always make some kind of adjustments in order to stay ahead. In the second half, they began bringing up their Linebackers to the line and hiding their rushers. Now, instead of dealing with just the 4 linemen on every play the Colts offensive line had to figure out which of the LBs might be replacing a rusher.

#54 Hightower comes up in the B gap on the left side of the line (QB perspective) and at the snap manages to draw attention from both of the LT and LG despite not rushing, leaving Coby Fleener on a 1v1 with Chandler Jones. They do this on nearly every passing play in the 3rd quarter.

Both #91 Collins and #54 Hightower are up at the line this time, drawing three blockers to them (Center, Right Guard, and RB). Ninkovich gets a 1v1 with Reitz despite the Colts having 6 blockers against 3 rushers.

It’s more than just faking the LBs, when they do bring it, the Colts can’t handle it. In the play below, the Colts have 7 blockers against 4 rushers and they still allow someone into Lucks face.

The Patriots crash the RDT #96 Alan Branch towards the LG while RDE #95 Chandler Jones bends to the right, leaving a huge gap for Collins to rush through where Dwayne Allen and Zurlon Tipton are left to pick him up. But when the snap goes off, Collins bends a little to his left at the rush, pressing the hole he’s trying to rush through just like a Running Back before cutting all the way to the outside of the B gap, lowering his shoulders and giving Allen and Tipton very poor angles to block him from. This whole play just makes you think Collins played Running Back at some point in his life.

Was There Ever A Doubt?

The Colts under Luck/Pagano have now played the Patriots 4 times. They’ve lost by an average of 29 points in each game while only managing to score an average of 18. The average score they’ve lost by is more points than this duo has ever managed to score against the Patriots (high of 24 in Luck’s rookie year). The Colts deep passing attack had almost no chance in this game and they abandoned the run immediately after their first possession. The difference in these two rosters is vast but so was the coaching.

The Colts did manage to find some holes in the Patriots passing defense through the pick plays and in/under routes that might give Seattle some ideas for the Superbowl but it wasn’t enough to give the Colts a chance to win.

Click Here For The First Half

See Every Passing Play In The Half On The Next Pages