Insider: It's time for an overhaul of the Colts' offense

INDIANAPOLIS – As Chris Ballard assembles his offseason to-do list, the Indianapolis Colts general manager assuredly will spend considerable time contemplating ways to add talent to his team’s defense.

A pass rusher here? An inside linebacker there? Yes, please.

But the more you watch the Colts’ offense stumble and sputter its way through this wretched season, it’s become clear where most of Ballard’s efforts this offseason must be directed.

Sunday’s 20-16 loss to the Tennessee Titans was a showcase of everything that is wrong with the Indianapolis offense. There is no facet of this unit that can be relied upon.

The Colts’ offense is, unquestionably, terrible.

The passing game cannot be counted on to produce when most needed. The running game is a constant struggle. The blocking is, at times, lacking and at others, non-existent. The play-calling rarely seems imaginative or even logical.

All told, what the Colts have on offense is a perfect combination of ineptitude and a glaring lack of talent that now has been revealed for all the world to see in the absence of injured franchise quarterback Andrew Luck.

The offense let the Colts down once again Sunday, sleepwalking its way through this game and treating the end zone as if it were an infectious disease. Adam Vinatieri kicked three field goals because the Colts, the NFL’s worst team in the red zone, lived up to that well-earned reputation.

There were dropped passes (Chester Rogers). There were poor efforts to catch other passes (Donte Moncrief). There were embarrassing whiffs by the offensive line (Denzelle Good).

And there was the fumble. No, make that The Fumble. Rookie Marlon Mack’s failure to corral a well-placed pitch from Jacoby Brissett in the third quarter was topped only by Mack’s inexplicable attempt to pick up the football and not simply jump on it.

On his team’s own 4-yard line.

“It was just me taking my eye off the ball,” Mack said afterward. “I just tried to do the best I could to get the ball, but I ended up missing it. I should’ve just fallen on it.”

Tennessee recovered and, moments later, was predictably celebrating its first touchdown of the game.

Ask yourself this: When the Colts are in a jam, who is their go-to offensive player? Pro Bowl receiver T.Y. Hilton is the easy answer. And it's certainly not a bad one. But when Hilton can be rendered relatively invisible, whether because of the quarterback, the play caller, the defense or a combination of all three, you have to wonder whether there are enough playmakers around him. Hilton on Sunday had two catches for 15 yards on five targets (Brissett overthrew him twice).

Give tight end Jack Doyle credit for making a couple of critical, difficult catches. But outside of Hilton and Doyle, this offense feels like a unit littered with marginal talent. And that only increases the odds Ballard will employ an offseason approach on offense similar to the one he undertook in 2017 on defense.

Seven of the Colts’ defensive starters on Sunday were players who were not with the team last season. Could a similar overhaul be ahead for the offense?

Maybe it should be.

Because this offense is hanging the defense out to dry. That’s not something that’s often been said in these parts, where the quarterbacks for most of the past two decades have been Peyton Manning and Luck. But, with this unit, that's been indisputable.

The Colts limited the Titans to three rushing yards through three quarters before the defense suffered a mini-collapse late in the fourth quarter. The bigger issue was an offense that can’t make a play when the Colts need one.

“When we have a chance to score and put a game away, we have to make those (plays),” left tackle Anthony Castonzo said.

That’s on the sloppy offensive line. It’s on the anemic running game.

And it’s certainly on offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski. Sure, he’s hamstrung without Luck. And, again, the talent on this offense is vastly overrated. But Chudzinski’s offense looks directionless. The game plan does not feel cohesive in terms of how it attempts to attack the defense.

But let us not exclude Brissett from this list of culprits. At one time this season, he was showing rapid development. He still shows it at times, but his decision making is not improving at the same rate. Consider the instance in the fourth quarter when Brissett, rolling right and under pressure, threw the ball out of bounds to avoid a sack. But he bizarrely opted not to throw it to running back Frank Gore, who was open just a few yards away and standing right in Brissett’s line of sight.

Brissett was under assault again from the pass rush – he was sacked eight times – but a number of those were attributable to Brissett’s own indecisiveness. There have been times when it seems clear Brissett deserves to be an NFL starter somewhere. Then, there are moments when you’re not sure what, exactly, he’s doing.

All these factors comprise an offense that is frustrating to watch and painfully ineffective. The Colts rank 26th in scoring, 27th in total yardage, 27th in passing and 24th in rushing.

The defense? It’s actually been quite decent of late. But with this offense, it doesn’t even matter.

Looks like Ballard better get to work.

Follow Colts Insider Stephen Holder on Twitter: @HolderStephen.

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