Daniel Jones of the Indianapolis Colts looks on
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Daniel Jones of the Indianapolis Colts looks on
It’s hard to imagine a better opening day for new quarterback Daniel Jones and the Indianapolis Colts. No really. Go ahead. Most of the stats coming out of Sundays 33-8 win over the Miami Dolphins imply that it might be the single greatest Week 1 performance in Colts history.
“According to CBS Sports Research, Week 1 marked the first time a Daniel Jones-led team scored on every first-half drive in his 70 NFL starts,” wrote Jordan Dajani. “The Colts would go on to score on every single drive — becoming the first team since at least 2000, regular season or postseason, to score on every possession.”
Every time DJ took the field, the drive resulted in points. Something that hasn’t happened this century and possibly beyond.
But ESPN’s Ben Solak says DJ’s performance, while adequate, proved nothing.
More than anything, Solak believes the Colts’ offense ran into a horrible no good very bad defense.
“It’s difficult to overstate how badly the Dolphins’ secondary played Sunday,” he writes. “That’s the story of the Colts-Dolphins game: a woefully undermanned secondary running into a deep pass-catching corps with a strong schemer at head coach.”
He then broke down the ways in which defensive coordinator Aaron Weaver attempted to disrupt DJ after an impressive first half, but says that Shane Steichen protected his quarterback by effectively utilizing the quick passing game. When rushing just four, Jones had a success rate of 65%, that rate narrowly dropped to 56% when blitzed. Against those 16 blitzes, Jones and Steichen were able to scheme open the Colts dangerous weapons resulting in a 2.33 seconds time to throw.
But even then, success against the blitz and all, Solak still struggled to muster up a single compliment for winning quarterback.
“I cannot generate any meaningful takeaways about the starting quarterback, good or bad,” the writer continued. “Jones had a classic point guard game. He threw well to his first read when open, including a beautiful deep out-breaker to Adonai Mitchell with anticipation, but didn’t do much damage through his progressions. He was fine as a scrambler, as always.”
Solak’s Neck Breaking Take
If you want to say Jones was the beneficiary of a good game plan meeting a beaten up, downward trending team I’ll allow it. Though I would argue having the most efficient offensive game of this century speaks for itself.
But Solak wasn’t content to stop there. In an attempt to make sure his point got through, the longtime NFL analyst hit Jones where it hurts.
“Jones avoided negative plays — no picks, one sack — which was and will remain his primary emphasis as he keeps the starting job from Anthony Richardson Sr,” Solak concludes.
“If there’s a victory lap to be taken in the Jones-Colts marriage, it’ll come down the road. This was certainly a good day at the office, but I’m confident Richardson also could have scored 33 points against the Dolphins’ defense on Sunday. (And QB3 Riley Leonard would have gotten a solid 27 points himself.)”
The Colts are slated to take on the Denver Broncos in Week 2. That’s a defense that could make anyone look bad. I’m interested to see how quickly the media forgets about this performance if things go sideways.