What’s Wrong with the Colts Defense

Often in football, there is a very simple explanation for things that happen. But, announcers don’t get paid millions of dollars to come up with simple explanations. So they end up spending valuable Sportscenter time - when they otherwise could be showing me more highlights from the games - yammering on trying to explain things which are obvious. One of these is the Colts defensive problems this season. Let me spare you the suspense. The Colts defense sucks because they’ve lost their two starting defensive tackles and their two starting safeties. That’s it. Everything goes back to that. That’s why the players have in can’t seem to tackle well enough – because they’re not first-string players. If they were, they’d have been starting in the first place. In fact, it seems to me that nearly every time a team is doing well then suddenly tanks it’s because of injuries, yet they are hardly ever cited as the reason.

Take the New York Giants. They were steamrolling everyone through the first half of the season. Then, they lost Osi Umenyiora, and Michael Strahan (their two starting ends who were piling up sacks at the beginning of the season), linebackers Brandon Short and Lavar Arrington, and cornerback Sam Madison. That’s half of their starting defense. And, not surprisingly, they allowed only 18 points per game in their 6-2 start, and have since allowed 27 points per game in going 1-5. Now not all of those injuries lasted for all of their slump, but they did also lose a great veteran offensive lineman (Luke Pettigout) for the season during this time, and I’m sure this didn’t help. But, naturally analysts must figure out what’s wrong, and talk about internal conflicts, talk about whether the coach deserves to still be coaching there, whether he will keep his job next year…etc. All because some of their players were hurt. The funny part is that if the Giants had allowed the same 18 points per game like they were before their slump, they would have won 5 of the last 6 instead of 1 of the last 6, and the analysts would be talking about how they were the best team in the NFC.

For some inexplicable reason, no coach seems to be willing to say “Look, I’m missing half my starting defense – that’s the problem.” Nobody seems to think this is a valid excuse for losing and it certainly is. Maybe it’s Bill Belichick’s fault – he found a way to collect players capable of performing in many different roles and was able to keep a very competent defense up despite numerous injuries last year. But even his team succumbed and was unable to make a playoff run last year and injuries are clearly to blame. The sobering fact, which no one wants to admit is that injuries control who wins the Superbowl as much as ANY OTHER FACTOR. This is pretty much my only problem with football as a sport.