As bad as the Indianapolis Colts looked during their 26-3 loss to the New England Patriots in week 9, their defense actually wasn’t all that bad.
Indy’s defense limited the Patriots’ ground game to just 2.5 yards per carry, while Mac Jones only threw for 147 yards—at a clip of 4.9 yards per pass attempt. And now we have a report explaining exactly why they were able to have so much success on that side of the ball.
According to Mass Live’s Mark Daniels, a number of Patriots players acknowledge that Colts linebacker Shaquille Leonard was calling out their plays at the line of scrimmage.
Via Mass Live:
Following the Patriots 26-3 win over the Colts, multiple offensive players in the Patriots locker room could be overheard talking about Shaquille Leonard calling out their play calls. One Patriots starting offensive player said Leonard occasionally called out what the Patriots were going to do on certain plays, such as outside runs and screen passes.
No one knows how Leonard had such an in-depth knowledge of the Patriots offense. He has seen them a few times now in his career, and the Colts also have former Patriots cornerback Stephon Gilmore on their roster. So those are a couple of possible explanations right there.
The bigger question from all of this is, how in the world did the Colts manage to lose a game in which their defense knew exactly what the opposing offense was running?
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One answer is by managing only 103 passing yards (and netting just 43 yards in the passing game after accounting for the 60 yards they lost via nine sacks). I guess this explains why Frank Reich no longer has a job.
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