The Colts haven’t punted once in their first two games of the season, and Daniel Jones looks like a new man. But a significant reason for Indy’s success has been head coach Shane Steichen. He’s done a tremendous job of putting Jones and the Colts offense in advantageous situations. This past week, he did so against a very good Broncos defense.
Steichen’s game plan seemed to focus on attacking Denver’s linebackers. Maybe he saw something specific on film about the way they played, communicated, and passed off receivers. Or maybe he just figured that the Colts’ biggest advantage in the passing game was to use their tight ends and running backs to attack those linebackers instead of targeting their receivers quite as much against Denver’s secondary.
Either way, his approach was extremely effective.
On the Colts’ second drive of the game, they came out in “12” personnel (1 RB, 2 TEs) on a 1st-and-10 with 2 tight ends to one side of the formation and 2 wide receivers to the other. The Broncos matched up with a safety and linebacker over the tight ends and their cornerbacks over the receivers to the left. This was an indicator of man coverage:
Specifically, the Broncos matched up with safety Brandon Jones over the outside tight end (Tyler Warren) and linebacker Alex Singleton over the inside tight end (Mo Alie-Cox):
But Warren then shifted to the backfield:
That changed a few things for the defense. Safety Brandon Jones would now be responsible for Mo Alie-Cox, who was still on the line of scrimmage:
Warren (the better receiving tight end), would now be accounted for by a linebacker instead of a safety. Broncos LB’s Alex Singleton and Justin Strnad would play the releases of Warren and Jonathan Taylor out of the backfield:
That meant Strnad would take the first player to release to to his side and Singleton would take the second. Or vice versa to the other side of the field.
But here’s the genius of the play. Warren would sneak through the line and quickly get vertical to the left of the center:
You could see Singleton pointing to Warren as if to tell Strnad to run with him. With Jonathan Taylor still behind the line of scrimmage carrying out the run-fake, he interpreted Warren as the first release to the left:
That meant Singleton thought he should take Taylor as the second release to the left. So he let Warren go.
But Strnad saw Taylor start to sneak out of the backfield and interpreted him to be the first player to release to his side. So he locked onto Taylor as well:
Warren was left wide open downfield as as result: