MINNEAPOLIS-De Foals made the difficult decision to abandon their development plan for Anthony Richardson due to what they believed was Joe Flacco’s ability to run an offense that had been far too inconsistent through the first eight games of the season.
Flacco offers efficiency where Richardson offered inaccuracy, offensive command where Richardson was limited, experience where Richardson was still learning to prepare the way a quarterback needs to prepare on a weekly basis.
But the Colts gave up something along the way to get something, and Minnesota’s defense exposed the limitations of Flacco’s version of Shane Steichen’s offense in a 21-13 loss, Indianapolis’ worst offensive performance of the season.
“Anytime you have a game like we had tonight, you’re probably a little surprised that you couldn’t get it going,” Flacco said. “You know, when you come here against a team like this, it’s going to be tough, but I don’t think you ever expect anything like that.”
By that, Flacco meant a night when the Colts produced a season-low 227 yards of offense, another season-low 68 rushing yards and failed to score an offensive touchdown; The only time Indianapolis reached the end zone was when Kenny Moore II jumped on a ball stripped from Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold by a marauding Grover Stewart.
Minnesota’s defense is not an easy target.
Under defensive coordinator Brian Flores, the Vikings run a complex, flashy scheme with many different looks and coverages, rolling through the defense like a hungry man browsing options at Chipotle.
Flacco seemed better suited to dealing with all the complexity than Richardson.
The hardest part, both encouraging and discouraging, is that he has largely figured out Minnesota’s exotic Rolodex of pressure. The Vikings recorded three sacks, but all three came on the final Colts drive, when Indianapolis was in desperation.
For the most part, Flacco had time to throw.
“I thought we did a good job,” Flacco said. “At the end of the day, I don’t think they…maybe they brought singles and stuff like that, but I felt like our guys did a great job up front. It was more about us not executing.”
Minnesota beat the Colts on the back end.
The Vikings use many different messaging, but Flores stuck to one simple principle on Sunday night. No matter how he called it, Flores wanted to keep two safeties over the top — he wasn’t about to let Alec Pierce beat him downfield.
“They did a great job defensively, there on the two shells, and they stayed over the top pretty much the entire game,” Indianapolis head coach Shane Steichen said. “We also hit some curl routes inside, obviously a few times there, but yeah, we’ve got to find ways to hit those pieces rather than with a different look.”
Richardson’s lack of accuracy — he has completed just 44.4% of his throws this season, the worst mark in the league — has been a major problem for the Indianapolis offense this season.
However, his penchant for pushing the ball upfield at all costs has some advantages. Richardson almost always finds a way to produce explosive plays.
Flacco had a big arm when he was younger, and the Colts signed him in part because they thought he would push the ball downfield more quickly than former backup Gardner Minshew, whose reluctance to throw downfield for far too many yards was left behind. the field a season ago.
But in the four games Flacco has played this season, it has become clear that he cannot regularly play explosively when a team is playing back. Flacco’s yards per attempt for the season is now 6.6; aside from a late explosion from Pierce against Jacksonville’s dreadful secondary, Indianapolis’ passing game with Flacco at the helm was a matter of dink-and-dunk.
If a disciplined team plays over the top, like the Vikings did, Flacco will have trouble throwing the top off anyway. Flacco must ensure that protections are lowered in the conventional manner.
“Get started with the run game and complete some things underneath,” Flacco said. “You have to do your best to sustain drives early in the game and maybe get them out without doing any of that stuff. You know, that means you have to make some passes and run the ball.
Flacco’s presence makes it more difficult to control the ball than with Richardson at the helm.
Indianapolis has been somewhat reluctant to run Richardson, perhaps concerned about protecting a player who has struggled with injuries in his first two seasons, but the threat of a player who has averaged 5.9 yards per carry this season tends to open holes even against the best-executed defense.
Minnesota has one of those defenses.
The Vikings entered Sunday night’s game ranked third in the NFL in both yards per carry and rushing yards per game. Indianapolis superstar Jonathan Taylor rushed for 22 yards on his first three carries and then picked up just 25 on his next 10, swamped by a Vikings defense that only had to move on the running back.
“We have to run the football efficiently there, with JT and all that, but we’ll clean that up,” Steichen said. “I have complete confidence that they will clean that up.”
The limitations of the Flacco version of the offense are more of a factor than principle.
In a sense, Flacco’s experience opens the playbook, allowing the Colts to develop bigger, deeper game plans.
“There’s definitely a lot of different things we can mention just because of the experience he has,” Taylor said. “It’s not that many RPOs. … We have these play calls; Joe can check something if he wants to. It reminds me of (former Colts quarterback Philip Rivers); he could call anything.”
From a simpler, more philosophical standpoint, though, a defense can limit the Colts’ options by taking away parts of Steichen’s playbook with the way they play.
Not every defense is as good as Minnesota’s. Not every defense will be able to shut down Taylor, or be disciplined enough to track down all of Steichen’s deep receivers, not the way the Indianapolis head coach has gotten guys open thus far in his Colts career.
When a defense can accomplish both tasks, however, Indianapolis needs to string drives together, and the Colts haven’t been good at that particular part of the game at all this season. Indianapolis had the ball for just 23 minutes and six seconds on Sunday night; the Colts have had the ball an average of nine fewer minutes than their opponents this season.
“(We have to) stay on the field,” Taylor said. “The bottom line is this is the National Football League. We have to put discs together.”
The Colts have won games with both quarterbacks this season.
They believe they can win with Flacco at the helm.
“As long as we practice for a week,” wide receiver Alec Pierce said. “Certainly, when it’s in-game, it’s a little bit harder because we’re playing a little bit different type of game. … I think we have good chemistry with both of them.”
Indianapolis made the change to open up the offense.
Minnesota proved Sunday night that the move for Flacco doesn’t remove all the limitations on the Indianapolis offense.
This move only shifts the obstacles Steichen and his staff must overcome.