Game Overview ::
By hilow >>
- Colts QB Anthony Richardson (oblique) was a limited participant in practice both days to start Week 5 preparations.
- Jonathan Taylor has missed consecutive practices with an ankle injury sustained late in Week 4, indicating a high likelihood of a missed game against the Jaguars.
- The other impact Colts on the Week 5 injury report are C Ryan Kelly (DNP, DNP), CB Kenny Moore (DNP, DNP), and DE Kwity Paye (DNP, DNP).
- Jaguars TE Evan Engram returned to limited sessions on Wednesday and Thursday as he aims for a return from three missed games with a hamstring injury.
- S Darnell Savage also got in two limited sessions to start the week after missing the previous three games as well.
How Indianapolis Will Try To Win ::
Shane Steichen’s offense was humming against a stout Pittsburgh defense in Week 4. While the offense moved the ball well with Anthony Richardson before he departed with injury, the actual structure of the offense itself looked far more fluid with Joe Flacco under center. The circumstances of Richardson’s injury were a bit mystifying to me because this staff is clearly doing what they can to coach him into better pocket presence and a lower out-of-structure scramble rate, and then they call a designed quarterback keeper right after he departed the game with a stinger, which led to him taking a hard hit from a linebacker in the second level. Either way, Richardson left the game after almost two offensive drives and did not return, starting the Week 5 preparation with a limited showing. To me, it is likely we see Richardson back under center again against the Jaguars, at least to start. The reason why the offense looked to function so much better with Flacco in Week 5 has to do with route structure and timing (at least from what I can tell from the tape). Flacco has the ability to understand pressure, coverages, and diagnose alignments, which leads to more balls delivered on time and to the right read. We saw him pepper Michael Pittman and Josh Downs against the zone-heavy and single-high-heavy Steelers, which had to be almost all diagnostics and timing. Richardson simply lacks those abilities at this point in his career, making up for it through his elite mobility and cannon of an arm. The task at hand is a very different one against the Jaguars, a team that started the season with absurd man coverage rates and backed off almost entirely from those trends in Week 4, running their defense using an 84.8% zone coverage rate, 78.3% two-high rate, a 32.6% Cover-2 rate, and oodles of Cover-6 (21.7%). One final note on the differences between Richardson and Flacco – Richardson appeared to move the ball well on those first two drives but there were three questionable decisions by him in the early going. The first was the first long completion to Michael Pittman in blanket coverage on a deep crosser, a ball which probably should not have been thrown, the second was his decision to accept contact on his first big hit (fumble, recovered by Indi), and the third was the hit that took him out of the game for good (the box score update on that play literally was, “injury update – Richardson has returned to the game. Richardson was injured during the play,” lolz).
Jonathan Taylor appears highly unlikely to play in Week 5 after being diagnosed with a “mild high ankle sprain.” While that probably will limit the amount of time he is out, it definitely seems ominous for his chances of suiting up against the Jaguars. That leaves the potential for a massive hole in the Indianapolis offense considering Taylor’s elite involvement. He ranks sixth in snap rate at the position (77.5%), third in team opportunity share (88.2%), sixth in carries (72), and seventh in red zone touches (15, with five goal line attempts already). So, do we expect Trey Sermon to step into that workhorse-lite role or does special teams ace Tyler Goodson get in on the action? The good here is an offensive line blocking to the second most yards before contact (2.94) but it does not come with a clean setup. The Colts find themselves in a relatively poor on-paper matchup as the Jaguars cede 1.68 yards before contact per attempt and just 3.9 yards per carry. The Colts run game would take a significant hit should center Ryan Kelly miss (appears likely), and we can’t be certain Taylor’s big workload will fall onto just one player.
Another nod to the changes exhibited by Richardson this season is his improvement against two-high alignments. He managed just 0.34 fantasy points per dropback against two-high in his rookie season which has grown to 0.62 in 2024. That ranks fifth in the league, of quarterbacks with 40 or more dropbacks this season. The reasoning for the Jaguars shift from leading the league in man coverage to leading the league in zone coverage is not fully known, but I have to think it was largely due to the sheer number of injuries on the back end. I tentatively expect those tendencies to carry forward to Week 5 after the team held the Texans to 24 points a week ago. Of the Indianapolis pass-catchers to run more than 25 routes against zone in 2024, slot wide receiver Josh Downs leads the team in FP/RR at 0.76, with robust marks in target share (29.7%), targets per route run (38%), and first-read target rate (40.7%). He also actually leads the team in those four metrics against man this season as well, continuing forward his ascension from his rookie season. A low 5.1 aDOT means he’s going to need elite volume to return GPP viability in any given week. Since Richardson has 20 pass attempts or under in two of three fully healthy games this season, that could be slightly more difficult to come by in Week 5, at least under the assumption that the likely absence of Jonathan Taylor doesn’t fundamentally alter how this team approaches trying to win games (it might, but that chance is likely higher if it were Joe Flacco under center and not Richardson – again, it might be).
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