Week 17 Colts vs. Giants game open thread

The Indianapolis Colts are on their way to taking the game up New York Giants for their week seventeen match, Sunday at 1:00 PM EST.

Last week, the Colts offense fell apart, finishing the game with 38 points against a bad one Tennessee Titans team. However, the defense folded like a lawn in the second half and let the Ti-toons back into the game, late. A lot of people seemed to be upset with Shane Steichen and that just doesn’t sit well with me. If you score 38 points, you should win the game every time. If the other team keeps it close while you score 38 points, it’s not on the side of the ball that scores the points, it’s on the one that prevents the other team from scoring the points.

There were complaints that Jonathan Taylor should have entered the game with a three-goal lead. Conversely, had Jonathan Taylor been seriously injured, there would have been even more complaints stating “what did he do in the game after three goals” and I would have been more on board with those complaints. But alas, despite all the gnashing of teeth from Colts fans online, the team actually won last week. Believe it or not.

This week, Indy faces a team that is desperately trying to secure the number one overall pick. Giants head coach Brian Dabol looks like he could be on his way out the door (not going to happen, but I’d back the Brinks truck so Dabol can be an offensive consultant in Indy next year if he’s released from his duties ). And they cut their week a starting quarterback a few weeks back. The Colts should absolutely win this week’s game regardless of who starts at quarterback.

Speaking of which, Anthony Richardson will miss another game this week with what appears to be back spasms. At this point in the season, my only real interest was watching Richardson week-to-week, and last week, even though he only threw the ball 11 times, he took more checkdowns than in previous weeks. Which is good! Too often the kid has passed open receivers underneath to throw 20 yard, low percentage, bombs. It’s not something you want to take away from the kid completely because it can result in special plays from time to time, but it’s something he’ll have to do far less of and my hope is that over time he can pay more attention to , when it’s time to take a shot, and when it’s time to take 5 yards on 2nd and 7.

With that said, Joe Flacco starts. The last time Flacco started the running game was stagnant and Flacco looked his age. Fingers crossed that it will be better this time. Defensively, the Colts should be fine, but I wouldn’t bet on this defense ever doing anything good, so we’ll see.

So far this season, the Colts have lost to good teams and beaten bad ones, which seems about right for a (mostly) solidly built team led by the least experienced starting quarterback in recent memory. The Giants are a bad team and the young quarterback isn’t playing. We’ll see how it goes, it won’t be revolutionary by any means.

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Week 17 Inactive

This is your week 17 open thread, so hang out here, chat, celebrate, commiserate and argue in the comments! Get lost (within reason)!

Go Colts!