Summary: The Indianapolis Colts came into their Week 5 matchup with the New England Patriots severely banged up. Making matters worse, the Colts lost several more key players on Thursday night. Nevertheless, the Colts were able to keep this game within striking distance before it got out of hand in the fourth quarter. There were several players getting important snaps towards the rest of the season, as this only improves the depth in my opinion. Matthew Adams and Zaire Franklin received large workloads with Darius Leonard out, and maybe most impressively, Braden Smith filled in at right tackle and played very well. The Colts only allowed a single sack, but it was the team's receivers who couldn't get up to play well in this one. Over the past two weeks the Colts pass-catchers have been cursed with awful hands totaling nearly a dozen in just 5 days of time. Eric Ebron still made a lot out of a short week as he hauled in 2 touchdowns with a 105-yard performance in Foxboro. I'll go through a quick review of the Colts 38-24 loss and address all of the above and much more. We will also take a quick look at the remaining games for the Colts, including the final three games before their bye week. We know the percentages are not in favor of the Colts making a realistic playoff run, so how does the rest of it look, with what we know about the Colts themselves, and the rest of their opponents? Additionally, I take you inside the progression of the Colts' PFF grades through Week 5. Again, much of what we think we saw Thursday night rings true with the way the grades panned out. However, there are some serious head-scratchers in there too. A couple of the Colts offensive linemen have been graded out pretty close to how consistent they've been thus far, while another couple have improved their grade tremendously, while another continues not to get the credit for his play. There are even some grades in which I felt the evaluators were too generous. How they are crediting for positive versus negative continues to be on display, and a little off-base, in their weekly updates for my liking. The Colts are missing some important pieces going into Week 6. If they want to make something of this season, they're going to need to come back sooner rather than later. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
