Will they be able to run out the clock? That’s my only concern.
As is often the case with the Colts, Saturday’s perception sounds like it’s been passed down philosophically from the team’s brass.
“I think oftentimes at this stage of the game, you have to play to your strengths,” Colts coach Jim Caldwell said. “We certainly don’t try to hide from things that we consider to be weaknesses. Our running game certainly has not put up the kind of numbers that we would anticipate and would hope. But all in all we’ve been efficient runners, I think.
“We’ve run the ball when we’ve had to. I think Joe has been a real efficient runner and [Donald] Brown when he’s been up has been efficient as well. Not gaudy numbers; 31st or 32nd in the league. That’s not that impressive. But when you look at the body of work, you might be able to see that we do run it in some stages pretty well.”
Earlier we heard Schatz say Indy and San Diego are breaking the mold in terms of the need to run early.
The big, lingering run question for Schatz about the Colts pertains to a different stage of the game.
The team’s unwillingness to hand it off when it needed 2 yards to clinch a first-round win in San Diego last season showed how little confidence it had in its situational ground game.
That resonated through the offseason, and I don’t know that we’ve found out for sure how different the Colts are now.
“The Colts have had all those come-from-behind victories, we haven’t seen a lot of them trying to protect leads,” Schatz said.
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