Opinion: Indianapolis Colts gave away playoff game against Buffalo Bills
Frank Reich is about to list his mistakes in the Indianapolis Coltsā 27-24 loss to the Buffalo Bills on Saturday, the first game of NFL Wild Card Weekend. Heāll forget one error, maybe the worst one, though heāll remember eventually and verbally flog himself for it. But before any of that happens, Reich sits down for his postgame news conference and lets out a huge breath of air: Shooooooo! This wonāt be fun, and the Coltsā coach knows it.
This was a game the Colts could have won. Should have won? Let's not go that far. We can be hard on Frank Reich, and I will soon, but letās be fair to the truth:
The Bills are an awfully good team with a brilliant young quarterback, Josh Allen, who threw for 324 yards and ran for 54 yards and accounted for all three Buffalo touchdowns. A Bills team good enough to go 13-3 for the AFC's No. 2 seed gave the Colts little to work with: no interceptions, no fumbles, just one penalty.
As Reich said, āYou have to credit Buffalo.ā You do. And we just did.
But as well as Buffalo played, it was the Colts who beat the Colts, and did it in all four phases: Offense, defense, special teams and, yes, coaching.
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Colts receivers dropped up to eight passes, depending on how tough you want to grade. One defensive end (Kemoko Turay) jumped offsides to extend a Buffalo drive that produced a touchdown, and another (Al-Quadin Muhammad) failed to recover a fumble between his feet that would have put the Colts at midfield, down three points with three minutes left. Special teams? Kicker Rodrigo Blankenship doinked a 33-yard chip shot in a game the Colts lost by three points.
But youāre not here to read about dropped passes or backup defensive ends or hipster kickers.
Youāre here to read about Frank Reich. You think his decisions lost this game.
And Iām not here to say youāre wrong.
Fire Frank Reich??
Where do you even begin? As it happens, after Reich blew out that gust of wind to open his postgame news conference, the first question was mine. It was about all the critical decisions heād made in this game ā āMore than Iāve ever seen,ā I was telling Reich ā and then I asked which ones he regretted.
Reich thought about it, said heād āhave to go back and look,ā then mentioned a play he called from the 1-yard line that failed. He digs through his memory banks for more ā he wants to help, even if helping me means undermining himself ā but eventually settles here:
āIāll have to go back and evaluate myself,ā he said. āItās too fresh right now.ā
Too fresh for everyone around here, Colts fans included, who suffered through this nationally televised game from Orchard Park, New York. Afterward, āFrank Reichā was trending on Twitter, with Colts fans deciding he should be fired. Which is ridiculous. In a league defined by quarterback excellence and continuity, Reich has played with three QBās in three years and gone 28-20 with two playoff appearances and one playoff victory. You donāt fire him.
But you do question him about much of what went wrong Saturday, when the analytics failed him and his play sheet failed him and his own eyes failed him. Everything that has made Reich such a success here, his mixture of creativity, wisdom and you-only-live-once daring, didn't travel to Buffalo.
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So again I ask: Where do you even begin? Chronologically makes the most sense, so letās revisit third-and-goal from the 1. Itās late in the first half, and the Colts have the Billsā neck under their cleat. To this point Buffalo has gained just 107 yards, with three-and-out drives on three of its first four possessions. A touchdown here, and the Colts are looking at a 17-7 halftime lead.
Reich has the NFLās hottest back (Jonathan Taylor) running behind one of the NFLās best offensive lines; the Colts nominated all five starters for All-Pro consideration with a straight face, and saw guard Quenton Nelson and center Ryan Kelly rewarded. But he goes away from his strength, pitching wide to Taylor. With nowhere else to be ā Buffalo's defense is crammed against the end zone ā six Bills surround Taylor for a 3-yard loss.
The first two plays calls werenāt exactly beauties, an inside screen to finesse tight end Trey Burton from the 4, and a direct snap to finesse halfback Nyheim Hines from the 2, but the pitch to Taylor was ugly. That was the play Reich mentioned afterward, though he also correctly noted that a Taylor run up the gut, behind that line, didn't work on a two-point attempt from the 1.
Didnāt help that Reich then turned down a field goal on fourth-and-goal from the 4, and that Riversā pass was about 2 inches too far for breakout receiver Michael Pittman ā heāll be in the Pro Bowl, and soon ā and that the Bills drove 96 yards for a touchdown. Allenās 5-yard TD run with 14 seconds left in the half, aided by Turayās silliness on fourth-and-3 at the 26, flipped what could have been a 17-7 Colts lead into a 14-10 Buffalo advantage entering the third quarter.
āThatās a 14-point swing,ā Reich was saying later, and now heās about to remember another mistake. One that showed up in the final seconds of this game the Colts could have won.
Blown challenge, blown game
It was a nothing play early in the fourth quarter, a 6-yard pass from Josh Allen to running back Zack Moss. The ball is on the field and now the Colts have it, but Moss was clearly down on the play, so it doesnāt reallyā
What is Frank doing? Heās challenging that?
To be fair ā we said weād do that, remember ā the Colts have a staff member who watches replays in the press box and buzzes the sideline to challenge calls. Did someone buzz Reich there? He didnāt say. But he did challenge, it did fail, and the Colts did lose a timeout.
This is the mistake Reich is remembering later, almost apologizing for the oversight ā āThat was bad on my part, come to think of it,ā heād say of the failed challenge. āI should have (mentioned it on that earlier) questionā ā and heās acknowledging, āObviously we needed that timeout at the end.ā
Yes, especially if you recall what happened on the Coltsā first possession of the second half, a ridiculous timeout Rivers wasted on first down to avoid a delay-of-game penalty. One play after the failed challenge, Allen hits Stefon Diggs for a 35-yard touchdown and a 24-10 lead. And the Colts are down to one timeout for the fourth quarter of a game where time is their enemy.
The Colts use their final timeout to stop the clock before Buffalo punts it to them at the 14, which seems sensible. The Colts will have 2:30 left to cover the 50 yards theyāll need to get within Blankenshipās field-goal range to force overtime. Thatās plenty of time, unless they do something else stupid.
And bless their hearts.
The Colts convert a fourth-and-1 from their 34 on a 3-yard carry by Taylor with 1:32 left, and thatās great, but the clock is running and the Colts are out of timeouts AND WHAT ARE THEY DOING? WHY ARE THEY HUDDLING UP LIKE THEY HAVE ALL DAY?
The Colts burn nearly 30 of the final 90 seconds before Rivers throws an incompletion. Three players later, all hell will break loose when Zach Pascal slides to his knees to catch a pass on fourth-and-10, then gets up and fumbles it away to the Bills to decide the game, only the officials mistakenly rule Pascal was down by contact and a review somehow upholds that mistake, which means the Colts still have the ball and a chance with 26 seconds left at the Buffalo 46.
Only, they need a timeout to be able to use the whole field for a short pass to get within field goal range, and they donāt have one. On the final play Rivers is throwing a Hail Mary from midfield, but it falls short of the end zone. Imagine, a Colts receiver coming down with the Hail Mary at the 5, but the clock expiring because theyāre out of timeouts. The pass falls incomplete, thankfully, saving us from having to make an even bigger deal of the Coltsā clock mismanagement.
Instead, weāre left to dissect a season-ending loss to a 13-3 Buffalo team that played an almost perfect game on offense, and played that game at home, but still owes the Colts ā and their coach ā a debt of gratitude. Because this was a game that, at worst for the Colts, should have gone to overtime.
āYou know you have a great team,ā Colts linebacker Darius Leonard is saying afterward. āYou have such high expectations: Super Bowl, or you didnāt do nothing.ā
The Colts didnāt do nothing, I guess. Nothing but give this game away.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.