2026 Indianapolis Colts Preview: Roster, Odds & Win Total

Welcome to the acclaimed podcast, The Deep Died, featuring your esteemed hosts, Andy Monitor and Drew Dinsick, powered by Bet Spurs. Welcome to the Deep Dive. Andy, let's talk, what, what are you making a face? I'm smiling. Oh, okay. We're talking cults. We're talking cults. Andy and Apple's cults, Andy are your third choice to win the AFC South and it's wild that we ended up with this team in this position, considering where we were last November, which was a team that was looking viable for the one seat in the AFC and a healthy favorite to win the AFC South. Ultimately, the injury to Daniel Jones via the Achilles tear and the lack of above replacement level quarterback play that the cults got from that point forward in the season, really unwound things for this squad and an eight and two star turned into an eight and nine finish as they racked off seven straight Ls because it was fueled by quarterback injury and because the early part of the season was such a success, really not a lot of heat on the powers in Indy, despite the fact that the new principal owner CEO, Carly Urse Gordon, is no one to trifle with. Everyone was retained to their own running it back. Daniel Jones is the spryest ever. You look better. And I do want to try to finish with the thing that stuck up to me a little was. So you say, hey, this seven game losing streak and we put a lot of it on the fact that Daniel Jones was hurt. And obviously, Riley Leonard, not the answer amongst other much older quarterbacks you played. But the losing streak did start before he was injured. And it wasn't just Daniel Jones got worse or the team got worse. They had a couple of really tough opponents. And then, you know, they took a couple tough losses there. And then I think week 14, maybe that was the the death knell for him. I feel like was there earlier than that? I think I had 14 written down. I thought he did it against the Chiefs. No, it was the Jags game. One of those two. Oh, whatever. I gotta double check that out. But yeah, the combination of some game. So it was week 13, started 13 games. It was the Texan's game. Yeah, the combination, some tougher opponents. And uh, you know, Daniel Jones missing really through the yeah, really through the fun part of the season away for him and that sucks. The timing of the Sawts Gardener trade. That's my biggest takeaway from last year is like, God bless them. They were good. And they said, Hey, we're not even waiting for next off season to further add to this team. Let's go get somebody now. Let's add a true blue top 10 corner CB one to this team. Fuck these picks. And let's go for it. And then it was just like, oh, man, it's great to have ownership and management who's behind the team and says, all right, we're we're behind you here. And we're going to we're going to get you going here. And the timing sucks. Oops. I mean, they still have they still have Sawts Gardener other team, I guess. That's exciting. And Daniel Jones is back. But yeah, that not a lot of for me to say about last year. Jonathan Taylor was great scoring a lot of touchdowns. Daniel Jones obviously impressed a lot of us. I think maybe that was even a small part of the Quessie firing was just another quarterback who we had in the building. Hmm. Looking a lot better than JJ McCarthy. I had a couple of plots on last year. Go ahead. Let's just take their eight and two portion of their record. They didn't really beat anybody. And I you can look at this and also say it could have been dead or no. You know, they they're losses were to the Rams and the Steelers. Both of them were on the road. The Rams lost was a little fluke if I remember correctly. They're offence trim you're you're offence trim both three over three times in that game and you lost by seven. But you know, you eaked out of winning against the Broncos. That was clearly the best win on this stretch. You beat the chargers. Congratulations. You've been a team with no offensive line. The other wins were against the Falcons, the Titans, the Cardinals, the Raiders, the Titans again, and the Dolphins. These were all fatally flawed teams. We give I say we we were kind of think pretty circumspect, but the the universe at large just absolutely just took a shit on the patriots for their schedule, being scheduled merchants last year. Well, they in two cults were kind of schedule merchants merchants last year. This wasn't really a murder or zero. They were beaten up on the Titans when, you know, cam war was performing at a very, very much below replacement level, you know, kind of effort. And you're right. Their schedule got hard. They had games against the Chiefs, Texans, Jags. Those were at the time, a presumptive playoff team and two playoff teams, the Rocks, your eventual Super Bowl winners, the Niners, the Jags, the Texans. Basically, everyone in their last final six games made it to the playoffs and DQ on the way. And some of those games were not really very competitive. I know the score between the Texans. You know, you were you were within shouting distance. You only lost the Seahawks by two. But your defense, I think, really did wilt once you came up against stiffer opposition in the back half of the season. And maybe some of that was just motivation, tough to get up for a game when you're, you know, you know, Riley Leonard's trotting out of the tunnel to support your offense, I guess. But yeah, but yeah, I did know what we said about the Jets. Yeah. And, you know, they, they Riley Leonard only started one game. The reverse started three games three last year. Maybe that affected morale in the locker room. Who knows. But whatever the cases, the, you know, the general, you know, kind of crash and burn after being eaten too was probably tough for a lot of people to, you know, kind of wrap their heads around. And, you know, I think the market's not going to be fooled by them this year. They're treating them like a pretty average team. And I don't even think it's necessarily a referendum on the health and replicability of the efficiency we saw from Daniel Jones when he was healthy. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, even with, uh, even if they were to rise to the heights of how well they played as being last year against, I get some bad teams. You can only play who you can use on your schedule, you know, it makes it tough sometimes. But I don't know that they were ever going to be, you know, the highest rated team in the AFC at the end of the year, even if they stayed healthy. Just based on how well, let's say they stayed healthy. Daniel Jones plays the old season. They went in the south. There's a three in state of the six. Yeah, they win the south. But at the same time, I think at the end of the year, we still would have had Denver. And even with a bad scheduled New England ahead of them in the AFC. Yeah, no, I would put them where the Jags were. I'd add them. I'd add them fourth, I think. No, no, I mean, in terms of playoffs, you know, literally would have been, they literally would have hosted the Buffalo Bills in the, in the 36. That's a pick them. As a dog. You think you would have been that much? I would have probably three points better, but I give more points for a, uh, playoff home game. They would have been dogs in that game. I had to make it. I'll go look at my numbers. I don't have numbers for this. This is not like, you know what? I should also keep it running, Talie. What if nobody got hurt on this team? But, uh, yeah, that maybe that's fair. One point, dogs. Jack closes one and a half point favorites. So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the market was really cool on Buffalo. I remember painting the Jags that day, but I don't think I laid a point on them. I think I got them plus money. We played money line because yeah, I got plus money. They should have won that game. That was painting. It should have. Yeah. I digress. We'll talk about that game more when we get to the Jags later this week. Tomorrow. Hey, guys, why are you podcasting on a Tuesday? It's the power went out on the West Coast. Sorry. We're getting them in when we can. We're doing our best. Yeah, but my point being even, even at the height of how, how high their stealing was last year, I think it was still, you know, we weren't viewing this team as somebody that was going to leap wrong. The top four or five teams in the, in the AFC, you know, there's a world where the, I think they're still just because of where I had the Ravens at the end of the year. They're probably still ahead of the Ravens, but I bet a bunch of before the Dam Jones injury, I bet a bunch of colts to miss five to one. Just because I was like, they can finish third. The Jags are not that far behind. The Texas are not that far behind and the colts just didn't have any easy ones on the way in. I guess if they had held onto the third seed, I think the most likely outcome for them was probably wild card elimination. The second most likely outcome for them was divisional round elimination. The third most likely outcome for them was conference championship elimination. Like, I don't think there was a higher ceiling with that team, which is kind of where you have to start with this year's squad, which is if they do run it back and that they are the beneficiaries of health, what constitutes a successful season, and it's probably a playoff appearance and I don't know if I don't really know that you can realistically expect to play off-win out of this group. They don't necessarily seem to have a high floor from the defensive side or a high ceiling potential with the offensive side. So it's like a good healthy season and you just have a good workman-like team that makes the playoffs and loses in the wild card round kind of. Is that where we're at? Yeah, I'm above average with this team. I have this team as an above average team obviously. I think that's where we need to be, but at the same time like you said, it's not the kind of offense where you see like what's the best case scenario for this offense with like bringing in Keenan Allen and a lot of it being predicated on Jonathan Taylor being, you know, great and that that can quickly win when it comes to a running back. Not everybody is Derek Henry. So yeah, the surrounding cast, even at the, if we say Daniel Jones plays as well as he ever did, again, the surrounding cast probably doesn't have me confident that there's like some huge upside to this offense right now. And like you said, there's some definite holes in this defense. So some of these third place teams we disagree with where they sit. I think we're both saying we're pretty fine with this team being the third place team behind, you know, obviously Texan's team that has an all-world defense and some other pieces that are pretty nice. Obviously a good quarterback and some receivers. They just trained a first receiver. And then a Jags team that is ascending. That said, they are that steady, eddy, you know, rabbit and the hair kind of feel where if these other teams struggle, it doesn't feel like the, it doesn't feel like this Colts team is going to, like you call them workmen like, doesn't feel like this Colts team is going to have a terrible season. No, it's like, it's like, it's like they're going to finish about 500. A bad season for them is like eight and nine. Yeah, it feels like 10-11 wins. 10-11 wins. 10-11 wins. Yeah, still be a playoff team. You can still win the division if things go wrong. So here's my, I'll just let's just spoil it. Jags are my top performing team in the AFC South by A hair at 9.3 wins. Houston is my second at 9.1. India is my third at 8.7. I have 0.6 wins separating the best in the worst in this division, which means a little bit of health luck either way. And these three teams could finish in any order. I think what the, maybe what the reason to be a bit skeptical of the Colts is, Daniel Jones is coming off in Achilles injury and a huge part of what made him special was his mobility. So that remains to be seen much, much younger. More reasons to be skeptical of the Colts Andy. Alex appears. They paid Alex appears in the off season. He has not had the, you know, he has not been a picture of health this off season. And then Tyler Warren, hugely important part of this offense. He is dealing with a groin. This is all the sudden like, are they going to face another year from hell where they're just not ever healthy? And, you know, for those reasons, it's kind of, I think, convenient to slot them third. I do think that they have a higher floor coaching wise than the other, then certainly than the Texans in my opinion. But, you know, I've put Shane Stichen as a guy that consistently gets less respect than he is due as far as being an offensive visionary. I kind of prefer, I, by, you know, I prefer Liam Cohen, but not by like, you know, huge lengths. And, you know, I, I think, you know, Luke Anorumo is, you know, maybe he has some flaws, but as long as you can kind of give him the right pieces to work with, he can coordinate a solid defense. So yeah, I want to stop you there because we talked about when, when Lou, when was Lou Anorumo doing the most damage when he was at his previous job? Yeah, he had an elite secondary. He had an elite secondary, and it allowed him to do a lot with his front seven with the, you know, his disguise system and what not. Yeah. And if he really does have two elite healthy corners, I'm, I'm seeing more upside almost for the, the defense. Well, we know he doesn't. And yeah, like, does it sound like what, does it sound like Trevor's word is especially healthy to me? Yeah, that is, I mean, the main issue right now is there are a lot of guys who are banged up in the preseason for this team, which stinks because it's made me have to change my notes a lot. And I mean, they've, I don't know that there's, ah, the Niners, we'll call the Niners the most banged up preseason team, but this one has a lot of little injury notes on it. Um, and then as you mentioned, and Bertie and the chat mentioned here too, Warren, very good. We felt like coming out of the draft, he was going to be a guy that could change a team. As we've seen some of these young, you know, newfangled, got a son old. I remember, I remember when a tight end was an alignment. He got four passes a year, and he would just chip people, but I mean, with how the, how tight ends are used nowadays, if you can get a guy like that really performing high, you don't need a good wide receiver too. You have a, you know, you have a receiver in your tight end who can take a big chunk of the snap share, the target share, the catch share. So, and Bertie points out his production fell off Cliff when Jones got hurt. Yeah, everybody's kind of dead. That's stunk. You wasn't the only receiver offensive player to get hurt. So we'll give him a little bit of benefit of the doubt, but yeah, I'm in the same boat as you. It's very close between these three teams. And I like stiking. I like getting a little bit cold sir because of the injuries they are dealing with right now, right? Right. And we saw and granted, these were much, much older men, but when we saw Iron Rogers and Kirk Cousins come off of Achilles injuries as quarterbacks playing. And I know this is a little more of a run heavy offense, I suppose, but making some of those extended handoffs and things like that, they just, they didn't have the pep and, and like you said, those weren't running quarterbacks. So, in certain times, you're expecting to have five, five, six carries a game and extend drives that way. So something to keep an eye on over the next couple of weeks is he gets more and more highlights on him here for his sitting duck. Is we as we prep for the season? You want to talk a little off season? I guess this key on that real quick. So he, Dale Jones was attempting about four rushes per game last year. It wasn't like hugely productive. So it wasn't like a big part of his bag last year before the Achilles. It was a big part of his bag in years prior though. So there's, there's this maybe just a means of growth. As a rookie in New York, he was a six attempts per game. I'm sorry, six yards per attempt. Three and a half attempts per game. He, he worked all the way up to about seven and a half, six and a half, six and a half, his three, well, final years in New York before dropping back down to three and a half in Indy. So there is, he did in general kind of work that out of his, his game a bit. I felt like his big. Probably having Jonathan Taylor. Well, that, well, that and the, and better protection. Like he was just in general under a lot less pressure in Indy last year than he had any of his years in, you know, in New York. And so if you're under less pressure, you're less liable to scramble. And maybe the scrambles became more valuable because of that. So it's, it, this maybe soft reason to be doubtful. But, but yeah, I think, you know, Daniel Jones and, and how he looks physically, particularly in the early going this year is, is, is going to be worth watching it. And I think like, again, final thought and then we'll move to off season. The perfect possible opportunity is that Daniel Jones does not look good week one against a very, very sharp and ready to play Ravens team. Yeah. And that everybody just kind of does like, up, knew it, Colts were about against. They're not a factor, not a factor. And then Daniel Jones gets healthier and back to 100%. Alex Pierce finds some form. Tyler Warren is no longer dealing with, you know, Kroen, soreness, maybe Keane Allen isn't even really getting many snaps because some of your younger players are more valuable in that third wide receiver position. Chiberius Ward injury concerns are gone. And you have a fully healthy secondary. That's pretty damn good, right? Like week four or five, six of the season for me for the Colts is where I'm hopeful that we have some people have quit them. And then there is a buy spot for this team because I don't think there are fundamental flaws. Being injured is not a flaw. Like, your offensive coordinator might be a dunce like we would suspect potentially in Houston. Yeah. And being, you know, being injured. is also not a flaw in that you didn't necessarily put together a viable offensive line in Jacksonville. So, you know, in this grand scheme of things, the flaws between these three teams, I kind of am least concerned about the Colts flaws, which is they're just a little banged up now. Yeah, but at important spots, as you mentioned, we need one full go. You need a CB2. You need Pierce playing. Pierce was two yards per route guy last year. Thousand yards. Like 40. That was 50. Catch this. I'm losing Andy signal. He gets nuked like once the show feels like this is crazy. He was, he was a, he was a deep threat. He was, did you lose me there? Yeah, I missed a lot of the peer, the point you were making was it about Pierce or one. Oh, yeah, no, I, we've had some issues. I had the power completely go out for a while. I don't know if they're working in the area, but no, Pierce, I also feel like people are attacking us. I feel like we're getting D, D, D, D denial service attacks. Do you think I think somebody's D dosing us because they don't want this information out there. Like, they're trying to keep us down. Yeah, because I feel like once the show, yeah, you were, you were going to make a point about the receiving options. I feel like, but then I could, Pierce. Pierce, I mean, it's sounding like the goal this week one, but that's not it's not for sure right now. We had a March ankle surgery. I was mentioning he was a two yards for route guy. He was a legit deep threat. That's kind of important when you run, when you're like a run heavy team. You can go run heavy, deep run heavy, play action deep shot. You can be a high, you know, upside offense that we're not going to see. So let's uh, yeah, let's get into some of the offseason stuff. Keenan Allen, a sign and free agency six time pro bowler who is old, he is 34 years old. Um, familiar with staking though, staking was um, his baby started from the chart. He was staking was a charger, like 2014 to 2020, I guess. Was he? Oh, yeah. That's a long time. 2014 to 2020. There's an eagle. I thought it was an eagle in there. I think he was an eagle after that. I'm going to have to check on my staking timeline now. Um, staking, shame. Yeah, where was I think he was a cool uh, charger before he was a cool, uh, an eagle. He was, I remember him being the offense coordinator. The chart was in 2020. I didn't have him. I didn't, I wasn't tracking him as that long, uh, you know, that's long of a tenure there. So he was the charger forever. He was the interim when they fired Ken Wisdonton 2019 and then they gave him the full-time job the next year. And then he took the Eagles job and then he took the Colts head coaching job. Either way, a little familiarity from pre pandemic times. I'm not sure that means a lot. Either way, we'll see how the usage goes between him and, you know, Josh Downes and some of the inside work. Arden Kee added kind of paid a little bit for him. We mentioned him the other day. He was a Tennessee titan. So he was a loss on that side. Nice little defensive addition to the outside. He's probably opposite lot too is what we're showing on the the chart right now. Michael Clements, another defensive end from I believe the Jets. Yeah, I have free agent. Another kind of a base run defender type that'll step in and a lot too spot when they're not looking to pass rush. Colby Wooden traded for a defense lineman. That was the Zeyer Franklin trade we mentioned when we talked about the Packers. Another guy who's going to, you know, be a rotational inside guy with Stuart and Buckner. Camberett Taylor is on this team outside depth with Gardner and Ward. But let's we mentioned might need to step in. If words will dinged up a team Davis Gather. Now we're getting now we're really getting down the they had a lot of depth pieces here. And this guy is probably starting on the weak side. But man, they I'm just looking down at the some of the defensive linemen that are below this too. So he was a free agent from error. I was on a Nick Westbrook a Kine depth with wet receiver spot. Another free agent that was added. He's getting the work while Alex Pierce is sitting though. Derek Naughty and Jerry Tillery more free agents on the inside. Jonathan Owens and juwa Wanya Thomas. A couple of safeties that are going to be behind, you know, Benjamin Halsey Eastern stick is still in the league. He was added to this team and free agency. McKay Rogers. Another corner back depth. That was kind of a recent signing. I think more camp death because of some of the banged up corners. He lost Michael Pittman. He was traded to Pittsburgh. Cost saving thing. He was going to cost a lot. We mentioned Zeyer Franklin was lost in the trade linebacker. That's why we have to get another off ball linebacker in the room to play in his spot. Kenny Moore was released after a failed trade request. He is not on a team. So that was a bad trade request, buddy. Quitte Pay, defense vend is in Los Angeles. Excuse me, Las Vegas. He only had four sacks last year. I think it was one of those we talked about that when we talked about Vegas. It wasn't a super productive. Maybe he fits in there. He lost right tackle Braden Smith, the free agency to inner division rival Houston, Nick Cross, safety, free agency to Washington, and then a bunch of other depth pieces, including Mike Hilton, the free agency, a couple other safeties, Amir Abdullah, another third down back in return. You actually had a lot of churn in the depth part of it. Who did they take in the first round, though, Drew? They didn't have a pick. You went to the Jets for sauce gardener. And that's also how they got rid of Ed and I Mitchell, who was part of that trade. Second round linebacker, C.D. Allen. Pretty good in the cults right now, A.D. Mitchell. He dropped the ball sometimes throwing out some. This was a trade that they traded down with Pittsburgh, took linebacker C.J. Allen from Georgia with their first pick. He had an early pop stint with a calf. He was activated. And he is going right into the Mike spot. So you got two brand new linebackers. Did not play on this team at your second level. A.J. Halsey, as I mentioned, you're starting strong safety. He's your Nick Cross replacement. You got him in the third round, fourth round. Jalen Farmer guard. He's going to be depth behind. Can call this. Brian Betcher, another linebacker, another edge. George Gums from Florida. George Gums cracks me up. He'll be rotation depth. And then a couple more depth pieces late. Edge, Caden Curry from Ohio State. That was the pick. You got back in the pitman trade, running back Seth MacGowan from Kentucky, who's currently listed higher on the depth chart than I thought he would be in. He's up there. He's ahead of DJ Giddens, I guess, because the other piece fighting for the spot is DJ Giddens. And then we had a, what some people are calling a steal. T. Ann Berks from Oklahoma. Nice slap depth, especially for a team who has a wet receiver who's injured right now. Okay. Coach remains. O.C. remains. D.C. remains. Kicker battles. Did you cover that? I have one more injury I needed to go over. Oh, go. You know who I'm going to talk about here? No, I don't. Brian Mason. Brian Mason. I'm going to add the injury. Special team's coach Brian Mason. Oh, yeah, he got him on the sideline of practice. Yeah, hit him on the sideline. Multiple ligaments. So not probably not affecting my special team's number a lot, but he will coach from the booth because he's on a fucking scooter right now. There's a kicker battle though, right? And camp like group and Spencer Schrader fighting it out. There's a kicker battle. There's a kicker battle with a couple. We're asking George Gums because of the James Gums sounds of the lambs. I don't know. Just man. Gums made me laugh. I don't know. George Gums Jr. All right. Well, it was a pretty unambentful offseason. I thought losing a lot of moves. Not a lot of them. It felt like they like it felt like they kind of made the bet on Pierce because I don't know. Because you tell me if I'm wrong. There was like a weird little bubbled up like he was like the hottest property in the free agent market all of sudden. He was he was doing interviews with. He was seeing lots of teams and considering my options and then he assigned a monster deal with the Colts and then he had ankle surgery. Wait a minute. Like what was like today? No, it was a good idea for him to do the ankle surgery after. After. Yeah, it was. It was a good idea to start after. Smart by him. And I also, I was a little bit surprised that he was the buzzy part of the free agent market, to be honest with you, 'cause I thought he was kinda limited as a wide receiver, and I definitely don't know that I loved that he got all this money, and it cost the pitman. Not that I'm like a pitman stan or anything like that, but it was a weird dynamic, ultimately. And now you're left, you have no pitman, you have no 80 Mitchell, you're forced to bring in Keenan Allen, who I have a really tough time seeing, being a factor. And it's almost like you're trying to use Josh Downs now in a position where he's not necessarily a skill set that's more like, keep it in the slot, don't fuck with that. Well, that's the thing, if you want to do that, which you should put down as your main slot guy, and you got Keenan Allen, he's an outside threat at 34. I guess he's just running practice rats, or he's just, he keeps the defense on us that, I don't know. I'm guessing it's a much different route tree that they're gonna be using compared to Pierce, if you're healthy, like Pierce's go routes and Keenan Allen has a lot of, hey, what can you do that's, what do you have for tricky routes that are gonna confuse a mediocre, you know, maybe we'll get a linebacker any sometime, and you can just hit some stick routes and nice little 10 yard outs, 'cause I'd like him in the slot somewhere, but you have a slot guy, and he's not a burner. Yeah, the way that they handled the roster build from a skill position player standpoint in the last six months was a little bit of a head scratcher, I would say, and I guess I want to hear opinion on the offensive line move, in particular, the right tackle here. Yeah, the Jalen Travis is, now you're right tackle because, like you're right tackle. Braden Smith was good. He wasn't like great, like he would now, I'm not building my team around Braden Smith, but he was very objective player for you. Yeah, you let him go to a, he's not placed for Houston, he needed a lot of help, and he was here for a while, it's not like he got, he got two years, 25 million, 13 guaranteed. I don't know their cap situation off the top of the head, but it must have felt like, hey, we can replace this guy. Yeah, I didn't love that, and I'm nervous about this new guy, just 'cause I haven't seen him taking up snaps, the left side of the line, flat out awesome, question marks everywhere else. All right, weird off season for the Colts. He's very purgatory feeling. You wanna move into ratings and give a hat tip to the good folks who we'll see in two days? Yeah, I do wanna mention jail and Travis, deal a foul high school Minneapolis, Minnesota. Okay. One of us, he was a Princeton Tiger. Okay, finished his career that Iowa state, 'cause nobody, you know what's gonna be super rare, is a guy who plays college football for three or four years, and it's all the same school. It is gonna start to feel very good. It's gonna be super rare, like, hey, what school, you're not even gonna say to him, or like what schools did you play for? What was your, all your stops in college? And now they're gonna be like, well, I was at Penn State, and then I transferred to Indiana, and then I went to the Broncos for a camp, and then I went back to Missouri Rolla, 'cause you can just do that now. I guess the big tenants pushing back. The NCAA has no power, it's crazy. The conferences are going to have to do this though. Yes, let's thank our sponsors, Circa Sports. We're gonna be out there Thursday and Friday, part of Saturday for Sign Up Weekend. There's a great event. If you are signing up this weekend, make sure you take advantage, they will give you free rooms if you sign up for a couple entries. So, I mean, it's like, oh, give me a free room after I spend, if you're gonna spend it anyway, you might as well get the free rooms on top of it. There's perks, there's some parties. Did you see if you could do three entries or more, you get a free seat at the Black Check Contest, or the Black Check, 20 Vegas Tournament? Yeah, it's at the high roller room. And I really want to see that bar. I think I want to go, you want to go to that? It's on Friday. I think it's on Friday. What's fun about that, too? Tournament Black Check is different. Like, you have to play way. I was gonna try to get a whole little like, explainer on it. You're split Friday, buddy. Yeah, yeah. (laughs) I don't know, I don't know the actual, all the right moves, but you need to be really aggressive. I was gonna try to get, yeah. Do you want to do that? Yeah, I definitely want to go to Legacy Club. That's gonna be fun. That plan is Legacy Club at night. Yeah, we got some other fun stuff planned out there. We'll be on Radio Row on Thursday, doing a live podcast with Gil for the US Open on Friday. Yeah, it's gonna be a super fun weekend out in the desert, but the real reason I'm excited to go is to sign up for the contest because we're shipping this year, probably both, but at least one, yeah, we got to, we got to strategize when we want to actually sign up, make sure when you let Maddie or Choudu's Maddie's assistant. Tony. Tony, thank you. They would both be there, they'll both be there. Yeah, why don't we? We'll let them know. We want them to be there all week. That's the thing too, if you don't want to have to deal with, I got to call the proxy and make sure they're there. If you come up this week, they're just going to be there because it is sign up weekend. So looking forward to it. Thank you to Circa for the hospitality and sponsorship and let's get into the ratings for the Indianapolis Colts where I have the QBOC number at a balmy 5.4. I'm a 5.1 and this is one that I'm going to have very, very close, you know, close sensitive fingers on the knob here because we don't really know what the expected performance will be here. As I look at my numbers last year, I think I've topped out with Jones and Stake in around a seven when things were really going good for them. I started way lower and had to adjust pretty quickly. But it was, I think 5.1, 5.4, that's the right starting point here for this duo with, I don't know, I guess if you had to put a probability of distribution around your number for the first four weeks of the season, are you more likely to go up or down from 5.4? I've got to look at the schedule. It seems like that's not how you should be choosing that. There's a, this shouldn't be based on opponent. Some of it's going to be, well, they start out with Baltimore in case, Drew, that cuts both ways. It's like, it's like, if they play some cupcakes, it's Baltimore, Casey Houston, bang, bang, bang out of the game. Baltimore Houston are obviously elite defenses. Casey, at least has spec'd all low. I think I'm more likely to bump them up because I'm starting low on purpose here based on, I think in the reality in general, you're probably more likely to bump an offense down as a whole across the league. - I think so too. - We start higher. So if you add up all our implied wins, I think I'm about 10 above how many we can have. - Really? - Yeah. - How do you get to an implied wins then? Because I'm literally just adding something the win probability of the games. - I am projecting 72.0 wins on this season. - So I did that and I have my implied wins. But here's the thing. I want my power ratings to reflect reality here and at the end of the year. I am going to lose 10 wins during the course of the season due to injuries. - That's okay, okay, I understand. - So you know what I mean? I'm at about 282 with my ratings. I have my implied win, I normalize it for implied wins so it comes out to, when I say, I think this team wins as many games, that is normalized to 272. But I say, I start high because as a whole, I will lose more to injuries than I will gain on, hey, this team surprised me the good. And obviously they'll be the inverse, they'll be the steam is worse than I thought. It's not due to injuries. There's balance each other out, but enough people get hurt that I lose about 10 wins during that. I've looked at it over the last few years. - I totally get that. I'm fine with that. Okay, so skill position group. - 5.9. - 5.8. - It's huge disagree with it. Another one though that's gonna go up, like as soon as Alex Pierce is fully healthy, he matters if it turns out that Keanu Allen has a real role on this team that might go down. But yeah, a healthy one, Taylor, Pierce downs. If those are your top four skill position players, you're leaning on for offense. Like this. - That's as good as this situation gets. It's really, really, really good. - Yeah. I'm low because of the warrant and pierce things. - Is this the number two? I think actually it might be one now because the San La Porta thing for Detroit. I think that Colts might be my top. If I take Y Dr. Cver one plus two healthy, plus Tyda and plus running back, I think this is the best skill position support in the NFL. Am I missing somebody? Am I forgetting somebody? - I guess the Rams is one, two Rams is much better. - It's not a seat. - It's not a seat, I say that. - Even with the cluster jam, man, that. Yeah, I was gonna say Detroit, but little port of thing. - That's with sidebar worth having one day, but I don't really get what's going on there. Jonathan Taylor is my R before. And yeah, Tyler Warren is my TE3, I think. Sorry, TE4. Colts overall, yeah, they're top 10. This is a top 10 when they're healthy, but they're not right now. So they get a little thing, a 5.8. Anyway, offense aligned for me is a six, which means all three of my offensive numbers are greater than five, which means that overall, this is an above 50th percentile offense, 55th percentile, 16th best in the NFL for me right now. The praise for both Bernard Raymond and Quentin Nelson, I think is worthy. Quentin Nelson might be one of the better offensive linemen in football. Don't have much of an opinion on Tanor Bartolini or Matt Gonzales. Jalen Travis, as we just learned as a Princeton Tiger, so good for him, but I have him as a neutral. I have him as a slight plus, but like a 51 percentile kind of thing. - Well, okay, he's a slight plus. - He had 300 snaps last year. - Okay. - He created out okay. But I can't use that as like a full sample because he was rookie. It's not a big sample size, and he's stepping in. I'm a 6.9, I have a, you know what Bernhard means in German? Brave Bear. - Brave Bear. - That means Brave Bear. - I was gonna say Brave Bear. - That's my dog's name. That's what we name the new dog Bernhard. - Bernie. - But we call him Bernie because he's fun. - Yeah, Quentin Nelson, obvious plus, Sportlini plus ish. And then the right side is kind of a incomplete to neutral possibly a plus at right tackle. If Travis plays well, this is one of the better lines. And just the scheme, and I don't wanna go and say too many nice things, but Jim Bob Cooter because I'm not a huge, Jim Bob Cooter stand, but. - Andy, not a cooter guy, that's news to me. - Not a cooter guy? - Yeah. - News to me. - Well, this is cooter round. Between him and Stuykin, the game plans they put together help, I don't know that. It seems like the scheme is good. The run block scheme is good. Having Jonathan Taylor helps, but the scheme and the continuity outside of right tackle helps as well. Give me a little continuity bump. - Okay. - I see you get a keel bump rather than cooter for three years, like, just continuity is nice. - The left side of this line is the best left side in football. - That's very fair. - Aging narrowly ahead of the Philadelphia Eagles. - You're gonna say the line's left side, suddenly it's a lot better. It's a lot better, but it's still, yeah. - Anyway, Christian Mahogany is a mystery to me. Anyway, the offense overall is a plus. Defense overall is not a plus. Runstop for me is 4.7, pass rush for me is 3.7, coverage for me is 4.8. And I don't know that I have a ton of defense here. There than like not much, like, I guess, here's the rub. The entire line back in core is a mystery box. - Brand new. - I have no idea how to rate it. - It could be anything, it could be a boat. - It could be a boat. I don't have any read on a Keem Davis-Gather or CJ Allen at your second level. And that to me means you're coming in below average to start with until proven otherwise. - Yeah. Runstop I'm a little lower. I'm at a 4.2 to your 4.7. Grover Stewart didn't have a great year. Ed knows in this standard though. - Buckner is 32 coming off a neck procedure. He's good, but he's 32 coming off a neck procedure. The depth behind him is minimum veteran money, minimum money veterans, naughty, tillery, wooden. So the runstop depth isn't great. The second level is, like you said, CJ Allen at Mike Davis-Gather on the other side, Franklin's runstop grade on the way out. It's not a big loss because he wasn't a good runstopper as far as how he grades with, but at the same time, it was also 1,000 snaps last year that we, at least no, we're getting. Michael Clemens was brought in as like a runstopping defender in the end, he might bump it up a little but I'm still learning past rush. Right around the same, you were 3.7, I'm 3.5. Same kind of thing, like you lost Quittie Pay, oh well, a bootcamp to Atlanta and you bring in Arden Key and Clemens Buckner, what, 36 pressures in 10 games? Nice, but he's not young, see how the neck holds up. Rookie Kaden Curry is gonna be in the mix, maybe a wild card behind Latu. He can bring this number up and then coverage him at a 4.9. And kind of a lot of agreements with this team. It needs to get healthier and then it's definitely a plus, but I mean, if it's healthy and good, Gardiner, Shavaria Sward, Bynum. - You know what the problem is? - It's the linebackers, man. These guys are not good cover guys. I actually, you know what, like my, you know what one of my holdups is with this defense? Why did you sign a keen Davis Gator and why is he starting? - You don't have it. - What is the good at? - You don't have another way to sign linebackers, really. Like Bruce Bryce Betcher? - Yeah, you could be maize always just go youth movement. One of them learned on the job. I don't know. I don't know. - The Bryce Betcher is a fifth round or fourth round, Rookie. He's gonna make the team because there's, you know, they're thin there and he's gonna play some special teams, but he is, he was also drafted by the Houston Astros, in fact, as an outfielder, we should go do that. But who knows, maybe Kather and Alan don't have great years and we see some of these other guys step in. - I also don't really know how to rate this kid Justin Wally. Does he have any snaps for them last year? Am I missing him somehow? - The nickel? - Yeah. He just didn't play for them last year, he was on the back of a squad all year. - So Kenny Moore was your nickel for the last year. - Kenny Moore was the nickel for six hundred and so the snaps, yeah. - Yeah. Wally, I think Wally was just, he graduated into it. I don't know if he has a lot of snaps. He's the second year guy. - I don't think I've got any snaps locked. - Yeah, I think he was just depth special teams or practice squad off to double check that. But I don't have anything on him. - Yeah, he dragged my number down. The linebacker's dragged my number down. AJ Halsey, I think is probably going to be a small minus relative to what you got out of the cross last year. Binaum, good, ward, hope if healthy, fine, sauce gardener, excellent. But it's kind of set up where if you're going up against the team with only one, what then you can probably handle it. If it's two, might be in trouble. If it's three, you kind of fucked. - You really need a big, big dad of Justin Wally. All right, let's, our numbers, I'm a little higher than you. I'm about a plus one. You're about a point plus two. My special teams number is a pitch higher. We do have maybe a downgrade because of the coaches injured. - Yeah, they, you have a kicker battle with them. - Why are you so low on the coaching? - I don't know, I'll have to look at that. - You don't like Shane's deck inside. - I'm going to have to look at his fourth down stuff. I used a lot of that. So remember, I said I had two games of fourth downs. I had fourth downs and fourth downs that matter. - Yeah, okay. - And some of it was late and I really up waited the late game stuff because that's what changed wind probability. I'll dig into that. That's interesting. Sanchez and Rhodes are steady as you're puntering long snapper. You get it to be gold as your returner and then a kicker job battle. I'm hoping for a groupie just because he's got to find your name. Shrater and groupie. All right. Point plus plus zero point two one for me plus one point two for you and the market is at a minus one point six three. The market is at a minus one point six for the cults. I think that's up way because they're playing some good teams early on. But that's a it's a little bit of a shocker. I guess they're on the road. There are three and a half point dogs to Baltimore. Oh, I'm trying to home. They're home. The three and a dogs point down. Oh, I think that number is three right now, right? This is an older pull. This is an older scrape. Wait, is it three or three and a half? What's the current number? I think it's three. I'll check. All right. We'll say three. You're three point dogs at home to Baltimore. So that actually explains where the market would have you as a minus. Five and a half point five and a half point dogs at KC. That feels like it's still a juicy three. It's like a three and a quarter right now. Yeah. Still cheap three and a half. Expensive three is out there for you guys. They're looking to bet this early week two. It looks like son and a football. They're putting they're putting these they're putting the chiefs on back-to-back prime time games. If you want to bet that right now, it is six and a half or seven. Well, you know, hanging seven and a half. I'm guessing William Hill is not taking a ton of liquidity on a week two line right now because they're William Hill and it's week two. But yeah, that's up to six and a half at Fandall. And then my fair for that. My fair for that is two point seven. You tend to disagree then. You may want to take some dog. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I might say international game on the roster. It seems like we've had a lot of these cults international games. I'm gonna guess this one's in Madrid. The neutral site. Yeah. Indie Washington, Madrid. It is. I don't have a written out. It just wrote international. I think it's in Madrid. Indie, Washington, international game. Live Googling. It is. And I feel like it's Germany. It's in London. None of us are right. It is in. Tottenham hot spur. That's the first one in game. Okay. Yes, that is the first week four. They did not take their buy. Not only did they not take their buy, but they got to play a Hall of Fame quarterback off that travel. As they travel to take on one of the maybe the most experienced quarterback coach tandem in the league in Mike McCarthy and Aaron Rogers who have combined 55 years of experience in this league. It's never easy hitting that travel spot at least in the East Coast travel. They don't have to do something silly like go to LA. The end of the schedule is much easier. You get Miami and we take 10 and then obviously maybe a scheduled loss there on a short week at Houston. The rest of the games are winnable. Even the Philly game. It's not a terrible matchup for a team with a good offensive line. And then four games at the end where you are either a favorite or a small dog. You have the Giants game before the buy lately buy. Not the not the worst schedule, but man, there's some really fucked spots between coming off the international game and playing a road game in a tough place. And having the double, double road at many at jacks where they're both coming off a buy. Yeah, yeah, it's no stuff. A couple of tough tough defenses. I don't know anything else for you there. I would not bet them against Baltimore. I would bet them against Casey in the first two weeks of this season. I think the winner or Casey number is jacked up. We've been over this. I know, it's true. My way the I think like the big the huge equity swing early in the season for division price is going to be that Houston game week three. They're hosting Houston. If you lose your home game to Houston, the market absolutely will quit you. And that number is going to drift aggressively. I think a one-in-two team that has just lost to Houston is my going to try to convince you we should buy on the Colts if assuming that they haven't had some yeah, assuming there's no signal that this just isn't going to work. I don't know why I want to bet on the Colts. I mean, I'm not that much higher. We're both higher than the market here. I think for me, it's probably not going to be a season-long thing unless I'm seeing some signal and it's just been hey, they had you know, the Pittsburgh game was impossible. The Minnesota Jacksonville games were impossible. And then if I'm feeling it, you know, I could bet on my head of that Dallas game. Maybe it's a game-by-game thing. I don't know if I do something futures-wise, it'll probably be mid-season. Obviously, Daniel Jones is in the comeback player conversation, but I think that markets dead due to one dude Jonathan Taylor or POI. It's it's hard to see him continuing just to do that every single year, but maybe Droy for CJ Allen just because he's going to play a ton and we're not in love with some of the runstop up front. That's a hundred maybe has 150 damn tackles. He's 30 to one. I think Zaire Franklin had the most defensive snaps of and maybe the most tackles of any defensive player last year. We talked about we talked about that he had it was like top 10. It was like a shitload of snaps and but still they weren't super effective at time. Okay. They're about 60 to one to win the Super Bowl, 30 to win the Fc, a four to one to win the South and a win total between seven and a half and eight and a half with the juice on the middle of those two. I'm not taking any positions right now. I think the culture of bet on in a lot of these games once they have Pearson a fully healthy Pearson Warn on the offensive side. Yeah. Like you're going to do a decent job of managing the past rush for a lot of these kind of midling past rushes. You're going to be able to run pretty effectively against some of these teams. Maybe you just it just doesn't break in your favor and you lose your you know your three and five three and six coming out of that first nine game stretch and people are just giving up on you heading into the Miami Miami game and that's the bet on time for them. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I know you do. I shouldn't but you shouldn't bet the Colts now. I know that because I don't think I don't think they're match they're not at the end with the current health situation. They don't match up well against Baltimore. The health situation and they don't match up very well. And I'm yeah I'm willing to join you there even though my KC numbers better than yours. I'm willing to join you if that's a seven. I kind of want to see I want to see like Pierce out out of out of precaution week one and Baltimore makes him look bad and then that drives it up to like a cheap seven for us and you know maybe they lose that game but seven's a lot of points for a Kansas City team that we weren't you know super enamored with. Yep I agree. All right well Colts aren't winning the Super Bowl but they might be going to the playoffs guys. Sadly not a lot of likelihood that oh hey lady. Carly Ursa Gordon is going to be a main character in this year's season but I haven't gotten any cool Carly stories all off season have you? Not really. She's still she's still like engaged in the development of this team right. She's still a principal actor. I think so. She has lost interest. She owns a team with her sisters. Three sisters. All right let's call it. We'll be back tomorrow. We'll knock out the Titans and the Titans. She is. We'll knock out the Texans and the jaguars. Not in that order though so we'll catch you tomorrow and yes RIP Dolly Parton. Oh no that happened today. Yeah she's a big loss. Someone who ever had a kid knows she's taking books. Sign your up, correct your nostril of the Dolly Parton. Imagination rivalry.