Week 3 Monday Night Football Recap: What We Learned

The Indianapolis Colts went into last night’s Monday Night Football showdown with the Philadelphia Eagles with one thing on their mind: get to 1-1. They failed to do so, unfortunately, as the Eagles came back from a 14-point hole for the second week in a row to win on a last second field goal, 30-27. The Colts had their chances to snuff the life out of the Eagles, but Philly stayed the course and ended up finding the light at the end of the tunnel.

And just like that, a seemingly pretty good Colts team is 0-2 and a seemingly kind of lucky Eagles team is undefeated. Those are the obvious facts, but there are a few more things we can all take away from last night’s prime time action. Here are a few:

Darren Sproles Still Has It

The New Orleans Saints traded away the tiny, shifty Sproles this past off-season, and he has showed quickly through the first two weeks that he is by no means done. He showed off as a rusher in week one and scored a touchdown on the ground, but put his speed on display as a receiver last night thanks to seven catches and over 150 yards. Sproles is clearly a big part of what the Eagles are doing on offense right now, and in no way is that a bad thing.

Indianapolis Finally Figured Out How to Run the Ball

It wasn’t amazing, but Trent Richardson finally showed up in 2014, running with urgency and actual purpose en route to a solid 79 yards on 21 carries. He only averaged 3.8 yards per tote, but overall looked his best since coming over to the Colts in a trade with the Browns last year. Ahmad Bradshaw was even better on the ground, as he averaged 5.4 yards per carry with another 70 yards off of just 13 runs. Turning into a complete run-heavy team when you have Andrew Luck is silly, but the Colts did show they can run the ball when they want/need to.

The Colts Need to be Smarter

Indy was up by a touchdown with five minutes left, in scoring position and they threw a contested pass on a third and long. It’s true that T.Y. Hilton was arguably held or pushed on the play, but Andrew Luck’s pass resulted in a pick. Philly turned that into a score and ended up winning the game. Had the Colts played it safe and ran the ball, they would have taken the clock down another 40 seconds, kicked a field goal and held a 10-point lead at home with about four minutes to go. That’s the way you win a close game with a team storming back, and they showed us how you lose that type of game.

Philly Starts Too Slow

Indy let the Eagles back into this game, just like the Jaguars did the week before. While that shows how explosive Philly can be on offense (58 second half points in 2014), it also shows how slow they’ve started (six first half points in 2014). They clearly need to find a way to get points up in the first half. The upside here is this week the offense was much sharper, and did get two field goals (and one miss) in the first half against Indy. If they can actually start putting together complete games, they could become one of the more dangerous teams in the league.