The Colts are struggling to perform the most fundamental skill in defensive football.
Indianapolis has other problems on that side of the ball. The Colts aren’t getting anywhere near enough pass rush off the edge, have trouble covering receivers in the middle of the field and need to force more turnovers.
The Colts could improve the defense considerably by simply tackling better than they have through the first five games of the season.
“It’s always the same, right?” defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo said. “It’s angles and timing, and the more opportunities and the more hats you get to the ball, the better we’ll be at it.”
Indianapolis has missed 33 tackles through the first five weeks, according to Pro Football Reference, a figure that ranks 27th in the NFL.
The two biggest plays of Sunday’s ugly performance in Pittsburgh, an 80-yard catch-and-run by Jaylen Warren and a 50-yard Warren burst up the middle, involved poor tackling.
Veteran middle linebacker Akeem Davis-Gaither simplified the issue even further than Anarumo in the locker room after the game.
“I look at tackling as a want-to thing,” Davis-Gaither said.
Davis-Gaither’s words cut sharply, making it sound like he was calling the rest of the team’s effort into question.
But Davis-Gaither has been credited with four missed tackles already, second-most on the team behind diminutive slot cornerback Justin Walley, and it was Davis-Gaither who whiffed on Warren at the line of scrimmage on the 50-yard run.
“Akeem is a coach’s son, Akeem’s probably going to be a coach when he’s done playing,” Anarumo said. “I think he comes from the mindset that we all want — when we arrive at the football, we want to arrive there in a bad attitude.”
Davis-Gaither’s comment sounded even more concerning in the wake of Indianapolis cornerback Sauce Gardner acknowledging last week that his effort in London wasn’t good enough.
“We do not have a lack of effort on the team,” Anarumo said. “When you lose, there’s going to be some things that are highlighted. If I thought there was a problem with effort, I would address it immediately. When there was, the guys came out and identified it themselves.”
The Colts’ tackling issues allowed Pittsburgh to protect 42-year-old quarterback Aaron Rodgers by getting the ball out of his hands quickly Sunday.
Rodgers averaged 2.58 seconds from snap to throw against Indianapolis, the fastest time of any quarterback in Week 5 by two-tenths of a second.
There are a few different ways to get a team out of quick game.
Tackling is the easiest.
“You’ve got to rally to the football and tackle those,” Indianapolis head coach Shane Steichen said. “Because there’s no way you’re getting pass rush there when the ball is coming out, watching and throwing.”
Bubble screens and “look” routes, the concepts Pittsburgh was using Sunday, are actually an opportunity for a defense. Make the tackle on a throw like that immediately and it has the same effect as stuffing a run at the line of scrimmage; the offense finds itself backed up into second-and-long, third-and-long situations that aren’t easy to convert.
“When (Davis-Gaither) says that, it just comes down to a mindset, being more nasty coming to the football,” Indianapolis free safety Camryn Bynum said. “It needs to be that same tenacity, that same mindset of, ‘We all want to get to the ball,’ and even practicing the things that go beyond just the contact — the footwork, the angles, the approach, it’s a lot deeper than just getting a big hit and getting the guy to the ground.”
In other words, a tackler has to be tenacious, but he also has to be good enough to get in the right position. When the Colts defense misses a run fit or takes a bad angle to the outside, the way rookie linebacker Bryce Boettcher did on Warren’s 80-yard play, that directly contributes to missed tackles.
It doesn’t help that the defense’s chief tackling positions are filled with players who are struggling right now. The most prolific tacklers on most NFL defenses are the linebackers and strong safety.
Rookie A.J. Haulcy is clearly going through growing pains, and the Colts are rotating as many as five linebackers into the game because no clear difference-maker has taken control of the job. Indianapolis signed veteran Germaine Pratt to the practice squad Tuesday, another sign of the issues the Colts are having at the linebacker position.
If the issue was only effort, as troubling as that might be, the fix would be easy. A defense that doesn't have the capability to tackle well is a bigger problem.
Indianapolis will respond by increasing its work on tackling.
“Obviously, we can’t take guys to the ground, but we tackle bags, all that stuff, and we’ve got to drill that more and more every day, make it a huge emphasis so we don’t have the missed tackles going forward,” Steichen said.
The reality is the Colts have already been drilling it, and the missed tackles have still been far too high through the first five weeks of the season.
Until Indianapolis starts getting into position, opposing offenses are going to keep flipping the ball out of the pocket, forcing the Colts to prove they can actually get guys to the ground.
Joel A. Erickson and Nathan Brown cover the Colts all season. Get more coverage on IndyStarTV and with the Colts Insider newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Tackling is a 'want-to thing.' So why can't the Colts do it? Here's what Lou Anarumo said