The Colts’ defense has been leaking in the same places all season, and Sunday against the Jaguars only made the problem louder.
Trevor Lawrence didn’t need a fireworks show to beat Indianapolis. He completed just 10 passes for 210 yards, and Jacksonville still walked away with the win.
The Jaguars offense wasn’t exactly rolling at full speed, either, even with 183 rushing yards and two touchdowns on the ground. But the Colts’ defense kept handing over openings, and on every Jaguars possession, the unit seemed to crack a little more.
That kind of collapse has become familiar in Indianapolis. The missed tackles, the soft spots underneath, the lack of disruption up front - it all looks a lot like the same defensive headache Lou Anarumo dealt with in Cincinnati. And now, with the Colts, it’s becoming impossible to ignore.
Anarumo’s defense has been buried by the same issues from the start. Indianapolis has lived near the bottom of the league in points allowed per game, total yards allowed per game and passing yards allowed per game.
The pass rush hasn’t done enough to change the picture, either, with edge rusher Laitu Latu among the players struggling to get home. Meanwhile, opposing offenses have repeatedly found ways to work over the linebackers and expose the middle of the field.
But the biggest problem has been tackling - or the lack of it.
Missed tackles have dragged the Colts down all year, and the damage shows up everywhere: in the yards allowed after contact, in the catches that turn into extra chunk plays, and in the kind of defensive possessions that never seem to end cleanly. It’s the sort of issue that has followed Anarumo before. During his run as Bengals defensive coordinator from 2019 to 2024, Cincinnati’s defenses often had trouble with missed tackles, and in the two seasons before he left for Indianapolis, those groups generally sat around league average or worse in missed-tackle rate and physical consistency.
That’s the uncomfortable overlap for the Colts. What Bengals fans saw in Cincinnati is showing up again in Indianapolis, only this time it’s hitting harder.
After eight weeks, the Colts rank 22nd in the NFL in defense, allowing 343.5 yards per game. They’re 12th against the pass at 211.8 yards allowed per game and 27th against the run at 131.8. The pressure numbers are even uglier: Indianapolis is 29th in sacks with 2 and 31st in takeaways with 3, including just two interceptions.
Those numbers don’t point to winning football, and they explain why the Colts keep losing. Right now, the defense is doing more to sink the team than save it, and how Anarumo fixes it remains a major question.
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Colts Fans Are Losing Faith As Jonathan Taylor Debate Heats Up
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Jonathan Taylor now sits at the center of that debate, with the conversation around the star running back becoming a referendum on how long this rebuild might take. For a team trying to chart a path forward, the question is no longer just what Taylor means to the offense, but whether keeping him fits the timeline the Colts are really working on. [Read more 🡒]