Cam Bynum recently highlighted the challenges that the Colts’ defense presents for quarterbacks.
Before Lou Anarumo joined the Indianapolis Colts this offseason, he was the defensive coordinator of the Cincinnati Bengals for six seasons, where he earned the nickname the ‘Mad Scientist.’
During the Colts’ Week 1 win over the Miami Dolphins, safety Cam Bynum got his first true experience of playing in Anaruom’s scheme and saw firsthand how he earned that nickname.
“He sees it as a chess match against the opposing coach,” Bynum told Kay Adams on the ‘Up & Adams Show.’ “And really, the way that he’s sending blitzes, and just versatile. Everything that he did this game, my first time being in a game he’s called, I got to understand him as a person more this time. Just seeing how he’s mixing things up, his mindset, he was more aggressive than I thought he would be.”
Bynum continued, “But also in times where it was smart to not be aggressive, he was smart enough to back off and take his foot off the gas a little, and just play some coverage sometimes–let us get a play off. Then we’ll send some more heat, then we’ll go to man coverage, then we’ll mix things up with zone, and I think that’s why we had the success we did.”
As Bynum described, the Colts’ defense threw a variety of different looks at Tua Tagovailoa and the Dolphins’ offense. The coverages varied drastically from play to play and series to series. What Tagovailoa saw pre-snap often didn’t match what he saw at the top of his drop. And then there were the blitzes from all different parts of the field.
The constant mixing and matching left Tagovailoa guessing, or as Colts’ cornerback Xavien Howard put it, the Dolphins’ quarterback was in “panic mode.”
The Dolphins’ offense mustered just eight points in this game. Tagovailoa was 14-of-23 passing for 114 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions. The unit as a whole averaged just 4.6 yards per play, which ranks 24th after Week 1, and the Dolphins turned the ball over three times.
“A lot of guys (made plays),” Bynum said. “Kenny Moore getting the strip sack, Nick Cross getting the sack. The quarterback had no clue where the pressures were coming from, just because we were mixing things up every single series, mixing up plays.”
Like every defensive play caller, Anarumo has core principles that his scheme is built around, but this system is extremeley malleable and will mold to the specific opponent. So what we saw from the Colts Xs and Os-wise in Week 1 may not be the same as what we see in Week 2 against Denver.
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