Curtis Painter (Photo/IndySports360)
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers (3-1) ran all over the Indianapolis Colts (4-0) in what was a marathon of a victory. The first half took nearly two hours to complete. There were a total of 20 penalties called in the game for 156 yards. It was a very sloppy, mistake filled affair.
For the Colts, who played hard despite their record, they may have found their QB for the remainder of the season.
As Jon Gruden said in the pre-game “Peyton Manning is not walking through that door anytime soon” and therefore they need to learn to play with what they have. Now that Manning will most likely miss the season, The Colts should develop Curtis Painter as an NFL QB. They could keep him as a back-up or use him as trade bait when Peyton returns, or when they draft Andrew Luck from Stanford number one next year.
The idea to bring in Kerry Collins was with the belief that he could babysit Peytons offense until he returned. The Colts figured the playbook could remain the same, the protections would be identical, and they would just change one part. It was a bad plan.
Curtis Painter should be the starter from here on out.
For Tampa they have found a running game in LeGarrette Blount. Blount, ran for 127 of the 152 yards rushing Tampa had last night. His average was 5.1. The Buccaneers are another young team with a young quarterback in Josh Freeman. They need to protect Josh Freeman from himself at times, and no better way to do that than to have a very strong running attack.
The Bucs have a veteran offensive line for Blount to run behind. They would do well to keep this approach. The downside of last nights performance was the 14 penalties for 106 yards. Many of them of the holding variety, and a few stupid personal foul penalties. Penalties will kill you in this league and the Bucs are going to need to learn how to avoid them a little bit better.
All in all a competitive game with some surprising big plays by the young Curtis Painter, and a dominating running performance by Blount
