which means they're playing a ton of prime-time games

Indianapolis Colts Daily Digest: An early look at DE Jerry Hughes and LB Pat Angerer (p2)
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Pass rushers don't necessarily have to get sacks, and that can be seen with Freeney. He's effective even when his sack totals aren't enormous because quarterbacks and coordinators must be concerned with him. A great pass rusher alters offenses and makes teams change their approach, and if Hughes can help on that front,Women's Miami Dolphins Jerseys, he'll do something that few ends outside Freeney and Mathis have been able to do for the Colts.
No way to tell if he can do that yet, but early impressions from the weekend is he's a good fit. He went back to school for his senior year for his degree and had solid numbers for a conference championship team. He's the kind of productive, no-red flags guy the Colts like, and it will be surprising if he's eventually not effective. . . .
We won't spend much time on Hughes, because the first-rounders get all the attention and you've read enough about him, but in studying the Colts' second-round selection LB Pat Angerer the selection makes a lot of sense, too.
First off, it's never a surprise when the Colts select a player from Iowa.
The Colts absolutely love Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz. They respect him as a coach, and trust that a player from the program will be fundamentally sound, well-coached and NFL ready,Matt Moore Jerseys. They had good luck with TE Dallas Clark (2003) and S Bob Sanders (2004) and Angerer's story isn't dissimilar to those two.
Angerer wasn't a huge recruit at Iowa, and he had injury troubles early on. He grew frustrated enough with football early in his career that he thought of quitting. He has told reporters the main reason he didn't was he didn't want to walk into Ferentz's office and tell him.
He improved drastically late in his Iowa career, and Ferentz called his junior season as good a season as any linebacker he has had at Iowa.
That's the sort of statement that catches Polian's ear. This sounds obvious, but Polian loves players who have proven they are good players. What that means is he values production more than potential, and if a player can be productive in the Big 10 at play at the sort of level that draws that sort of praise from a coach such as Ferentz, Polian's going to find that hard to ignore.
That's another reason Polian's drafts don't get graded highly by experts. Polian takes players such as Angerer, and they're not sexy selections, but they're solid, low-risk selections, and of such players often is consistency built. . . .
We'll break off from the draft review to take a look at.
Kravitz began with the obviously silly notion that the Colts should lose the season-opener to Houston to avoid any sort of perfect-season story, then gave Polian a B for a draft grade, saying, At the very least, it appears the Colts have addressed several need areas -- assuming, of course, that the majority of draftees stick around and make an impact: In the first five rounds, they got a third pass rusher (Hughes), a hoped-for heir apparent to Gary Brackett (Angerer), much-needed cornerback depth (Kevin Thomas), a 300-plus-pound guard who can bench-press Toyotas (Jacques McClendon) and a blocking tight end (Brody Eldridge).
Probably the most interesting part of Kravitz's column was when he discussed the Colts' schedule, correctly noting that it's one of the toughest in recent Colts history. That will be a major issue next season. The Colts have only five 1 p.m. kickoffs, which means they're playing a ton of prime-time games (five) and a ton more 4 p.m.ish starts. They also have a stretch of five consecutive postseason games and a division that likely will be tougher than last season.
I agree with Kravitz that the Colts will win at least 12 games again, and would add that if the NFL truly wanted to avoid worrying about whether the Colts would pull front-line players late in the season, they may have tried to do it by dealing them this schedule.
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