The Musings of Brian Groce

In our usual fashion the Indianapolis Colts lost a preseason game, but considering that the offensive starters played a whole three minutes I’d say that we actually didn’t do too bad by only losing by 13 points to the Dallas Cowboys.

While it’s a little hard to tell where you really stand in preseason games, it’s clear that the defense needs some improvement, but overall didn’t do too bad by only giving up 16 points.   While 16 points isn’t a stellar number, with our starting offensive we’ll win almost any game that we can hold an opponent to under 16 points so long as our offense or special teams don’t give away some free points.

That said, the time of possession for the opposing offense, especially early in the game, worries me a little.  We have a very fast offense which is useful, but our defense is a bit slow and allows teams to charge up the field with the run while chipping away at the clock.  Luckily our defense only allowed the Cowboys to reach the end zone once last night, but in the regular season I don’t see that happening.  Something must be done to give these guys a more level playing field as far as rest time goes.  But it is only preseason, right?

I can hardly believe that it’s already time for football to start, but boy am I ready for it along with some cooler temperatures and stove tops full of chili.

The WORLD CHAMPION Indianapolis Colts kick off the 2007 NFL preseason tonight against the Dallas Cowboys, and you can be assured that I’ll be watching even though it doesn’t matter for the season standings.

I think that our offense will be stellar again this season, but the “D” is a huge question mark. So seeing what sort of defense we can put together in the preseason will matter this year and if we can do better than the seasons in which we had to put up 35+ points to win a game,we should have a chance for another good run.

And boy, is our schedule a doozie with only a handful of seemingly “easy” wins. But that’s to be expected with wining the Super Bowl, so we can’t really complain too much, especially since New England is on our turf.

Here’s the complete run down:

Go Colts!

* All times local to Indianapolis. Kickoff Times may change after Week 11 due to Flex Scheduling.

We’ve wanted to add an Indianapolis focused blog to the Surge Bucket Media Network for a while now, so today we’ve launched Take Back Indy.  The focus of this blog will be issues that we’re currently facing in Indy and the subject matter will obviously vary depending upon what’s going on at any given point in time.

Many of the posts on Take Back Indy will merely mention specific issues and will encourage reader interaction to constructively discuss the issues at hand.   Also, the website will eventually include a forum component to encourage greater interaction.  Please stop by and comment when you have a chance.

Via the Indy Star…

A stormy eight-year relationship between Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Formula One ended today with the announcement the international racing series would not return in 2008.

IMS chairman Tony George and F-1 boss Bernie Ecclestone could not reach an agreement on a sanctioning fee to continue the U.S. Grand Prix. George had set today as a deadline for a new contract.

As long as the pompous Ecclestone is in charge of F1, that is fine by me.  I have never been to an F1 event as it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me (parade “racing” and team “racing”) and I think a lot of Americans are in the same boat.  The main downside is that it will lose the city quite a bit of business for that week, but hey, we’re building a bigger and better convention center, right?   And next year the MotoGP comes to town, so that should help out and hopefully that will be a bit better than the GP car racing.

The 2007 NBA Draft wasn’t that full of surprises…Greg Oden went #1 to the Portland Trail Blazers with Kevin Durant going #2 to the Seattle SuperSonics. The other two Indiana All-Stars, Mike Conley Jr. and Josh McRoberts, went #4 to the Memphis Grizzlies and #37 to the Portland Trail Blazers respectively.

The Indiana Pacers on the other hand pretended that they got into the draft this year, and I’m not going to join them on their journey into Neverland by pretending that I know what these goof-balls are up to. Something seriously needs to happen in the Pacers front office in order to make us a contender once again. Bad decision after bad decision has just hosed us to the point of only having one chip left to play, and that chip is a bit overinflated.

Who knows, maybe we can swing a deal with Portland to give Jermaine O’Neal back to them (along with the rest of the team) in exchange for Oden & McRoberts and then somehow steal Conley Jr. away from Memphis (maybe give them our “drafts” that are staying across the pond). Can you imagine the potential of having those three guys on the roster three or four seasons from now. And just the fact of having three “local boys” on the roster would sell out the Fieldhouse year-after-year.

But I digress as that will never happen for multiple reasons even if the other teams were willing. And I seriously wouldn’t be surprised to see Portland try to swing a deal to land Conley Jr. down the road provided the trio is healthy and have delivered on their expectations. Time will tell.