INDIANAPOLIS – Receiving a golden opportunity to make a statement with the Colts playing their starters for the first time this preseason, Sam Ehlinger failed to make a positive one on Saturday night.
Unlike what Jacob Eason did last week, Ehlinger did not put together a film filled with plays that can potentially translate to winning football come Sunday’s in the fall
Ehlinger finished his starting debut going 8-of-13 for 70 yards and 2 interceptions. The first interception was definitely on Ehlinger, getting a ball deflected at the line of scrimmage, which ended up as a turnover. It was another sign of Ehlinger’s lack of height (6-1) and pocket movement showing up for the rookie. Ehlinger’s second pick was trying to hit on a very well-covered timing route (wide receiver Ashton Dulin didn’t help Ehlinger out either in finishing the route).
For a guy that is never going to be one creating gobs of plays down the field, having three interceptions in less than 4 quarters of work in the preseason is not going to aid his cause.
In total, Ehlinger completed 61 percent of his passes on Saturday, with an ugly yards per attempt number of barely over 5.
Such a performance, not even factoring in the interceptions, shouldn’t threaten how this competition was trending over the last week.
Eason has been the better QB since the two began to split starting reps two weeks ago.
While Eason’s outing on Saturday started off poorly (2-of-8), he bounced back in the second half (going 14-of-19 for 132 yards), and continues to protect the ball much better than his counterpart this preseason.
“I need to look at the tape some more, but they both did some good things, made some big plays,” Reich said of his QB play following the game.
“Sam had two tipped balls lead to interceptions, so we have to clean that up. Jacob missed one or two things early but then made some big plays. We’ll learn from those. I think both did positive things. I need to look at the film more closely before I make a full evaluation.”
As the Colts look ahead to their final week of training camp at Grand Park, will we see a commitment at quarterback?
Three practices remain at camp. A final preseason game awaits Friday in Detroit.
Ideally, Frank Reich wanted to have this quarterback competition settled heading into this week.
But it sounds like Reich wants to let things play out for another week between Eason and Ehlinger. The head coach said his ‘hunch’ is that the competition will continue this week.
Saturday’s play from both QBs often looked like inexperienced signal callers who were selected on the final day of their respective drafts going through NFL growing pains.
Despite that, Eason has been the better QB over the last two weeks.
Is that enough for the Colts to finally say he’s their guy with three weeks to go until the regular season begins?
