After spending the bye week watching tape with a critical eye, Colts head coach Jeff Saturday said on Monday he will not make a change at quarterback for Saturday's Week 15 game against the Minnesota Vikings at U.S. Bank Stadium.
So Matt Ryan will continue forward as the Colts' starting quarterback through a both-things-can-be-true lens: Ryan needs to play better, Saturday said, but the team's struggles – a 4-8-1 record and an NFL-high 26 turnovers – are not all his fault.
"We talked about it about Dallas and even about our game vs. Pittsburgh not being what we want," Saturday said. "And I think he shoulders a lot of the burden. We haven't been good enough in a lot of areas, so I hate to pinpoint one guy or one position, but obviously that's the quarterback position in the NFL, right? You get way too much credit, you get way too much plane. But there's parts of his game that has to improve. And we talked about that with a number of different guys. We got to play our best and if we're going to win, we need Matt playing his A game. And that's my expectation for him."
Ryan's 13 interceptions and 14 fumbles lead the NFL in each category, although when Saturday went back through the film, he saw reasons to believe those ball security issues were not only because of the Colts' quarterback play. Saturday pointed to pass-catchers being in the right positions, pass protection breaking down and the timing of the play being off as catalysts for the Colts' league-high turnover total.
So with that in mind, Saturday said he isn't looking to make a change at quarterback right now.
"I think the problem is, from the outside looking in, you want to attribute all those to one guy," Saturday said. "And if I could, that would be an easy position to change and all of a sudden now you think you've made the team — all of a sudden we got no warts. But that's not the case. I feel like Matt has continued to give us the best chance. And unfortunately we keep turning the ball over but it's not just on him, it's on a number of different guys."
But while changing quarterbacks may not fix the Colts' turnover issues, Saturday emphasized that those problems need to be solved over the final four games of the 2022 season.
"It's casual and careless, and we as an offense, we can't be defined by that," Saturday said. "It's killing the football team."
