Sluggish game in Indianapolis between Colts and Buccaneers

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Indianapolis Colts are tied at 3-3 after one quarter.

The Colts did exactly what they had to do early in the game: complete the short plays consistently. The Bucs defense is playing with some discipline, though they've already picked up two offside penalties, but Lovie Smith allows opposing quarterbacks to march down the field if they can consistently pick up all the short plays. That's hard to do for a full game, though, and gets especially tough once the field gets shorter as they approach the goal-line. That's what happened on the Colts' first, time-consuming drive where they finally settled for a 49-yard field goal after taking seven minutes off the clock.

The Bucs took a different approach, pounding Doug Martin play after play and then hitting Mike Evans and Vincent Jackson for big games in the 10-20 yard range, as they do every game. Jackson had a beautiful toe-tapping sideline catch on third-and-11 to keep the Bucs' first drive going, though they too stalled in the red zone and settled for a field goal.

The Colts are in the red zone now, though, after a couple of big passing plays where they caught the Bucs defense flat-footed. We'll see what happens in the second quarter.