Most Colts, Lions Starters Won't Play Friday, Eason to Start

The Indianapolis Colts are on the eve of their final preseason matchup in 2021 but you shouldn't expect to see much from their starters on Friday against the Detroit Lions.

"I talked to Coach (Dan) Campbell, they’re not playing their starters so we kind of reevaluated," Colts head coach Frank Reich told reporters on Wednesday. "We’re not going to end up playing our starters, most of our starters aren’t going to play.

“Yeah, I was on the fence anyways," Reich continued. "I was prepared to play the guys a little bit, not much, but just a little final tune-up. When I found out they (Detroit) weren’t playing theirs, that kind of made the decision easy.”

The NFL reorganized the yearly schedule starting in 2021 to cut out one preseason game — from four games to three — and add one to the regular season — from 16 games to 17.

Previously, the third preseason game would've been a dress rehearsal of sorts for the regular season where many starters would play about a half before hitting the sideline for the second half, and then sitting out all of the fourth game. Teams are now having to adjust how they approach the preseason, which is likely to turn the third game into a contest full of depth players like the fourth game used to be.

With that being the case, Reich announced that current backup quarterback Jacob Eason will start Friday's finale against the Lions. Starting quarterback Carson Wentz recently returned to the practice field after a procedure on his foot caused him to miss most of training camp. He put in three consecutive days of heavy 7-on-7 work this week but is not yet ready to play in a game.

“Yeah, Jacob’s going to start on Friday," Reich said. "So, Jacob will start and we’ll just kind of rotate the quarterbacks kind of like we’ve been doing but we’ll just go with the flow of the game.”