I was happy. I was excited. One possession for each team into last night's game and the Colts had a 7-3 lead with the ball. The offense drove right down the field with throws to running backs and banged home a TD courtesy of a beautiful pass to Jacob Tamme. Rivers and the Chargers bogged down in the red zone and got nothing deep, a win for the Colts. The game was in hand. God, was I wrong. Three hours later I was not mad, just depressed. The Colts were dying in front of me. The "window" is not closed, because the NFL is not the NBA. Teams rise and fall year to year, and just because the Colts might go 10-6 in 2010 does not mean they can't go 13-3 in 2011. However, what the next season holds does not help me. The Colts in 2010 have been worse than a tease. They have turned into a virus that is slowly killing me.
The Colts are one of my teams, and other than the Devils, they have been the most successful. This is probably why what I will write will seem hilariously bitter considering the team is still the favorite to win the AFC South and make the playoffs, again. The Colts had their '12 or more wins each year' streak snapped, at the ludicrous number of 7 (the next highest is four). Peyton Manning is putting up his worst statistical season since 2002, with a QB rating of 91. All that said, the Colts really have been a massive disappointment. Sure, injuries have hurt. Dallas Clark is gone. Joseph Addai has missed longer than anyone hoped. Austin Collie has a lingering concussion. Gary Brackett has missed games. Anthony Gonzalez played six quarters. Bob Sanders has played a three quarters. Still, I expected this team to stay good and stay competitive, and until yesterday, they were.
The Colts kept drawing me in with close explainable, excusable losses. They lost a game where their opponent hit a 59 yarder at the gun to win by three, after the Colts had two fluke turnovers inside the opponents 10 yard line. The Colts lost a game where Michael Vick went all Michael Vick, and they still had a chance to win. The Colts lost a game where they lost the turnover battle by three and still had the ball twenty-five yards away before a tough interception. Those games were close, were defendable. This was not. After the second pick-6 (the one that absolutely should have been called back for an obvious pass interference) the team quit. Reggie Wayne started dropping passes that he usually could catch with his feet. The o-line started sucking ass even more. The run defense wore down, and the pass rush disappeared. For the first time in years, the team quit and were embarrassed, at home. That was the worst home loss in the Manning era, and it felt worse.
Losing a game like the one to New England was tough to deal with, but this loss was different. This is rock bottom (at least what could be considered rock bottom for a team still tied for first place with all winnable games ahead). This is what it is like to be a Lions fan, or a Jaguars fan, or a Browns fan. This was the most depressing loss. I did not need to throw anything, like I did at the end of the Pats game. I did not need to stew on all the fluke plays for hours like I did at the end of the Jaguars game. No, all I needed to do was go into a shell and forget about it.
That game ruined my day, and have really ruined the season. I absolutely do not think the Colts are a team that currently constituted would sniff the conference title game. Not without Addai, or Collie, or Brackett, or Sanders, or Session. However, all those guys may come back, which herein lies the problem. I don't want to be dragged back in, especially when it will probably end with a harrowing loss in Baltimore or Pittsburgh or, God forbid, Foxboro. I want to leave this team, I want to get myself cured of the disease of the 2010 Colts, a team that simply, with the injuries, are not good enough. They might become good enough, they might get those guys back, they might miraculously get Bob Sanders to stay healthy. They might win the Super Bowl, but I don't care anymore. I, just like the Colts, have hit rock bottom.
I will say that the Colts win never make it easy. The years where everything goes right (2005, 2009) always goes the same: some tough event in the end of the year that shakes things up (Tony Dungy's son's suicide in 2005 and the Week-16 pulling of starters at 14-0 in 2009), followed by a loss in the playoffs. The one year that really nothing was going right was 2006. The run defense was absolutely ridiculously bad, giving up 176 yards a game (yes, that is right, 176 yards). Bob Sanders was oft injured. The team had no real third wide receiver and Dwight Freeney was in a two-year malaise. That team ended up beating the first, second and third scoring defenses in the NFL on the way to the Super Bowl. Hey, you never know. That year had the other abhorrently embarrassing performance, a sullen 17-44 loss in Jacksonville, and the team was at rock bottom. No one really thought they were any good heading into the playoffs. It will be the same thing if the Colts enter the playoffs at 10-6 as the AFC 4th seed. The Colts today are at rock bottom. Very often, the eventual Super Bowl Champion hits a rock bottom point during the season, one where everyone around the medias say "This team has No Shot of winning it all". This is that moment, and the Colts might dig themselves out of this. I just might be too sick of them to truly care.
