Doyel: Colts play like this and they're proud?
This should be youth soccer, you know that? Because if this were youth soccer, if the Indianapolis Colts were a bunch of 5-year-olds chasing bugs and dripping snot all over the field, you could pat them on the head after this 27-21 loss to New Orleans and give them a big bag of orange wedges. Pizza party at coach Pagano’s house!
You fought hard, guys. You didn’t quit.
Never mind that you didn’t get started.
Again.
What is it with the Colts, anyway?
They play like this, and they’re proud. Do you understand me? The Colts were down 27-0 on Sunday to the Saints, and they’re proud of the overall result.
“It shows the character of this team,” linebacker D’Qwell Jackson was telling me, “to come back like we did. We don’t quit.”
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Only in this locker room, where the Colts are accustomed to being blown out by the Patriots, Steelers and Cowboys of the world, can a 27-0 deficit at home to the sub-.500 New Orleans Saints lead to character development.
“Challenged the guys at halftime,” coach Chuck Pagano said. “It would be real easy to make excuses and say, ‘Well, it’s because of this, that, hangover.’ That’s all bullcrap. That’s on us.”
I presume he was referring to the emotional hangover of playing archrival New England last week. But I digress. Here’s more Pagano, and please, don’t be eating right now. You might spit up. Consider yourself warned.
“I’m damn proud of the way they responded at halftime and came out and played,” Pagano said. “We came up short, but they fought their butts off.”
Bring your swimsuits to the pizza party, guys – last one in’s a rotten egg! Maybe T.Y. Hilton can do that somersault into the pool, the same one he did into the end zone Sunday to cut the deficit to 27-7!
There are other issues for this team, not just the slow starts. Most of the old guys (Andre Johnson, Trent Cole, Todd Herremans) are too old and not helping. The most important young guy (first-round pick Phillip Dorsett) is too young and not ready. Quarterback Andrew Luck has regressed. Maybe he’s injured and not telling us. Maybe he’s simply not the player he was. Maybe those are the only two choices.
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But the bad starts keep happening. The Colts sure do stink when the game begins – but my goodness do they refuse to quit.
Even if America quit on the Colts.
Oh, maybe you didn’t know what was happening elsewhere: The Colts were so bad Sunday, so unwatchable, that Fox got tired of foisting this nationally televised blowout on the rest of America and switched games in most markets.
To 2-4 Washington versus 2-3 Tampa Bay.
Think about that for a minute.
The Colts just keep doing this. Season opener at Buffalo, amid all the Super Bowl talk, the Colts rolled over and played dead. And when they rolled over, they landed on a whoopee cushion.
Phbhbhbhbht …. 24-0. That was the score late in the third quarter. But take heart! The Colts didn’t lose 24-0. They wiped the snot from their nose and made it 27-14.
Following week, home opener against the New York Jets. The Colts wait until the fourth quarter to stop chasing that damn dragonfly and score their first points. They lose 20-7.
Following week, the victory at Tennessee. Remember? The score was 35-33, the locker room was elated, Pagano was in tears. They had been down 27-14 midway through the fourth quarter. They had given up 27 straight points to the Titans (season record: 1-5) before deciding to stop making mud pies and start playing professional football.
Which brings us to Sunday, and that 27-0 egg the Colts were laying in the third quarter against the 2-4 Saints. Luck didn’t complete a pass until the second quarter. The Colts didn’t cross midfield until the final minute of the half. A few plays later Luck completed one of his only passes of the half, this one to Saints cornerback Kyle Wilson. An interception, you call that.
The Colts didn’t score until there were less than 4 minutes left in the third quarter, and even then it required the Saints defender covering Hilton to fall down, allowing Hilton to score an 87-yard touchdown before his silly flip into the end zone.
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But the Colts did score, and they did score again, another long TD pass from Luck to Hilton. And they did score again late in the fourth quarter, a third TD pass for Luck, this one to Donte Moncrief, and now the score was 27-21 and the Colts were trying an onside kick and they were almost getting it and then the game was over, and it was 27-21.
And 27-21 doesn’t look so bad, right?
D’Qwell Jackson, a tough veteran who has been Coltified into thinking what happened on Sunday was acceptable, says this game “shows the character of this team. … We don’t quit.”
Terrific. Neither does my lawn mower.
Luck, playing the worst football of his career, was saying something almost as mystifying:
“We’ve got a darn good football team,” he said, and maybe they’re not paying attention at the Colts complex. Maybe they don’t realize that, as a team, they are 3-0 against the AFC South and a mostly uncompetitive 0-4 against everyone else.
Jackson was right about something, though. The Colts did not quit. For most of three quarters, the defense didn’t hit anybody. Defensive backs got run over at the goal line. Jackson and Jerrell Freeman were somewhere else while Saints running back Mark Ingram was running for 143 yards on 14 carries, most of them through gaping holes where most teams have “linebackers.”
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And then it changed. I mean, like that. Everything changed. On offense the receivers started getting open and Luck started making smart decisions and the offensive line stopped holding – just kidding; Anthony Castonzo kept holding – and the defense started making tackles. By game’s end, the Colts were playing like a team that can get to the playoffs.
Then again …
Whoever wins its NFL division – even the AFC South – is invited to the pizza party, I mean, to the playoffs. It’s one of those rules, like the one in youth soccer that says everyone deserves a trophy.
But the NFL isn’t youth soccer.
Not everyone deserves a trophy.
Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel
