Colts Keep Playoff Hopes Alive with Ugly Win but Still Face Rough Road Ahead

This is the NFL season that just won't die.

For the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday, it meant keeping their AFC South playoff hopes alive, if even by the thinnest of threads.

For the rest of the league, it meant bizarre outcomes. The Pittsburgh Steelers lost to the Baltimore Ravens. The New York Jets beat the New England Patriots. The undefeated Carolina Panthers lost to the Atlanta Falcons, and last year's NFC darlings, the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks, both lost.

Both conferences' playoff pictures are a mess, and the Colts and their part in the AFC South division race is just one more piece to the puzzle.

The Colts had a small chance of making the playoffs last week, and it's gotten even more convoluted with Week 15's result.

Though the Colts won, the Houston Texans also picked up a victory, removing the possibility of the Colts winning the division outright on wins and losses, which would have needed Houston to lose both in Week 15 and 16.

Indianapolis can still win the AFC South, but it'll take quite a bit of help from the football gods, according to Nat Newell of The Indy Star:

Those aren't great odds, to say the least.

But anything can happen in the NFL, and this season has been a testament to that.

Every preseason notion has gone out the window, it seems.

The Colts' high-powered offense has limped and crawled it's way through a disappointing season, as has the Green Bay Packers', to a lesser extent. The Carolina Panthers were the league's last undefeated team, while the New England Patriots went from Super Bowl favorite to losing three out of the last five. The AFC's most dangerous team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, lost a must-win to the 4-10 Baltimore Ravens on Sunday and may miss the playoffs.

Would it really be all that surprising if the Colts managed to sneak into the playoffs, despite the odds?

If you watched the Colts and Texans both play on Sunday, your answer to that question might be very different than if you hadn't.

The Texans routed the Tennessee Titans 34-6, their sixth win in the last eight games, while Indianapolis put together another game that could only be described as, well, ugly.

What else do you call a game that included a safety, a missed extra point, three (almost four) backup quarterbacks, 15 penalties, and seven drives that gained less than 10 yards?

Obviously the Dolphins, a now 5-10 team who may or may not have quit on interim head coach Dan Campbell at this point, contributed to that ugliness. But the Colts have found themselves in these kinds of games far too often this year.

The common factors in those performances?

A listless offense. An undisciplined team. An inconsistent defense. A stuffed run game. Poor play-calling.

All of those things came into play for Indianapolis on Sunday. Again.

The offense continued to suffer from poor quarterback play, as a beat-up Matt Hasselbeck and a lost Charlie Whitehurst piloted the Colts to just 5.0 yards per offensive play, including 5.4 yards per dropback. The only good part of the offense was Frank Gore, who rumbled his way to 72 yards and two touchdowns in the first half. But then he ran nine times for 13 yards in the second half, a reminder of how bad the Colts run game can be.

Play-calling falls into that category, of course.

With Hasselbeck and Whitehurst at quarterback over the last five weeks, the Colts have fallen into very predictable, largely unsuccessful play-calling. Feeling pressured to take the burden off of their quarterbacks, the offense has devolved to heavy-personnel running plays and quick passes. You can understand why offensive coodinator Rob Chudzinski has gone the direction he has, but the lack of creativity and versatility has killed the offense.

It's hard to compare him to his predecessor, Pep Hamilton, given the different quarterbacks available to both coordinators. But like Hamilton, Chudzinski has done little to inspire any sort of confidence this season.

The defense was inconsistent, to be sure, but it's had far worse games. Against a patchwork offensive line, the Colts pass rush found a few cracks, enough to get to Ryan Tannehill for sacks six times, including on the game-winning play.

But even then, it felt a bit hollow: The Colts only got that game-ending sack because Miami messed up the snap count. The Dolphins center snapped the ball early and was the only offensive lineman to move at the snap, giving the Colts a free run at Tannehill.

Still, no matter how ugly the game may have been, it goes in the record book as a win, and the Colts are alive for one more week.

But how much does this win actually mean?

If the Colts' improbable playoff scenario doesn't all pan out next week, it'll just mean the Colts fell a few more spots in the draft—and nothing more.