Colts Organization Gets the Wrecking Ball After NFL's Black Monday

The most notable casualty of Black Monday wasn't a head coach, but essentially an entire front office.

Most of us expected Raheem Morris to get the nod to clean out his office. The youngest head coach in the NFL was criticized for being too close to his players, and that was before he wrapped up his third season on the Buccaneers' headset with a 10-game losing streak. One could suspect that Morris' office was already cleaned out before the season actually ended; if Tampa Bay gets blown out by Carolina and Jacksonville, Morris was probably pissing most of his day away on Tumblr anyway.

It was also no surprise that former Giants defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo was dismissed from his first-ever head coaching job in St. Louis. The Rams had to battle with a suddenly-competitive division, an unhealthy Sam Bradford and an apathetic fan base. Aside from the team's stunning Week 8 defeat of New Orleans, there was very little to cheer about in Spags' three-year stint in Mound City.

But the stunner from the NFL's unofficial day of purging was the release of the Indianapolis Colts' front office duo, vice chairman Bill Polian and general manager Chris Polian, who were fired yesterday by owner Jim Irsay. After perenially destroying the AFC South every season, the team and its injured star quarterback went 2-14 this season. While Peyton Manning stood on the sideline all season, the rest of the team seemed lifeless and unprepared to compete for the first half of the season.

As hands-on owners go in the NFL, Irsay is one of the lower-key figures in the league. He doesn't splash his money around like Daniel Snyder might and he doesn't have the headline-stealing bravado like Jerry Jones that oozes out like a busted oil derrick in north Texas. But Irsay did quietly build a team in central Indiana that, until this season at least, competed for Super Bowl bids every year. Bill and Chris, widely considered part of the an elite NFL front office, got a lot of credit for that.

But the Polians' departure signals to the team (and the league) that the Colts are tearing down and starting over. According to ESPN's Mike Sando, Indianapolis had the eighth-oldest offensive unit in the league heading into the season, which presumably included their 35-year-old future Hall-of-Famer (who, incidentally, is six months older than Raheem Morris).

Like every other Colt on the roster, Manning's future in Indianapolis is officially up in the air. Peyton's plight is doubly enthralling since the Colts now have the first overall selection in the upcoming draft, arguably the greatest consolation prize for any professional team that got its ass kicked all season. It seems almost obvious that Irsay would be content drafting Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck, an NFL-ready phenom and every pro scout's wet dream. That move would come straight off the Colts' 1999 blueprint, when the team took Peyton No. 1 overall and proceeded to build the team around him.

Of course, the problem with rebuilding is that the second incarnation isn't guaranteed to resemble the first. There's no guarantee that Luck will pan out as the can't-miss prospect that he's touted to be. But other elements here work in the team's favor.

First of all, the team can't do any worse, so why wouldn't the ownership cut some older players (with higher salaries) and field a younger team while expectations are low. Those younger players will eventually mature, bond, and create the nucleus of the next generation of Colts football.

Whether that strategy can be executed with Peyton Manning's new contract remains to be seen. Since that sum would be considerably more than the Colts would have to pay for Luck, thanks to the league's revised rookie wage scale, Irsay surely is investigating that option.

The irony here is that one miserable season made all of this possible. Football fans in the midwest can tolerate a losing season (or if you're a Bengals fan, 20 or so) for the prospect of a winning team down the road. By performing so poorly this season, the Colts have not only re-aligned fan expectations toward a rebuilding period, but also delivered the capital in high draft picks to do so.

But Morris' tenure in Tampa Bay reminds us of what can happen when the proverbial "girl that brung ya" goes through a period of underperformance, and the question of whether or not one can do better with another guy has to be asked. Jim Irsay has apparently asked himself that question, and his answer could not have been more clear.