The Humanity of Losers: Recapping the 2011 Indianapolis Colts

The Indianapolis Colts walked into the Superdome on Sunday night. Why they did that is anyone’s guess.

They had no intention of giving the New Orleans Saints a game, as evidenced by the 62-7 final score—a game like that doesn’t require a box score as much as a police report.

The Colts showing up for that game was on par with a 90-pound dude walking through a dimly-lit alley at two in the morning, and it ended in about the same way.

What’s particularly disgusting about the way the Colts have seemingly folded up their tents on 2011 is that they’re wonderfully incented to do so.

If the Colts go 0-16, they’ll almost certainly have first crack at the 2011 draft. That means dibs on prospect wunderkind Andrew Luck. But I’m telling you something you already know.

The NFL famously implemented flex scheduling to avoid putting games like this on national television. Unfortunately, current league rules prohibit that practice before Week 10.

Teams usually don’t swing from Super Bowl contender to the scrap heap in a single offseason. The Colts have, and we can’t blame all of this on Peyton Manning.

Manning’s injury isn’t as much to blame for the Colts’ collapse as much as the organization’s reaction to it.

Publicly, Manning was expected to miss a game or two as the season drew near (whether the Colts knew otherwise is another matter), which made the search for a legitimate starting alternative pointless.

Indy did manage to lure Kerry Collins out of his pickup truck for $4 million this season, a signing that had the potential to blow up in the team’s faces if Collins was to be counted on for extended action. He was, and it did.

So Collins went out, and left holding the bag was Curtis Painter, who seemed better equipped to be the next Dutch Boy than the next Colts quarterback. It’s not his fault—playing backup to Peyton Manning means not playing, and so the call for Painter to play seems almost unfair. But what the Colts did next was particularly telling.

They did nothing.

The Colts sat on 16 and let the dealer flip away. They didn’t make any additional acquisitions. They didn’t try to stop the bleeding. They did nothing, short of hanging a metaphorical sign on the front door of Lucas Oil Stadium that read “GONE FISHIN’.” Fishing for Pac-12 quarterbacks, we all can presume.

That attitude from management trickles down to the personnel of a football team. Any Bengals fan can tell you that. Anyone working in a large, directionless corporation can tell you that.

Failure breeds failure, and that crop is ready for harvest in central Indiana.

Last week, the Oakland Raiders found themselves in a similar situation, and they did something. Sure, acquiring Carson Palmer came at exorbitant cost, and it hasn’t produced the short-term gains for which the team was hoping.

But they tried to improve their team as the Colts put their hands in their pockets and continued counting the shopping days until Christmas.

For all the scorn heaped upon Tim Tebow, at least the guy delivers consistent effort in the face of scathing criticism. We could debate all day where that animosity brews, from his religion, his ridiculous physique or the fact that he just sucks at football.

But Tebow’s transcendent feature is that despite everyone’s opinion regarding his future as an NFL quarterback, he is not resigned to his fate. He tried, he played, and somehow his team came out on the winning end Sunday.

This year’s Colts could heed that same lesson.