Some people are fans of the Indianapolis Colts. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Indianapolis Colts. This 2021 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Indianapolis Colts.
Your 2020 record: 11-5, including handing the Jaguars their first and only win of the season. This was a loaded Colts team that let a 58-year-old Philip Rivers take the wheel. Let’s see how that played out:
Ah yes, right. This man has six dozen children, so he’s used to getting trampled. But otherwise, this was a downright respectable season for a team I NEVER wish respectability upon. That Jags loss was the only time the Colts lost to a sub-.500 team. And the Colts’ final loss of the season came at the hands of a Buffalo team that would go on to make the AFC title game. Indianapolis could have won that game. In fact, if you looked at the box score, you might have assumed they did. They nearly doubled Buffalo’s time of possession. They put up over 450 yards of offense and never turned the ball over once. No team, in history, has ever lost a playoff game doing that.
The Colts did. And do you know why? Because they’re fucking stupid.
That’s a fourth-and-goal from the 4 to take a 17-7 lead going into halftime. As always, I will never shit on a team for going for it when it matters. But I will very much shit on them when they call a fucking end zone fade when they do. We’ve been through this before. Only a quarter of end zone fade route attempts succeed. Most of the NFL has caught onto this fact. Not these haymunchers. Look at Philip Rivers drop all the way back to the fucking 18 to throw this ball another seven yards into the end zone. All the Colts needed was four yards. They tried to get 25 instead. Dumbest shit I’ve ever had to endure.
Did the Bills immediately drive down the field for a touchdown after this, giving them a lead they’d never relinquish? Did the Colts try to win the game in the final two minutes by executing a 13-play drive that resulted in a whopping 39 yards of offense? I never curse and tell.
Your coach: Frank Reich, who long ago mastered the art of fucking up otherwise bold play calls. Reich got COVID-19 this summer, presumably from accidentally smelling his new quarterback.
Do they have a Guy on the coaching staff? They do, and it’s legendary Jets center (no sarcasm) Kevin Mawae. I really wish Kevin Mawae would hang out with a cool team for once.
Your quarterback: Rivers retired to sell magic copper bands to his fellow ultra-Catholics. But don’t worry, The Colts found the PERFECT replacement for him. Say hello to the worst quarterback, and perhaps the worst person, in football.
“Every great quarterback wants to be coached and they want to be coached hard and by the best, and it doesn’t seem like [Wentz] wants that,” one source said. “It’s kind of like whoever’s coaching him is working for him. But it can’t be that way.”
That’s former MVP candidate Carson Wentz, whose own linemen demanded he be benched a season ago. He disregards play calls. He gives head coaches the silent treatment. He refuses to get vaccinated. He gets injured if you ask him what time it is. He’s injured right now, in fact!
As of now, the Colts remain optimistic that Wentz will be able to play in Week 1, but Wentz's career has been all about misplaced optimism from the very beginning now, hasn't it?
I can’t believe that Howie Roseman could deal away a franchise quarterback for two draft picks and get the better end of the deal, but here we are. If Wentz plays 75 percent of the snaps at QB this season (HAHAHAHAHAHA), the Colts will lose their 2022 first-rounder to the Eagles in addition to the third-rounder they already gave up. If he doesn’t, that first rounder reverts to a second-rounder. Either way, the Colts fucking lose. There’s no better place for Wentz to resuscitate his sorry-ass career than with this team and with this coach, and yet it won’t matter. Colts fans are all dumber than a post, and even they’re beginning to realize this. This team just fucked itself. There’s less risk eating indoors with Carson Wentz than there is trading for him.
By the way, there’s a little hater’s bonus to Wentz working for Jim Irsay now, because there’s nothing that Jim Irsay loves more than diagnosing his quarterbacks from afar. The man is no stranger to medication, after all. Come November, Wentz will be sidelined with a mysterious liver ailment and Dr. Irsay will prescribe him two hefty doses of Clapton to take the pain away.
What’s new that sucks: Great news! Quenton Nelson is hurt!
Even though the Colts can’t stop giving their own quarterbacks pancreatic typhoid, they’ve been able to thrive in recent years thanks to having the best offensive line in football. They never actually WIN this division anymore, but they usually have enough meatboys up front to stay out of the dungeon.
But now Nelson has the exact same foot injury that Wentz has. Almost as if Carson Wentz spreads bad things around any team he joins. FANCY THAT. Like Wentz, the Colts hope Nelson will be cleared by Week 1, but that doesn't mean you and I have to maintain similar hopes.
It gets worse. Ryan Kelly also hurt himself in camp and left tackle mainstay Anthony Castonzo just retired. The latter will be replaced by Eric Fisher, who tore his Achilles THIS year. Meanwhile, Urban Meyer is in the AFC South now and will have little compunction about hiring the ghost of Aaron Hernandez to strangle the rest of this team to death right out on the field. Carson Wentz was never worth protecting, but surely Jacob Eason deserves some tiny bit of mercy.
Darius Leonard got a fat raise. Xavier Rhodes redeemed himself a season ago but the downward spiral awaits.
What has always sucked: Jim Irsay isn’t gonna die until he’s older than the fucking moon. Until that blessed moment, he’s still gonna be owning this team and spending his downtime as a dimestore Paul Allen, collecting new rock and roll artifacts to tuck under his pillow at night.
I can pretend that other NFL owners are secretly unhappy people, but they aren’t. Dan Snyder cackles himself to sleep every night while resting atop a pile of dead cheerleaders. Robert Kraft’s life is an endless parade of after-dinner cocktails and casino blowjobs. Jerry Jones has more fun every day than most college students have in four full years. These are shitty people, but they don’t strike me as terribly sad ones. Jim Irsay, by contrast, appears to be alone ALL THE TIME. He spends every day hanging out with his barbell, or with a certified Neil Peart touring kit he bought at Sotheby’s, or with a closet full of locally sourced opioids. Every smile of his is a cry for help. He’s a human boat parade: a miserable, ruddy, shitfaced rich guy with goatee energy. I’d rather live in a fucking canoe than spend one second inside his skin.
As for the Colts, they’re yet one more empty tchotchke that’ll fail to make the little boy owning them happy. Every good player here goes to waste. Andrew Luck was a god in this league for six years and now it’s as if he never even existed. Kwity Paye will be a star and have two playoff wins to show for it by the time his career is over. The most memorable play for the Colts this decade was the Griff Whalen fake punt. Everything good here is rendered disposable in an instant.
Gregg Doyel is a melodramatic idiot. Pat McAfee is always wearing a black tank top and sweating for some reason. I kinda wish the Capitol rioters had gotten to Mike Pence.
Ratto says: The Colts will raise a banner to each of Peyton Manning's endorsement deals as he slowly begins the corporate war of low-grade companies with massive advertising budgets against reigning champion Shaquille O'Neal. BEST NAME TO HEAR ON TV: Jake Eldrenkamp.
What might not suck: Jonathan Taylor rules and I fear playing fantasy against him. Too scary. Makes me shit liquid.
HEAR IT FROM COLTS FANS!
Laura:
Only the Indianapolis Colts could watch the film of 2020 Carson Wentz and insist on spending a potential first round draft pick to land that jackpot of suck.
Nicholas:
Ballard: We need a rock solid handoff machine that can consistently hit 5-15 yard routes. We knew Rivers didn't have the deep ball as much, but I took the risk thinking he could at least hit the mid range. He didn't that's on me, and I'll do better this offseason.Irsay, doing lines of Al Davis: WOO LAZERFACE BALL FAR, WHO DO THATGhost of Grigson: caAArrRRSssSSooNNNNnn....Ballard: Wait, what no
David:
After a year of truly lifeless quarterbacking by an over-the-hill redass, they decided "Yeah, we gotta double down on that!" and traded for an even more over-the-hill, even bigger redass.
Nick:
A year in this mayo dump of a city was enough for Marmalard.
Robin:
Have you seen the vaccination rate among the team?
Michael:
Of course the year we finally seem to have everything we need to be competitive our team decides the one thing that they won't put in their bodies is the vaccine.
Kyle:
These fucking idiots aren't vaccinated. They'd rather cling to life on a ventilator, forfeit six games this season because of COVID-19 protocol, and still go 10-7 to squeak into the playoffs just in time for Carson Wentz to thrown nine interceptions to the fucking Titans or something. The worst part is I'm still going to cheer for them, because I'm that fucking indoctrinated.
But at least I'm vaccinated. Fuck these guys, fuck me, and fuck getting your vaccine info from Facebook.
Bryan:
Matt Stafford looked at our team/city and concluded, rightly, that we were a downgrade over Detroit.
Michael:
Listen, let’s say I steal an apple to feed my family. Am I a bad person? Yes, but not because of the theft. It’s because I stole just one goddamn apple to feed my whole family.
That’s what happened when the Colts were brought to my city in 1983.
Jon:
Fuck Carson Wentz, in case that wasn't clear enough. He's like if Kirk Cousins were less likeable and a worse QB.
Brad:
Our former generational QB had to invent new bones to get away from an O-line that made defensive coordinators feel like they had all six Infinity Stones every single play.
Max:
Only the Colts could have two generational quarterbacks and get a grand total of two Super Bowl out of them.
Most of these people still worship Jeff Saturday as the only useful piece of a Colts offensive line that regularly saw Peyton Manning have to throw away the ball or dump a pass off to Edgerrin James for two yards. He scored a touchdown and was then worshipped on Bob & Tom, which I haven't listened to since 2009 but has probably become a right-wing commentary outlet.
In 2013, I was invited to tea at Meg and Jim Irsay's house (this was pre-divorce). She introduced me to two of her friends, and after saying my name said "...He's a Christian." At no point did we ever discuss my religious beliefs, nor was it a relevant or accurate descriptor for me. The rest of the experience was unremarkable, but I never went back to Meg's for tea.
Fuck the Mayflower truck with the fist of a thousand Pences, and double-fuck "My Man Mitch" Daniels too. Indiana is a flyover state with a race track and might as well be renamed North Kentucky.
Peter:
We're determined imbeciles. Dedicated buffoons. Self-sabotage wunderkinds. Indiana is such an ignorant backwater that didn't even know football existed until Peyton Manning invented it whole cloth in 1998, and that level of self delusion fuels us ever onward. Ballard/Reich are sold as great cerebral leaders of men and commanders of ultimate respect, except for when it comes to the bare level leadership example required to get greater than half our roster to vax up. These "high character" superstars, turn into terrified children once they encounter their first shot that's not steroids/opiates/cortisone.
The bar for being the "smart" team in this embarrassment of a division is so goddamn low its subterranean, yet we've dug in deeper than a limestone quarry to lead the pack in antivax idiocy, outpacing Florida, Tennessee, and Texas.The last person with any brain to darken Lucas Oil Stadium's door was Andrew Luck, and those precious few brain cells are why he fled the goddamn country to get as far away as possible from corn-fed hell. He left with a smile on his face and no regrets because he finally realized he was the only sentient being in the goddamn state and could do no harm by leaving; everyone else was already dead. At least we’ve replaced him with an equivalent pile of injuries and blown potential. But this one is too stupid to quit so at least there's that. Fuck Ryan Grigson with a Trent Richarson fathead. Fuck Jim Irsay with Elton John's piano. And fuck me for still planning to watch every game this season.
Tim:
In 2019 I was working in New Orleans and very excited to go see Colts/Saints for MNF. I hadn't been home to Indianapolis in a year.
Monday, around 1pm, one of my coworkers called me outside our building for a "medical emergency". It was two 300+ lb. Colts fans in full regalia beating the shit out of each other on Canal St. One still had his jersey tucked in. I broke up the fight to the delight of several Saints fans around me. The cause was, allegedly, "he tode that woman over there that I was a gay"
One of our core switches blew and I missed the game fixing it. All well and good as we lost 34-7.
Go Colts.
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