How many times are sports writers going to have to write this column?
How many times will the Indianapolis Colts enter a game against a good opponent and come up laughably short?
How many times will Andrew Luck find himself down by three or more scores before his infamous turnovers even begin to show up?
How many times will the Colts be an inferior team before change is enacted?
The Colts lost 42-7 to the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday afternoon in what was just one of several embarrassing prime-time outings for Indianapolis this season.
Like they have for the past six weeks, the Colts started slowly on Sunday. Unlike in previous weeks, they never picked up the pace. The Colts offense looked as bad as it has all season, failing to score before quarterback Andrew Luck was pulled in the third quarter.
The defense was just as bad, as the Colts allowed Dallas to march up and down the field with ease. Dallas punted just twice, both on the Cowboys' final drives of the half.
On one hand, this game meant very little for the Colts. Sure, they could talk about playing for seed, but in the fluid AFC, it matters little. The Colts would need New England or Denver to lose both of their final two games in order to have substantial change, and that was unlikely at best. The loss doesn't matter in the big picture, at least in terms of pure wins and losses.
On the other hand, the Colts could have used this game to make a statement. After consecutive unimpressive wins over middling AFC teams, the Colts could have given Dallas a fight, and potentially won, to prove they belong among the NFL's upper echelon.
Instead, the Colts went down without a fight. Or rather, they lay down and surrendered before the the initial kickoff.
Some could point to Andrew Luck's low-production day as a primary cause for the Colts' lack of offense. After all, Luck finished with just 109 passing yards with zero touchdowns and two interceptions.
But Luck actually played a fine game, all things considered.
Luck's first interception came with 17 seconds left in the first half as he tried to get the Colts a late touchdown when they were down 28-0. He tried to force the ball to TE Coby Fleener in the end zone, a poor decision.
But Luck was 12-of-17 for 99 yards prior to that passnot a great stat line, but nothing that merited a 28-0 deficit.
Heck, Luck was down 14-0 before he even dropped back for his first pass.
Pep Hamilton had one of his worst games of the season, opening the game with three straight runs, including shotgun draws on 2nd-and-15 and 3rd-and-14.
Then the Colts went for a fake punt on 4th-and-11 from their own 19-yard line, a pass from Pat McAfee to third-string safety Dewey McDonald. McDonald was open, but he dropped the pass and the Cowboys had a short field for their second touchdown.
Chuck Pagano would cite aggression as a needed element after the game.
But if the Colts wanted to be aggressive, they shouldn't have been running three times to open the game, especially not on 2nd-and-long or 3rd-and-long. Risking a turnover on downs on your own 19 isn't aggression, it's reckless.
Sure, McDonald was open, but a pass that goes 25 yards in the air from your punter to a third-string safety is always a high-risk play, especially deep in your own territory. And the reward would have been, what, a first down on the Indianapolis 35?
While Pagano's aggression is a nice break from his usual overly conservative nature, the combination of three straight runs with a high-risk fake punt was one of the oddest play call selections in recent memory.
But it wasn't just play-calling holding Luck back. Nobody on the Colts could hold on to passes. Dwayne Allen dropped two first-down opportunities, including what could have been a wide-open 75-yard touchdown pass in the second quarter.
Then there was the offensive line, which was playing with three new starters from center to right tackle as the Colts rested a few starters with lingering injuries. The Colts had several big plays wiped out because of holding penalties or illegal shift penalties on the offensive line, not to mention the horrific blocking attempts from the backups-turned-starters.
The Colts finished with just one rushing yard in the game. That's the lowest total ever for the Colts franchise, and the lowest total in the NFL since Dallas rushed for just one yard in December 2007.
Combine that complete lack of support with a defense that allowed Dallas to score touchdowns on six of 10 drives (including the first four), and you get a 42-7 loss.
It was another complete meltdown around Luck, one powered by a combination of a lack of talent (exacerbated by T.Y. Hilton and numerous offensive linemen nursing minor injuries) and poor coaching and preparation.
Sure, this game doesn't mean much in the long run for the Colts, and it's better they lose like this than risk an important starter like Hilton and lose him for the rest of the season or a key postseason game.
But for Colts fans, blowout losses on national television are getting old very quickly. It would be one thing if this was a one-time thing. This was another example of the numerous talent and philosophical issues with the team.
Go back to Pittsburgh, go back to New England, go back to early-game issues against Denver. The Colts have continually been ill prepared and out-executed in alarming fashion by the league's good teams.
It was a reminder that the Colts are not yet Super Bowl contenders, no matter how excited people got over a six-game stretch against bad-to-middling competition.
Sure, they might win a playoff game. It's the NFL playoffs, so just about anything could happen. But the Colts have set themselves up as one of the least likely teams to make a playoff run because they haven't surrounded Luck with the talent needed to win a Super Bowl.
There are issues rotting away at the core of the Indianapolis franchise, and until those get fixed, the same results will continue to play out.
Source: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2307190-colts-collapse-around-andrew-luck-in-another-primetime-blowout
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