It’s a story New York football fans will be familiar with.
This one, though, takes place 700 miles to the west.
The Colts don’t lack talent — but watching them play football, many weeks, they seem to lack energy, enthusiasm, life.
The Week 17 blowout loss to the Giants in MetLife all but cemented what the pundits have been saying since the last days of Andrew Luck: the Colts are listless, and their problem is culture.
“There’s no vision,” one anonymous veteran player told The Athletic. “From the top down — from the front office, to the coaches, to the players — no one is ever on the same page, and every year at the end, we’re sitting here losing.”
If the losing wasn’t painful enough — in a season that began with the owner, Jim Irsay, heralding a roster capable of “winning playoff games,” the Colts at 7-9, will miss the postseason for the fourth consecutive year — the saga under center has left too much to be desired.
On some Sundays throughout his second professional season, Anthony Richardson has danced and dazzled like Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes.
On other Sundays, the 22-year-old has been totally confined to the bench — has, even, taken himself out because he was, in his words, “tired.”
It was an infamous decision, an embarrᴀssment for the ages, an encapsulation of everything ugly inside Indianapolis.
And then it got worse.
Head coach Shane Steichen and general manager Chris Ballard benched their presumed franchise quarterback in favor of veteran journeyman Joe Flacco.
But Flacco played sleepy and uninspired football, and the Colts were forced to go back to Richardson just two games later.
Under other circumstances, that could be taken as an auspicious sign.
But as Jay Glazer reported on “Fox NFL Sunday,” Indianapolis had intended to keep the young gun benched for the duration of the season.
Flacco played such abysmal football, though, that the Colts had no choice but to go back to their fourth overall selection in the 2023 NFL Draft.
All that flip-flopping left a poor impression on fans and a worse impression in the locker room.
“They were trying to hold [Richardson] accountable, which is understandable, but then the guy they put in wasn’t the guy either,” one Colts veteran told The Athletic. “So when they went back to [Richardson], at that point it’s like, ‘OK, but what are we doing?’ That really affected the team.”
As former Colt Pat McAfee wrote in an extended tirade on X, “a blind person could see the red flags on this team. Work ethic questions, NEVER happens on good teams.. Preparation commitment questions, NEVER happens on good teams.. Late to meetings, NEVER happens on good teams…
“The franchise QB tapped out of a game.. on 3rd down.. in the red zone.. because he was tired… NEVER HAPPENED in the history of the NFL … Somehow AR thought it was ok to do that. That’s a locker room issue.. that’s a culture issue.. that’s an indicator of a loser atтιтude radiating thru [sic] a building that was built by greats.”
The loser atтιтude is pervasive, and atтιтudes, as New York football fans know well, stretch from bottom to top and top to bottom.
Even the greatest buildings were built brick by brick by brick.
That’s how they fall, too.
