This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning.
Just a few weeks ago it wasn’t crazy to suggest that the Indianapolis Colts were serious Super Bowl contenders. They looked so good in beating the Patriots and Cardinals in back-to-back weeks, they had the best running back in the league who could seemingly take it to the house any time he touched the ball, and their defense had studs all over the place.
Today, however, they are packing up their lockers and calling it a year. There will be no playoff games for Frank Reich’s team this year. Instead, they will only have more time to think about their stunning collapse which ended Sunday with one of the worst losses in NFL history.
There’s no hyperbole in that statement, either. The Colts went down to Jacksonville on Sunday needing a win over the 2-14 Jaguars to clinch a playoff berth. The Jaguars had been the laughingstock of the league all year. They were playing with an interim coach, and had a stadium full of fans dressed as clowns in protest of the team’s GM.
Oh, and last week they gave up a 50-burger to the Patriots.
Everything pointed to an easy win for the Colts. It was the no-brainers of no-brainers of Week 18. Heck, the Colts were 15.5 favorites going into the game. That’s a lot of points!
Then the Colts went out there and laid an absolute, stinky egg. The 26-11 loss is one that is going to sting for quite some time. And it should. It wasn’t even as close as that bad score would make it seem, either. It was the definition of bad and it’s going to be the type of painful memory that will ruin nice days during the offseason.
How in the world does that Colts team that had all of the pieces necessary for a deep playoff run lose that game? How do they come out so flat against one of the worst franchises in sports? How do they lose to the freaking Jaguars in a must-win game in Week 18?
I’ve been watching the Colts’ in-season Hard Knocks, which makes this loss even more unbelievable. If you have watched it, too, then you’ve seen how good this team is at preparing for games and you’ve seen how good they are of being their for each other. The truly have felt like a team that has the necessary it to be special.
You also have probably heard Reich saying that his QB, Carson Wentz, would make some plays at big moments down the stretch that would lift their team to big wins. The opposite of that happened yesterday, as Wentz looked like the mediocre QB that the Eagles were very happy to part ways with.
The Colts’ season is now over, thanks a little bit to the Jaguars but thanks mostly because to their own inability to play like champions when that was asked of them. The really didn’t even need to play like champions yesterday. They just needed to play like a 3-win team and they would have gotten the victory.
That loss to a bad Jaguars team is the type of loss that can hang around a franchise for a long, long time. And if it does, they will have nobody to blame but themselves.
Because man, that was an embarrassing loss.
Quick hits: Derek Carr admits Chargers timeout changed things… Tom Brady stayed in to get Gronk $1 million… New Tom Brady meme… And more.
– The ending to the Chargers-Raiders game last night was absolutely bananas and a mind-boggling timeout by the Chargers likely cost them their season.
– Tom Brady refused to come out of yesterday’s win until he could help Rob Gronkowski make an extra million bucks.
– Speaking of Brady, there is a funny new meme of the QB thanks to his reaction to something on the sidelines yesterday.
– Here are my NFL Week 18 Awards, which look back at the good, the bad, and the hilarious from Sunday’s games.
– Klay Thompson made his long-awaited return to the Warriors last night and it was all very awesome.
[mm-video type=video id=01fs1b3ps3bmhybpjmxe playlist_id=01f09p3bf720d8rg02 player_id=none image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01fs1b3ps3bmhybpjmxe/01fs1b3ps3bmhybpjmxe-4e89f7a1b7fd8e67760c83b0480e6e38.jpg]
[listicle id=1385259]