[NFL Preview] The 2015 Indianapolis Colts and the Perception of Reality

The Indianapolis Colts have been a team that has never had much of an identity: sure, for a long time they were Peyton’s team — an offensive juggernaut filled with do-good skill players like Dallas Clark who would dissect you to death until they didn’t: a decent push up front and a hand in the face of Peyton (often by the defensive schemes of a San Diego, or a Baltimore, or, more often than not, a New England) would lead to surefire destruction and the loss of purpose — the gameplan would be thrown out the window & there would be nothing to hang one’s hat on; the tenacity of a home field advantage, a blue-collar work ethic identity that seemed to emanate from other Midwestern football teams.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the Colts often seem cobbled together: they strike lightning in a bottle twice with the first picks of the 1998 and 2012 draft, snagging two blue-chip franchise quarterbacks, and then attempting to build around these players — a strange concept in football, as all of the positions are so carefully carved out and operate both in tandem with others, but also entirely independent of others: the notion that one can build around a quarterback is a strange one, being that a quarterback is just one player on one side of the ball: a frustration that many Colts fans have had for decades (please fix our defense, please please fix our defense) that despite all champions at all levels of football have been beloved for their prowess on the more gritty side of the ball, despite having a defensive minded coach who came up with the Ravens, we’ve spent off-season after off-season after off-season drafting pass catching tight-ends, signing wide receivers, and trading away for running backs (Trent Richardson, you broke my roll tide heart).

This off-season has been a busy one for the Colts, in that they have doubled-down on offensive firepower, with the signing of Frank Gore and Andre Johnson, and picked up stupid-fast wide receiver Phillip Dorsett in the first round of this year’s draft. They also added some help on the defensive side of the ball, namely Trent Cole, who escapes Chip Kelly’s defense means nothing wasteland into something “different,” if by “different” you mean very much the same but slightly less cultish. But let’s be real, no one cares about Trent Cole. Instead, we are rightfully focused on the fact that despite the loss of the most beloved Colt of all time amongst people who didn’t become Broncos fans when Peyton skipped town, we went ahead and added three former Miami Hurricane players to our offense, bringing our grand total to four (and one is a basketball player who never played football! It’s all about The U!) and T.Y. Hilton who went to Florida International, probably because Florida International is actually in Miami instead of Coconut Grove, and my friend Jason says that Coconut Grove doesn’t have very many good clubs. Plus, the temptation of playing in the Sun Belt Conference is obviously way too good to pass up.

And so you think all of these Miami signings might be a way to give a milquetoast team with really sharp uniforms that haven’t changed since 2004 when they blamed manufacturing errors for mistakenly lightening the original blue and thus darkening the primary color back to royal blue a semblance of that South Beach Swagger™ that existed in the 80s, perhaps you’re right: it’s hard to picture a team with less swag than Indianapolis — what with our annoying nerd dad quarterback legend being replaced by his equally terrifying and amazing nerd son who rebelled by growing a beard and having a favorite Bundesliga team. If you get a concussion (can you say the word concussion in a piece about the NFL? Is Roger Goodell going to knock down my door talking about protecting the shield?) you can kind of pretend that the horseshoe helmet looks like the Hurricanes’ “U” — that you can convince the good, kind-hearted folks of Terre Haute and Muncie that grew up on Boilermaker and Fighting Irish football, that the acquirement of skill players from South Florida will not only be good for our points per game, but also the global brand recognition of Indianapolis Colts Football: that we can’t out-class the Packers, can’t out-bravado the Bears, can’t out-struggle the Lions, so we might as well have our team resemble a freshman from Bal Harbour’s fantasy football team who is trying to win the Hecht Residential College cash pool this year.

This, of course, is nonsense: as of the 2015 NFL season, UM has 53 players on NFL rosters, so if you averaged this whole thing out, each NFL team has exactly 1.65 attendees of the U on their team (one would assume that Matt Bosher counts as 0.65). It is the norm, not the model. The Colts obviously aren’t trying to emulate Miami’s success, either, because despite having the most players active in the NFL at this time, Miami’s biggest win since Frank Gore matriculated was in the 2006 MPC Computers Bowl. One would assume that if you were trying to build an identity that differentiates one’s self from the other 31 franchises, you would draft exclusively sign players from the state in which you reside (I see you, three Ball State Cardinals), or unveil all-white uniforms or become the first professional sports team to be run by sisters.

Instead, the team loads up on playmakers, not because they’re value pick-ups, not because they all have an excellent small liberal arts school education, not because of swagger, but because of the fantasy: that on paper this should work beautifully — these are big names with gaudy statistics that people remember. They have flashes of brilliance at any given moment and are recognizable by fans who tune into NFL Red Zone, but don’t always get open on 2nd and 8, leaving us in third and long. This, of course, gives me extreme pause as a lifelong Colts fan who knows that we are one Andrew Luck ACL tear away from the Craig Erickson/Paul Justin/Jim Harbaugh/Don Majkowski QB controversy of my youth (note to self, remember to look up where Craig Erickson went to college), thus rendering every single player on the team completely inept — looking at you, every player on the team that packed it in and absolutely destroyed the frail beautiful Midwestern psyche of Curtis Painter in 2011.

This is all to say that I recently picked up a copy of Madden 16, mostly because I was excited to play as the Colts: a team with an above average quarterback and a number of trust-worthy weapons to throw to — our new based god speedster Dorsett (who when asked to predict his rookie ratings, confidently stated 95: the swagger is back) going on fly routes and absolutely torching any DB not worth a damn. You can throw it up to Andre Johnson, the “playmaker,” and he will catch it. Frank Gore gets hit in the back field and falls forward: the first time this has happened with a Colts video game running back since, well, Albert Bentley in Tecmo Super Bowl. The Colts, in a sense, are the perfect Madden team for people like me: I’m not particularly good at the game, although I have a decent understanding of both offensive and defensive playcalling and rely on that, rather than trying to make circus catches or hit the spin button at the opportune time. No one who plays Madden casually has any fucking clue what they’re doing on defense (and if you’re one of those people that claims to not use the defensive end to try to get sacks and instead controls a safety, you’re obviously a bigger liar than our “sober” owner), so who cares that Erik Walden is undersized, or that Jerrell Freeman is in decline, or that we’re viewing Dwight Lowery as an upgrade at Free Safety.

This allows you to talk yourself into the idea that you’re a good Madden player — that you could hold your own against just about anyone, despite the fact that there are some downright magical players out there that set up a fireworks display of hot routes that can only be defended by someone who has the ability to take control over said undersized linebacker and break up the pass using a button that I’ve never heard of, let alone used on my controller. You will fail over, and over, and over with your beloved Colts before determining that perhaps it’s not you, it’s them: you experiment with the Niners, perhaps, or in a moment of weakness, Peyton’s Broncos. And yet, the result is the same — that with or without superstars, young, and/or ageless, at its center, it’s still this strange broken system that is trying to piece things together in hopes of making some magical run strung together by big plays and dumb luck. That despite the glamour of the Clevelander on Friday Night or the new-fangled ability to make one-handed catches with your 71 overall tight end, it’s still a question of hoping that somehow the system that has been proven to be broken somehow unbreaks itself for enough time to pull out a Greatest Show On Turf, or a 2014 AFC Divisional victory over the older bizarro version of yourself.

Perhaps this is what the 2015 Colts are doomed to be: the team that your younger cousin picks in Madden despite being a Dolphins fan because he just wants to run verticals and throw bombs to Johnson, Hilton, Moncrief, and Dorsett all game. A factory that churns out incredible fantasy players that earn you the respect of your co-workers. In actuality, they are an all-star team full of holes hoping that the rest of the league doesn’t figure out a way to catch up. The “happy ending” for the Colts has always existed in narrative: the unbreakable Peyton, the chance to go undefeated in 2005, Chuck Pagano overcoming cancer, Andrew Luck trying to fill impossible shoes, Ric Flair impersonations, deflategate. They are champions in simulated franchise mode, your fantasy football all-stars, your SportsCenter live look-in. Perhaps it is fitting that the Colts’ biggest celebrity fans are Andy Dwyer and the cast of Parks and Rec: even their supporters are fictional. The Colts have always been the perfect modern football team — beautifully adapted to transcend the game itself. However, after the fantasy ends, the game is inevitably settled on the field, where it tends to be the same old story.