Derek Schultz: Looking back at 10 years of Colts disappointments

Ten summers ago, with Andrew Luck on the come and Peyton Manning in the rearview mirror, Indianapolis was a trendy preseason Super Bowl pick.

A 45-7 blowout loss in the AFC Championship Game to rival Patriots to end the 2014 season was deflating (pun intended). But given the team’s gradual progression under its wunderkind quarterback, the prevailing thought entering the 2015 campaign was that another decade—similar to the 2005 through 2014 seasons—of consistent success was on the horizon in Indianapolis.

Sadly, 10 years, 14 quarterbacks and 0 division titles later, the only consistent thing the Colts have done in the last 10 years is repeatedly fall short.

They’ll enter another season next month with no Super Bowl expectations as they try to earn back the trust of a jaded fan base and finally move on from the most frustrating stretch of Colts football in the franchise’s 40-plus year tenure in Indianapolis. Here’s a look back:

2015 season: 8-8

Becoming the whistleblowers in Deflategate that January, which was the talk of the NFL for months, might have made the Colts look a bit foolish, but most pundits were taking them seriously in 2015. General Manager Ryan Grigson loaded up in free agency, bringing in former all-pros in Andre Johnson and Frank Gore, along with Eagles pass rusher Trent Cole. Those acquisitions were supposed to help an ascending team truly take flight, but the ensuing season never got off the tarmac.

Luck was hurt immediately—the first serious setback of his pro career—after suffering a shoulder injury in a season-opening loss in Buffalo. He continued to play through it, including captaining a fourth-quarter rally in a 35-33 win over the Titans in Week 3, before the pain finally forced him to tap out.

Backup Matthew Hasselbeck, at age 40, kept things afloat in his stead, but the Colts lost three straight games after Luck’s return to sink into a 3-5 hole. Luck led a surprise Week 9 win over eventual Super Bowl champion Denver, but it ended up being a Pyrrhic victory as a lacerated kidney ended his season and any realistic championship aspirations.

The Colts were outscored 96-26 in back-to-back embarrassments in Pittsburgh and Jacksonville in Hasselbeck’s second starting stint and wrapped an 8-8 season with Charlie Whitehurst, Ryan Lindley and Josh Freeman under center.

2016 season: 8-8

In the immediate wake of a failed 2015 season, Jim Irsay, who was reportedly on the fence about a direction forward, dug in and declared Grigson and head coach Chuck Pagano would not only return but each get contract extensions. In one of the most awkward press conferences in Indianapolis sports history, the Colts owner staged an uncomfortable, kumbaya moment between the two in front of the cameras, but the Colts brass never got in lockstep behind closed doors.

Bringing back Grigson, Pagano and an 8-8 team without any major additions ultimately produced the same mediocre result as the Colts alternated wins and losses from Week 3 through Week 9 and Week 11 through Week 17. They raucously celebrated a come-from-behind win over a pitiful Jaguars team in the season finale to finish .500, which sadly might have been the only standout moment in an otherwise forgettable year.

2017 season: 4-12

Grigson was unceremoniously fired and replaced by Chris Ballard. Around the same time, Luck underwent surgery in January to finally address his throwing shoulder, but his rehab never took.

All you need to know about this season was that Scott Tolzien was the Colts’ opening-week starter. He threw two pick-sixes in a hilarious—at least in a macabre way—46-9 loss to the Rams and never threw an NFL pass again. New QB Jacoby Brissett was thrust into the starting role barely a week after being acquired in a trade with the Patriots and performed admirably, especially given the circumstances, but the Colts’ 2017 season was always dead on arrival.

Indianapolis missed the playoffs for a third straight season, and Pagano, like Grigson, was shown the door before the completion of their ill-fated contract extensions.

2018 season: 10-6

Deep into the offseason, Luck was still not throwing footballs. Well, he was technically throwing footballs—non-regulation ones—but it wasn’t until a mental recalibration in Holland, as well as a physical one from renowned throwing specialist Tom House, that the Colts franchise quarterback got back on track.

It took a minute for his team to follow, though.

Under first-year head coach Frank Reich, Indianapolis limped to a 1-5 start and appeared to be heading for another go-nowhere season. The Colts salvaged things by ripping off nine wins in their final 10 games—the guaranteed loss in Jacksonville was the only outlier—to make the playoffs, where they crushed the AFC South champion Texans in Houston.

The run might have ended with a loss to Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in the Divisional round, but the final three months of the 2018 season represent perhaps the only true sustained period of joy for Colts fans during the past decade.

2019 season: 7-9

Like the 2015 season, expectations were once again high. Reich’s debut season was well received; a stellar rookie class led by Quenton Nelson and Shaquille Leonard set a new foundation, and Luck was back back—or so we thought.

Everyone knows what happened from there. Luck’s offseason calf pain lingered to the point he decided to shock the football world and call it a career in August.

Still reeling from that retirement, the Colts fan base briefly unified behind the team’s surprising 5-2 start with Brissett returning under center. However, Brissett’s limitations couldn’t be hidden by a dominant offensive line forever and, after a string of close losses, the Colts were pummeled by Drew Brees and the Saints in New Orleans and blasted once again in Jacksonville to finish a disappointing 7-9.

2020 season: 11-5

The Colts threw $25 million at an aging but still effective Philip Rivers to upgrade from Brissett at quarterback, traded for defensive stalwart DeForest Buckner, and brought in Jonathan Taylor and Michael Pittman Jr. through the draft, ushering in the franchise’s best win total (11-5) and second postseason berth since 2014. Reich was roundly criticized for his red-zone decisions in a 27-24 playoff loss in Buffalo that January, but the Colts’ COVID season was mostly regarded a success overall and the first step forward for the franchise in the post-Luck era.

2021 season: 9-8

Rivers’ one-and-done decision put Indianapolis in a position to make another quarterback switch, and the team pushed its chips in on Carson Wentz, a reclamation project who once thrived under Reich in Philadelphia but had been benched by the Eagles after leading the NFL in interceptions, total turnovers and sacks taken the previous season.

Wentz was up and down, but the Colts were still winning at a decent clip, including a memorable prime-time win in December over the hated Patriots, despite Wentz’s 57 passing yards. A short-handed victory in Arizona on Christmas night put Indianapolis at an over 90% probability to make the postseason, but they followed that up with a home loss to the Raiders and an all-time embarrassment in Jacksonville (sound familiar?) to conclude another playoff-less campaign.

2022 season: 4-12-1

Ugh. Where to even begin? The Colts compounded their mistake trusting an in-over-his-head Wentz by trading for an over-the-hill Matt Ryan, and their boat took on water right away with a season-opening tie against the putrid Texans.

Irsay’s meddling began with Ryan’s benching for third-stringer Sam Ehlinger in October, but it wasn’t until he fired Reich following a blowout loss to Indy’s old pals in New England that the ship capsized.

In a move that was ridiculed nationally, Irsay tabbed Jeff Saturday, a fan favorite as a player, as interim coach of the 3-5-1 Colts despite no collegiate or professional coaching experience. Following a death rattle in Vegas, Saturday’s mission impossible saw the Colts end the season with seven straight losses, including a final insult—a 32-31 home loss to a Houston squad that was playing for the No. 1 pick in the draft.

Indianapolis was arguably the worst team in the league by year’s end but did receive a top-five draft pick and the chance to finally end the veteran QB carousel as a consolation.

2023 season: 9-8

Indy’s prize for the failures of the 2022 season was Anthony Richardson, the team’s highest draft pick (No. 4) since using the top selection on Luck in 2012. Richardson, who was equal parts athletic and raw, flashed promise in September games against the Jaguars, Rams and Texans, but his rookie season was limited to just 10 quarters due to injury. First-year head coach Shane Steichen squeezed a lot of juice out of backup Gardner Minshew, but the Colts fell just short of a long-awaited division title, losing a heartbreaker at home to Houston in the season finale.

The result was no playoffs yet again, but the franchise at least appeared to be heading in the right direction.

2024 season: 8-9

Richardson returned healthy to start the year but showed how just behind the curve he was in his development. After completing just 10 of his 32 passes in Houston—accuracy has been a recurring concern—he was promptly benched for Joe Flacco in an effort to “win now.”

Unfortunately, the Colts proceeded to do the opposite, as Flacco racked up six total turnovers in losses to Minnesota and Buffalo before Steichen pulled the plug and reinserted Richardson two weeks later, who went on to lead comeback wins over bad Jets and Patriots teams.

Those rallies weren’t enough as the hapless Giants racked up 45 points against the Colts’ toothless defense in late December to seal another playoff-less season for Indy.

2025 season: TBD

Irsay’s last major football decision before his passing was to give what is likely a final shot to his general manager (Ballard), head coach (Steichen) and quarterback (Richardson), but with new leadership at the head of the table in the Irsay daughters, it is anyone’s guess how their evaluations down the road might differ from their iconic father’s.

Regardless, hope remains that better days are ahead for the Colts—Lord knows the fans here deserve it—where they can regain past glory and once again be regarded among the upper-echelon franchises, instead of the middling also-ran stuck in NFL purgatory that they’ve been for the last decade.•

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From Peyton Manning’s peak with the Colts to the Pacers’ most recent roster makeover, Schultz has talked about it all as a sports personality in Indianapolis for more than 15 years. Besides his written work with IBJ, he’s active in podcasting and show hosting. You can follow him on X @Schultz975.