Smell that? Acrid? Sickly? Sour? Then you must be downwind of Indianapolis, Indiana, where the Colts have gone from Super Bowl dark horse to a blazing dumpster inferno in eight short weeks. It began with an abysmal comeback tie against the Houston Texans in Week 1 and continued into Week 2, with a 24-0 shutout loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Eventually Matt Ryan—the second aging gunslinger in as many years for the Colts—got benched in favor of pedestrian Longhorn Sam Ehlinger. Then offensive coordinator Marcus Brady got fired. Then head coach Frank Reich got fired. Then Jeff Saturday was hired on an interim basis, becoming the least experienced head coach in NFL history, sparking a league-wide inquest into race, opportunity, and plain old football IQ.
That takes us pretty much up to present, with Ehlinger, Saturday, and the rest of the glue farm preparing to face the equally inept Raiders on Sunday. Could they surprise the entire league and spring an upset after one of the darkest weeks in franchise history? Maybe. It’s football, anything can happen. But before you go plunking down your kid’s college fund on the Colts to cover, you might want to read this little nugget first.
That does not inspire confidence. In fact, it’s an almost unprecedented monument to organizational failure. On Sunday, Ehlinger will make his third start at the most important position in American sports and he’ll be doing so with his third different OC on the headset. Oh, and we should probably mention that OC is an assistant quarterbacks coach named Parks who looks like this.
Our thoughts and prayers are with Colts fans in these trying times. In many ways, their season starts on Sunday, and yet it can’t be over soon enough.
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