DENVER – No, the Colts' season is not over.
Sunday's Week 15 loss to the Denver Broncos at Empower Field at Mile High did not eliminate the Colts from postseason contention. It did, however, clinch the AFC South for the Houston Texans, meaning the Colts will not win their division for the first time since 2014 this year.
A narrow path remains. We don't need to get into the specifics of it now. What matters more is how the Colts digested their 31-13 loss to the Broncos, one marred by self-inflicted mistakes ranging from mundane (penalties) to significant (a few turnovers) to catastrophic (as detailed here).
"This one hurt the most because I mean, outright, (we) blatantly beat ourselves," linebacker Zaire Franklin said. "No disrespect to the Broncos — I think Sean Payton's a hell of a head coach, I think he's a hell of a play caller, and (wide receiver) Courtland Sutton's a stud – but man, I just feel like we just blatantly did not play winning football today. When you're playing meaningful football at this time of the year, the mistakes we made, you ain't gonna win if you do those things."
The Colts were penalized eight times and had five turnovers, with those two realities far too much to overcome in a game with massive playoff implications.
"We definitely needed this one and didn't get it done," wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. said. "I don't know what type of odds we have left, but it's very frustrating that we couldn't get this one."
"This one definitely hurts a lot," defensive tackle DeForest Buckner said. "We had our opportunities and we just let it slip through our fingers."
While the Colts still have a 17 percent chance of making the playoffs, per the New York Times, the focus is not on scoreboard watching and is moreso on finishing the 2024 season strong against the Tennessee Titans (3-11), New York Giants (2-12) and Jacksonville Jaguars (3-11). The Colts could've upped their playoff odds near 70 percent on Sunday, instead they dropped significantly. Still: The chance at finishing 2024 with a winning record does matter to this team.
"This was a big-time game for us, and obviously our chances are slim now," head coach Shane Steichen said. "But we know that we signed up for 17 of these things, and we're going to keep fighting."
"The best result for everybody would be trying to finish this season as a winning team," Franklin said. "Because I think we're good enough to be a winning team, but we didn't play winning football today."
The Colts, for plenty of the 2024 season, have not played the sort of complementary football that drives playoff contenders. There've been games where the offense has sputtered while the defense has been stout, or the defense has been gashed while the offense plays explosive and efficient ball. Sunday's loss to the Broncos was more of the former; the Colts' defense set new season-bests in yards per play allowed (3.2), total yards allowed (193) and interceptions (three).
But Franklin, the vocal leader of the Colts' defense and the NFL's top tackler, was not willing to entertain platitudes about how the defense played in a losing effort.
"Throughout the course of a season there's going to be highs and lows," Franklin said. "I feel like sometimes it's too much putting blame on certain things, like the defense didn't win the game and then we lost along with the offense too. Regardless of how we played, the Colts lost.
"… We a team. Yeah, you might feel decent because you played decent. But at the end of the day, we lost as a team."
It's now up to the Colts to finish the 2024 season on their terms, not as individual players or as siloed off units, but as a team.
