National Football League

Colts hit rock bottom in loss to Browns

Published Sep. 18, 2011 1:00 a.m. ET

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The electronic sign read 140 Days, 6 Hours, 41 Minutes, 37 seconds and was counting down when Sunday’s Indianapolis Colts-Cleveland Browns game was about to kick off.

It’s just a little sign in the pressbox at Lucas Oil Stadium, marking when the Super Bowl will be here. There has been excitement here about that for a few years. The dream was always that Peyton Manning would lead the Colts into that game, a home game, a special home moment for their hero.

Forget it. Manning has had three neck surgeries now, and it will be a miracle if he comes back this year at all. As a result, the Colts have no chance. They lost to the lowly Browns 27-19 to fall to 0-2.

Well, that’s how the fairy tale goes, anyway. Everyone seems to be tying a nice, neat little bow on what’s wrong with the Colts, that the entire team and every little detail all the way down to the popcorn vendors were handpicked to fit a Manning team. It was the perfect plan by the perfect golden franchise.

Here’s the dirty little truth: The Colts weren’t going to be that good anyway. Not even with Manning.

Oh, they would have been better. Maybe they would have won nine games instead of, say, three.

But somehow, Manning, who is great, has managed to get even better while he’s gone. The flaws on this team were showing last year.

Remember? Manning fell behind Tom Brady. The Colts lost a home game, to the New York Jets, in the first round of the playoffs.

Despite their reputation for draft genius, the Colts haven’t drafted well in a couple of years. Their special teams aren’t special. Their offensive line is awful. Their defense can’t stop the run. They didn’t develop a backup quarterback.

You just don’t notice those things when Manning is out there. He was doing a brilliant job of covering them up, but even he couldn’t keep it up. Even he wasn’t going to be able to get this mediocrity into a Super Bowl.

Late in the third quarter, Colts fans were booing, as Kerry Collins, a 38-year old given $4 million to come off the scrap heap, had thrown an interception. With five minutes left in a five-point game, and about 140 Days, 4 hours, 10 minutes, 52 seconds left on the Super Bowl clock, Colts fans were filing out.

"You certainly can’t pin it all on one person at one time," Colts coach Jim Caldwell said. "This is a team game."

The clock is ticking, and answers aren’t coming. Colts fans are waiting for Manning to come back or for Collins, who has been with the team only a few weeks, to figure things out. Don’t count on either one.

So I asked Collins if he feels he’s on track to grasp the offense.

"It is kind of hard to say after a tough loss like this," he said. "We came out in the no-huddle and I thought we did that pretty well. It was smooth. The operational things went smooth.

"I feel like I’m in the right spots most of the time. I’m sure I’ll look back at the film and there will be a lot to learn from. I think I’m getting better all the time, and I’m getting more comfortable with this offense every day."

Collins was unshaved and in an untucked bright red golf shirt and jeans with a little blob of white paint on the left front pocket. Manning used to show up in a suit.

It’s not that you have to be well-shaved to be a quarterback. Brett Favre was a slob after games, too. It’s just that Collins is so different from Manning, and people were expecting Manning. They are used to him. The best hope for the Colts now is to just go 2-14, draft Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck and then start getting him ready for the future. At some point, rebuilding was going to have to happen. Now it’s just so easy to see what’s needed: linemen, on both sides.

Collins isn’t great, and he is going to make an easy scapegoat. The feeling will be that if he were just decent, then the rest of the Colts would be OK. It isn’t true. And decent describes him perfectly.

The Browns, meanwhile, are just 1-1. But they have some things to build around. Quarterback Colt McCoy, in just his second year, had veteran calm and presence Sunday. In the middle of the second quarter, he stood patiently in the pocket, then rolled left while searching for an open receiver.

Finally, he drilled a pass into tight end Evan Moore’s stomach in the back of the end zone.

I’m not denying that the Colts have been built for Manning. You get that one special talent, and you center everything around him. Why not?

The point is that even with that plan, the Colts were fading.

But playoff banners hang in the locker room, and the players talk about the quality of the franchise. They are winners. Did anyone mention to the team that this isn’t a one-person operation? "That’s just known around here," rookie Delone Carter said.

No, it isn’t. The players see what’s happening. Several of them gave the usual football-player talk about having to look at the game film and make corrections. Defensive end Dwight Freeney, one of the few playmakers on defense, said that winning or losing didn’t matter as much as continuing to move forward.

“We’ve won six, seven straight (in the past),’’ he said. “We’re going to still believe that we can. There are 16 rounds; we’ve only lost two of them.’’

The Colts are trying to con themselves into believing their organization is a safety net, that given time, things will work out.

“There are some encouraging things for sure,’’ Collins said.

When he said it, they had only 140 days, 1 hour, 2 minutes left to figure it out.

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