Doyel: Colts are infected by losers

INDIANAPOLIS – Before he quit on the last pass thrown his way, Donte Moncrief celebrated his only catch of the Indianapolis Colts’ 20-16 loss Sunday to Tennessee by dropping the football to the Lucas Oil Stadium turf and twirling it like a top. While the ball was still spinning, because Donte Moncrief is really good at spinning a football, he walked toward the end zone and made an elaborate first-down gesture. Look at me, his gesture was saying. So I looked carefully the rest of the game. Saw Moncrief catch zero additional passes, and quit on one.

Before he dropped the last pass thrown his way – and dropped with it the Colts’ final chance to avoid another ridiculous loss – Chester Rogers celebrated two of his three catches by strutting and preening, or by making a first-down gesture and theatrically wiping his chest, as if his No. 80 is obscured by dust. Look at me, his gesture was saying. So I looked carefully the rest of the game. Saw Rogers drop a third-down pass with 4:19 left.

In the most basic of definitions, the Colts are losers because they are a 3-8 NFL team. In a league where parity is the stated goal and mediocrity is easily attained, the Colts have beaten the system and the odds by being truly terrible. They are losers, and they probably cannot help it. Their franchise quarterback is injured and out for the season. Their roster is low on talent. Their coaching staff is not good. Their owner is, well, bless his heart.

In other ways, however, the Colts are losers by choice. They don’t play hard enough, like when safety Matthias Farley just sort of hoped Titans running back Derrick Henry would run out of bounds with 1:55 left – and then was chucked aside as Henry stayed in-bounds, keeping the clock moving and sealing this game. The Colts don’t play smart enough or selflessly enough, either. Those are choices, and while the Colts are not very good at most things, they are exceptionally good at making the wrong choice.

Case in point: Kenny Moore II. He’s a guy I’d love to celebrate, because he’s an underdog: little guy (5-9, 190) from little school (Division II Valdosta State) with little hype (undrafted free agent). But he’s surrounded by losers in a locker room that has run amok since Reggie Wayne and Robert Mathis and Peyton Manning and Dwight Freeney and Marvin Harrison were setting the tone. The winners, they lead by example.

So do the losers.

And this locker room, with a small but growing number of me-first players, has too many losers. Are they all losers? Oh good Lord no. Don’t ask me to list the dudes in there I respect, because surely someone’s name would be inadvertently left out, and anyway there must be 45 or more players on this 53-player roster worthy of respect.

Kenny Moore isn’t a lost cause, by the way, though he made a fool of himself Sunday when he celebrated a dropped ball by the receiver he was covering, Eric Decker, by theatrically signaling an incompletion. As if Moore had done that, when he had not. The official stats gave him no credit for the play, but Kenny Moore saw a chance to celebrate Kenny Moore, and he took it. He's young (22 years old) and has been paying attention to the leaders in his locker room, men like T.Y. Hilton and Donte Moncrief.

Look at me, Kenny Moore’s gesture was saying. So I looked carefully the rest of the game. Saw Moore get run over by Derrick Henry on a 10-yard gain that started with Tennessee backed up to its 2-yard line. Saw him get juked to the ground one drive later by the enormous Henry, missing every inch, every ounce of his 6-3, 247-pound body. Saw him get burned for a 19-yard reception by Corey Davis. The latter two plays led to the Titans’ go-ahead touchdown with 5:59 left.

The Colts had one last possession, but on third-and-3 from their 32 and Hilton invisible and Moncrief refusing to fight for passes thrown his way, quarterback Jacoby Brissett chose Chester Rogers but hit Rogers in a bad spot: both hands. Rogers dropped it, and while there were more than four minutes left in a four-point game, the crowd left.

They knew how this would end, and besides, they don't seem to like this team. Colts fans have turned on the Colts, and this is a nice market. The Pacers, for example, lost their franchise player (Paul George to a forced trade) this summer and were a playoff long shot, but the fan base loves them. Because the Pacers play hard and smart and unselfishly.

The Colts lost their franchise player (Luck) and don’t have much shot at the 2017 NFL playoffs, but that's not why they lost the fan base. They lost it by having too many losers. Fans love guys like Brissett and Jack Doyle and Frank Gore and Rashaan Melvin, professionals and hard workers who don’t ever and I mean ever celebrate themselves like Moncrief, Rogers, Moore and, historically, T.Y. Hilton.

But just like a few drops of guck will contaminate an entire bottle of water, just a few losers will contaminate an entire locker room. And this fan base pays attention.

Now, I tried to talk to Donte Moncrief after the game for this story. Well, I did talk to him. Told him what I was writing, and why. It didn’t go well, which is fine. He’s an NFL player, and not only has his team just lost another game, but now this sports writer is telling him he’s part of the problem. It was never going to go well. This is how it went:

I’m writing about the celebrating this team does, I tell Moncrief. You’re 3-7. My thought is, do something before celebrating.

“What you mean,” Moncrief says, “’do something?’”

Win a game, I say.

“Hey yo,” Moncrief says to Rogers, who is young (23) and impressionable and lockering in the same corner with Moncrief and Hilton.

“He’s trying to say we're 3-7, so don’t do nothing when you make a play,” Moncrief says, to both of us. “He’s saying why do we do first-down things when we get a first down? You make a play, you make a play.”

So, I say, the celebrating will continue even if the losing continues?

“As long as we making plays,” Moncrief says. “You want us to go out there and not have fun? You think we're going to go out there and just be bored in the game and not have fun?”

It’s the look-at me stuff, I tell him.

“What’s look at me?” he says.

Running away from everybody else, I say, and ... hey everybody, look at me.

And now we’re done talking, because coach Chuck Pagano is addressing the media down the hall and I’ve got to be there. A few minutes later I’m back in the locker room, and Moncrief is talking loudly to three or four teammates when I walk past and he says:

“There he goes!”

I look at Moncrief, who’s staring furiously at me, and I see the disconnect: He literally doesn’t have any idea why I’m asking him about celebrating routine plays in a lost season. He’s trying to fire himself up, and this game is hard. You make a play, you make a play. Something like that. Anyway, Moncrief snarls something at me about “tripping,” and I wave a hand at him and walk away.

Down the hall, Jacoby Brissett is about to speak to the media. I know what he’ll say – he’ll blame himself for the offense’s struggles – but I head that way anyway, far from the losingest corner of a losing locker room, where whatever affliction they have seems to be contagious.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel.

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