INDIANAPOLIS – It began as the brainchild of the backup quarterback, this closed-door, let-it-out, last-year-isn’t-repeating-itself airing of grievances that would swing the course of their season. Jacoby Brissett texted a few teammates after 1-4 became 1-5, wondering if it was time to step up and do something about it.

“What do you think?” he asked one veteran. “Should we all meet?”

They let the idea marinate for a few days, then decided: Enough was enough. It was time. It was mid-October. The Indianapolis Colts weren’t the worst team in football, but their record argued otherwise: They sat at the bottom of the AFC, and were tied with the Arizona Cardinals for the worst record in the league. The losses were piling up, and so were the frustrations. When one player gruffed, “This (expletive) is getting old,” after their loss to the lowly Jets in Week 6, he might as well have been speaking for the entire team.

More:Hilton says he's playing; Colts still awaiting word on Kelly, Ebron, others

Insider:Reich's not changing Colts' mantra now that playoffs are within reach

So at Brissett’s initial suggestion, they huddled in the team meeting room a few days later — every player on the roster, not a single coach — and got real with one another.

The meeting?

It included some hard truths for the 11-man rookie class, many of whom were already playing meaningful snaps. “We’re 1-5, welcome to the (expletive) NFL,” one player remembers hearing. “This (expletive) happens.”

It included an impassioned speech from the first-round pick. Quenton Nelson had the guts to address the entire team six games into his career, and that stuck with the veterans in the room. “From that day on, I knew that kid was gonna be a special player,” one teammate remembers, “just because of how much he cares.”

And it included words from the team’s established voices — Andrew Luck and Jabaal Sheard and Al Woods and Najee Goode. “I think the main thing I took from that meeting was enough is enough,” remembers second-year cornerback Quincy Wilson. “We’re not doing this again. We’ve dug ourselves a hole. We’re not doing what we did last year.”

More:Andrew Luck on 10-0 record vs. Titans: 'It doesn't matter'

Insider:Andrew Luck's fiery halftime speech lifts Colts from slumber

They haven’t. Last year they let a bad start bleed into a bad finish; this year they turned it into the foundation for the NFL’s most stirring midseason turnaround. The Colts are 8-1 since that players-only meeting in mid-October. They’ve become one of the hottest teams in football, are sitting on the doorstep of the playoffs for the first time in four years, and are the squad no one wants to see come January.

When did it all flip? Start with that day in October. Start with that meeting.

Something changed. Something clicked.

Because they’ve been a completely different team ever since.

“We came together,” Goode says, “where some teams in that situation can spread apart.”

Sheard, a Super Bowl champion with the Patriots in 2016, said the meeting was about “looking each other in the eye and building that trust. We needed that as a team.”

Goode, a Super Bowl champion with the Eagles in 2017, called it “a reality check.”

He goes on. “These young guys needed to know that all these games we were losing wasn’t because of talent.”

Goode is right. The early-season Colts were losing games, but they weren’t getting blown out. They were beating themselves. Fumbles. Drops. Penalties. You name it. Four of the five losses had been one-score games in the fourth quarter. They knew how to compete, these young Colts, but not to close. In the NFL, there’s a difference.

“Before we can learn how to win,” Luck said after the Jets loss, “we need to learn how not to lose.”

Thus the need for the midseason meet. This wasn’t about wholesale changes, the veterans told the team that day, but sharpening a focus and buying into a belief. “The main thing,” recalls running back Jordan Wilkins, “was that everybody needs to dig in. Nobody needs to do anything crazy. Nobody needs to change their game. Just everyone needs to find something you can get 1 percent better at.”

“We gotta get our stuff together,” added safety George Odum. “We gotta work on the small details. We gotta break down film better. We gotta meet together better. Now we understand ... we had to come together and play like a team, not like individuals.”

The meeting is what Chris Ballard has craved from the minute he took the job: a locker room that polices itself, one that’s governed by veterans, the discipline of their daily approach heeded by the up-and-coming talent. A player is not only responsible to his coaches, but to his teammates.

That’s how a culture is built.

“You can’t buy a locker room,” Ballard said all the way back in January 2017, the day he was introduced as general manager. “That has to be developed over time ... we want high-character guys that love football, that will hold each other accountable, that will be good teammates. Look at the teams that win in this league. It’s culture. Culture wins. It absolutely wins.”

His Colts are proving it. They’re winning with defense one week, the running game the next, on Luck's shoulders the next. With breakout stars bursting onto the scene — Darius Leonard, Marlon Mack, Tyquan Lewis, Anthony Walker — and established stalwarts at the top of their game — Luck, T.Y. Hilton, Anthony Castonzo. They’re winning by margins big and small, by building leads and by rallying from behind.

They’re winning with a roster that’s maturing with each passing week, and in the years that follow, on the verge of coming into its own.

It was Luck, fed up with his team’s sleepy first half on Sunday, who called them to the carpet during intermission. The Colts were in the locker room so long they nearly missed the second-half kickoff, but no matter. A 17-7 hole became a 28-27 win, their third in a row, their eighth in nine games. By night’s end, their playoff fate rested in their hands.

That’s what Ballard wants. That’s culture winning.

That’s been the ride, improbable as it reads: From 1-5 to 9-6, and in firm control of their playoff destiny.

“With anything in life, I can almost say with 100 percent assurance, that every lesson I’ve learned is after I went through something I didn’t like,” offers veteran safety Mike Mitchell, who arrived just as the Colts turned the course of their season. “This doesn’t shock me. Sometimes losing teaches you more than winning.”

Maybe that’s the story of the 2018 Colts. Maybe they needed those early losses, and the lessons that came with them. Maybe they needed the midseason meeting that forced them to swallow their reality and make a choice: Either slog through the horrors of 2017 for a second straight winter, or buckle down and see what happens. Come together, or spread apart.

"Proud of this team," Goode says. "I've been on some really good teams in this league, including one last year, and this group is on the same path."

Follow IndyStar Colts Insider Zak Keefer on Twitter at @zkeefer.