Doyel: Colts are luckless, winless but not quite hopeless

INDIANAPOLIS – Half the crowd was gone, having already given up on the Indianapolis Colts, when Jacoby Brissett threw a pass that had the other half — the loyal, the hopeful, the naïve — heading for the exits. It was the first play of overtime Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals, and Brissett had just thrown a pass he cannot throw, an interception into double coverage that left Lucas Oil Stadium so empty and quiet that Arizona coaches could be heard whooping it up in their box upstairs.

It was over moments later, Arizona’s Phil Dawson hitting a 30-yard field goal for a 16-13 victory, and now the Arizona coaches are streaming out of their box and thundering toward the elevators and the locker room below.

“Yeah baby!” one of the Arizona coaches is shouting. “This is who we are!”

And this, apparently, is who the Colts are:

Luckless. Winless. Not quite hopeless, but not far from there. Until injured quarterback Andrew Luck returns, and here we’re assuming he will return at some point this season, the Colts can’t beat many teams and they won’t win many games.

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But the Cardinals are a team they can beat, and this was a game they should have won.

Problem is, the Colts don’t have the talent, the depth, the mental toughness or the health to overcome even a bad NFL team — and the Cardinals, without injured star running back David Johnson, are a bad NFL team — if they also are forced to overcome themselves. Hard to believe they can beat anyone when Brissett is throwing a bad interception and running back Frank Gore is dropping an easy pass and right guard Jack Mewhort is committing a silly penalty and left tackle Anthony Castonzo is falling apart (he was committing multiple penalties when he wasn’t being demolished by Chandler Jones) and receiver Donte Moncrief is disappearing (eight targets, two catches, 18 yards).

“It’s tough right now,” said Colts linebacker John Simon, an offseason acquisition in free agency and the best player on the field for most of Sunday’s game. “You never want to be starting a season 0-2.”

He’s new around here, but the Colts are always starting a season 0-2. This is the fourth consecutive year they have opened with back-to-back losses, and they have rebounded to go 27-15 the rest of the way, combined, over the past three seasons. But this season feels different. Well, this season is different. Luck is gone and there’s no indication that he’s coming back any time soon, or even at all. Surely he will play this season, but nobody with the Colts is saying, and I think that’s because nobody knows. Owner Jim Irsay repeatedly refers to “the four inches between (Luck’s) ears” as the biggest determining factor.

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Until Luck returns, what we saw Sunday was a blueprint for how the Colts can compete with — maybe even win against — some of the more beatable teams on a schedule that is blessedly weak. In Brissett they have a quarterback who is athletic enough to extend plays and bold enough to make plays, even if he is inexperienced enough to make huge mistakes like the overtime pick he threw to Cardinals safety Tyrann Mathieu. In Gore they have a running back who can work the clock and shorten the game. In Jack Doyle they have one of the most reliable targets in the NFL, with Brissett completing all eight of his passes for 79 yards to the former Cathedral tight end.

On defense they have the franchise’s best pair of outside linebackers since Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis, though to be clear, this might be the only time you see those two names in the same sentence with “John Simon" and "Jabaal Sheard.” Simon and Sheard are not Pro Bowl pass rushers, but they were a problem Sunday for Arizona. Defensive tackles Al Woods and Johnathan Hankins are disruptive on the front end, and in the back the Colts have young and hungry defensive backs who are competing.

Rookie cornerback Quincy Wilson punched one potential catch out of Arizona receiver Jaron Brown’s hands, and Rashaan Melvin — the team’s fourth cornerback last year, but its No. 1 corner this season until Vontae Davis returns from injury — punched and clawed at another pass for Brown to force an incompletion on third down. Rookie safety Malik Hooker made his first career interception look easy because he’s fast and rangy and instinctive.

The Colts have enough to compete with bad teams — and the Cleveland Browns are in town Sunday — but they can’t win doing some of the silly stuff they did against Arizona. They committed seven of their eight penalties in the second half, including the play where they came out of a timeout and were called for jumping offsides — by their 12th man on the field.

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Leading 10-3 in the fourth quarter, the Colts drove inside the Arizona 10 for what could have been the clinching touchdown, but Mewhort was flagged for a false start on first-and-goal from the 7. One play later, Gore was open over the middle, but Brissett’s pass bounced through his hands and off his face. The Colts settled for a field goal, and Arizona’s comeback began on its next possession.

“It’s mental fortitude,” Mewhort was saying afterward of his penalty. “And I didn’t have it there. I hurt my teammates.”

“I’ve got to catch that pass,” Gore was saying of his red zone drop.

“Dumb decision,” Brissett said of his overtime interception. “Just a bad play all around. I take credit for that.”

They are assigning blame now, but they are assigning it in the right direction. They are looking into a mirror. They are pointing.

Your fault.

They're right, which means they're not hopeless. They are close. But they are not hopeless.

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