INDIANAPOLIS – Say this much for Ted Monachino: The man stood in there every week last fall, and he took the bullets. He never hid, never flinched, never slipped up and came out with the obvious, even though everyone in the room knew it — his defense was old.

And bad.

And inconsistent.

The numbers offer a damning portrait of Monachino’s debut season as the Indianapolis Colts’ defensive coordinator: 30th in total defense, 22nd in points allowed, 27th against the pass, 25th against the run, 31st in defensive penalties, 25th in third-down conversion percentage, 19th in sacks, 26th in takeaways.

The Colts weren’t in the top half in any major defensive category. Not one.

That’s how a team with a Top 10 offense sinks to 8-8 and misses the playoffs.

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Yet numbers never reveal the whole story, not in professional football. Players believe this. Coaches preach this. If NFL games are decided by a few, critical swing plays each Sunday — a creed Colts coach Chuck Pagano echoes nearly every week for four months — consider the opportunities drowned by the Colts defense in 2016.

You remember: That final drive against Detroit in Week 1. The fourth quarter against Houston in Week 6. The five straight touchdown drives they allowed to Oakland on Christmas Eve.

One play here, one play there, and it’s a different season. But what-ifs are fool’s gold. It’s done. It wasn’t good enough.

“It absolutely wasn’t,” Monachino said this week, addressing last season’s woes. “We all know that it wasn’t.”

“I know there were a lot of things I could have done better, and so that’s what I set out to do — all through the offseason, right after we finished our last game, right up until today,” he added. “It’s all about what I can do better.”

In Monachino’s mulligan season of 2017, he inherits what will prove to nearly be a brand new unit, top-to-bottom, one that could feature as many as nine — nine! — new starters. Polished as ever earlier this week, Monachino spoke highly of the old guard — the Mathises, the Waldens, the Jacksons — the players who have anchored the Colts defense throughout the Pagano era. Beneath that, it was evident: This is a coach eager to see what he can do with some new blood.

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He’s in a rare spot for an NFL coordinator: Training camp opens in a little over two months, and he isn’t exactly sure what his first unit will look like.

“Neither do they,” he said of the players, “which is a good thing.”

Competition. That’s the buzzword around the Colts’ West 56th Street facility these days, relentlessly stressed by first-year general manager Chris Ballard. He wants starters to earn their job under the steaming summer sun, not walk into it based on past accomplishments. It’s something the Colts simply couldn’t have done, not sincerely, in years past. Too many entrenched starters. Too much was already decided.

No more.

“Everything’s open, and that’s the best thing going right now,” said outside linebackers coach Brad White, whose room features six new faces this spring. “There’s no, ‘You’re the guy.’ Anybody can be the guy. Anybody in this room can take somebody’s job.”

A player White singled out was Akeem Ayers, one of the few holdovers from last season. Signed after the Rams let him go during final cuts last September, Ayers shifted from inside linebacker to outside in 2016, a transition that White stressed is harder than it sounds. What was encouraging: Ayers’ playing time and production blossomed as the season wore on.

White loves his athleticism, his long arms and his sneaky speed. He sees some traits in Ayers he saw in the Colts’ all-time sack king-turned-part-time-volunteer assistant.

“He brings that smooth slither you had with Robert Mathis,” White said.

The position coach also seemed genuinely intrigued by the potential Jabaal Sheard and John Simon bring to his unit, two proven starters in the prime of their careers who he feels may have been overlooked, and perhaps underutilized, in previous stops. With Sheard, White believes, he was always the secondary pass-rush option, first in Cleveland behind Paul Kruger and in New England behind Chandler Jones and, to a degree, Chris Long and Dont’a Hightower. Simon played in the shadows of J.J. Watt and Jadeveon Clowney in Houston.

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“They all have traits in there that (teams) may not have tried to accentuate before,” White said of his new linebackers. “Too often people get pigeonholed. Too often people say, ‘This is what you are and this is what you do.’”

Sheard could be the featured edge rush in Indianapolis. The way the Colts are paying him — a $9.9 million salary cap hit in 2017 — he should be.

Another welcome change, according to more than one defensive coach, is this: The Colts won’t have to rest defensive starters during practice nearly as often in 2017. It became ritual over the past few years. Players with a decade or more experience were given days off.

“And they deserve them,” White quickly noted. But the alternative — having a unit whole on the practice field as often as possible — advances Ballard’s theory of competition.

A year ago at this time, White was coaching a unit that featured three starters 31 years or older. Now, no one in his room is older than 28. The youth movement continues this weekend, when the Colts host their annual rookie minicamp. Attending will be outside linebacker Tarell Basham from Ohio, the Colts’ third-round pick and potential pass rusher of the future.

In so many ways, the Colts’ defense has turned the page. They’ve buried 2016, moved on. Jobs are up for grabs. Competition can commence.

“We’re excited about building and developing some leaders,” was how Monachino put it.

Call IndyStar reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134. Follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.