Insider: 5 decisions that led the Colts to 6-8

The cracks began to surface that first Sunday in Buffalo, when a team favored to make a trip to Super Bowl 50 stumbled so severely out of the gate the owner found himself answering queries about his head coach’s job security not 15 minutes after the game had ended. Then it grew worse. Over the following three and a half months, Jim Irsay’s team has slowly, but steadily, crumbled.

With two weeks to play, they are leading the league in one category: underachievement. This was supposed to be the Indianapolis Colts’ dream season, a culmination of a remarkable four-year overhaul, the year they take The Final Step — the Super Bowl step.

Instead it all went to hell.

“We had opportunities all season long,” their coach, Chuck Pagano, offered Monday, a day after his team suffered a humiliating 16-10 loss to the Houston Texans that encapsulated their ineptitude. While the division — and their season — hung in the balance, the Colts couldn’t find a way to beat Brandon Weeden. At home.

“Make no excuses, everybody has injuries,” Pagano added. “We’ve had our share. It is what it is. We all signed up for 16 games.”

That’s just it, though: They will play 16 games this season, not 17. The Colts will all but assuredly miss the playoffs for just the third time since 1999.

The culpability starts at the top and trickles down, from the owner who talked about winning championship(s) last spring, to the general manager who failed to address glaring deficiencies on his roster, to the coach who is routinely outschemed on Sundays. Singling out just one — Irsay, Ryan Grigson or Pagano — seems insufficient. So does absolving the players of blame. This is on them, too.

After this mess, all are guilty. All hands are dirty.

How did it come to this? How did they fall so far?

Here are the five most damaging decisions made over the past 12 months that have plunged the Colts from Super Bowl contenders to 6-8:

1) Jim Irsay’s decision to offer Chuck Pagano only a one-year contract extension:

For Pagano, who was coming off a third straight 11-win season and a trip to the AFC Championship Game, this had to be insulting. He said thanks but no thanks to Irsay’s offer of a one-year extension. Pagano would bet on himself in 2015. It was a gamble, an awfully risky one for a man facing such daunting expectations.

“I know what I signed up for,” Pagano often says. “I know how I’m judged.”

It’s the last thing a Super Bowl contender should have to worry about, let alone a successful coach. Yet the Colts began this season with no guarantee Pagano — whom the players love to a fault — would be back for 2016. Their play the past three weeks seems to have stamped his fate.

Anything but a lengthy postseason run, and very likely a Super Bowl trip, would 't have sufficed. The uncertainty surrounding their head coach’s future hung like a dark cloud over this team from the outset of training camp, through the 0-2 start, through the three straight losses midseason and through this month’s stunning collapse.

Pagano has tried, desperately and unsuccessfully, to salvage a season as it slips away from him. He gave each player a poker chip with his favorite word inscribed on it — GRIT — and had them watch clips from the epic boxing matches between Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward. Apparently the motivational ploys have fallen on deaf ears: The Colts have been outscored 79-3 in the second halves of the past three games.

2) Ryan Grigson’s decision not to invest in the offensive line:

After star quarterback Andrew Luck — the one player on this roster the Colts couldn’t afford to lose — was abused in 2014, the victim of an NFL-high 71 quarterback hits, Grigson addressed his mediocre offensive line by doing … essentially nothing.

OK, to be fair, he dished out $2.25 million for 32-year-old Todd Herremans, a Philadelphia Eagles castoff who was supposed to help shore up the interior of the Colts’ unit. Instead he was benched in Week 3 and cut two weeks ago. (If only that was the first free agent whiff.) Secondly, six rounds in May’s draft came and went before Grigson took an offensive lineman, and even then it was little-known Denzelle Good out of a school called Mars Hill.

Without any significant upgrade, the Colts’ offensive line — especially the interior — was routinely exposed in 2015, especially when facing more athletic defensive fronts. This is undeniable. Just ask Matt Hasselbeck.

“The problem has been consistency across the board,” said tackle Joe Reitz. “Five guys for 60 plays. You might have 55 good plays, but if there’s five bad plays, and those lead to a penalty or a sack, that’s not a good enough job by the offensive line.”

The unit was leaky from the start. Luck took such a vicious beating in a Week 3 win against Tennessee he would have to sit out the next two games with a sore shoulder. Hasselbeck now knows his pain. The fragile, 40-year-old backup has filled in nobly in Luck’s stead and absorbed much of the same punishment: In just the past three weeks alone, Hasselbeck’s suffered back, neck, rib and jaw injuries. One can only assume Charlie Whitehurst is praying his number doesn’t get called.

The Colts currently lead the league with 108 quarterbacks hits allowed, according to NFL.com statistics, and since 2012, the team has been among the top four every single season.

The deficiencies have crept into the run game as well. Frank Gore knows. The Colts’ $4 million running back hasn’t seen a hole since training camp. The most damning stats of all: With Gore, the Colts are averaging 3.6 yards per carry this season — lower than their 3.9 average last season with Trent Richardson. Gore is on pace for his worst full season of work since his rookie year in 2005.

3) Ryan Grigson’s decision to take a receiver in the first round of the 2015 NFL draft:

To say nothing ill of Phillip Dorsett — the Miami product could very well turn out to be a special player — the Colts needed a 5-9 receiver in the first round of last spring’s draft like Donald Trump needs extra cash. Dorsett has been injured for most of his rookie year, so the sample size remains small, the jury still out.

But for a team that was pummeled by 38 points in the AFC Championship Game just months prior, it was an exasperating selection. After adding just Herremans in free agency, the Colts elected not to bolster their offensive line until the seventh round.

It never felt like a wide receiver was the missing piece, not with the talent Grigson assembled pre-draft. As this team has stumbled this season, it became clear: Not even Jerry Rice lining up out wide would’ve saved this team. The issues lie elsewhere. They’re sprinkled all over the roster.

4) Andrew Luck’s decision not to slide vs. Denver:

We’re not here to condemn Andrew Luck for his heroics — the guy beat the best defense in football while playing the entire fourth quarter with a lacerated kidney — but a franchise quarterback has to exercise more prudence when he flees the product, especially one as irreplaceable as Luck. No one could’ve known it that day, but those punishing hits he took derailed the Colts’ season. They still haven’t recovered.

It didn’t fall apart initially — Hasselbeck won his next two starts — but eventually the Colts crumbled. It became more apparent, week after week, how much this offense missed The Franchise. The Colts attempted just seven passes of 10 yards or longer on Sunday, completing just three of them. The playbook has shrunk, and T.Y. Hilton isn't happy. So have the point totals (10 in Pittsburgh, 16 in Jacksonville, 10 vs. Houston) and their playoff chances.

With a talent like Luck, anything was possible. Without him? Well, the Colts are 6-8.

5) Chuck Pagano’s decision to run the fake punt vs. New England:

It didn’t lose them the game that night, but running the most historically botched fake punt in the annals of professional football doesn’t exactly do much for a team’s confidence. It will remain a play seared into memory banks, unforgettable for all the wrong reasons: Griff Whalen, reserve receiver, snapping to Colt Anderson, reserve safety, in the face of five blitzing New England Patriots special teamers who had to be wondering, at that moment, how they got so lucky.

Remember that?

It was a microcosm of the disaster, a moment that told us everything we need to know about the 2015 Indianapolis Colts.

They just weren’t ready. And everyone is to blame.

Call Star reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134 and follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.

Colts at Dolphins, 1 p.m. Sunday, CBS