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It’s no surprise that Colts owner Jim Irsay is unhappy. The question is what will he do about it?

He expects multiple championships during the career of quarterback Andrew Luck. Through five seasons with Luck, they’ve yet to come close. In the past two seasons, they’ve failed to qualify for the playoffs despite being in one of the worst divisions in football.

Privately and publicly (sort of), Irsay has said he’ll stay the course. But will he?

One big factor could be the number of empty seats he sees in the stands a few hours from now. At a meaningless New Year’s Day game played at 1:00 p.m. ET against a Jacksonville team whose fans surely won’t be buying up any of the many tickets available on the secondary market, the empty seats likely will number in the thousands. After seeing that for three hours (and given that the Texans are heading to the postseason with Tom Savage at quarterback), Irsay may be showing up for work with a far different agenda than he had a year ago, when he signed coach Chuck Pagano to a four-year deal and G.M. Ryan Grigson to a three-year extension.

Some believe that, if Irsay makes a change, he’s more likely to fire Grigson and keep Pagano. While Pagano publicly has accepted full responsibility for the struggles of the team, it’s fair to put most if not all of it on Grigson, given the failure of the front office to put enough talent around Luck.

Peyton Manning had stars like Marvin Harrison, Edgerrin James, Reggie Wayne, Dallas Clark, Marcus Pollard, Dwight Freeney, and Bob Sanders. Andrew Luck’s NFL experience has been more like Peyton’s father, Archie — a great quarterback largely on an island.

Sure, they have some very good players. But there aren’t enough game-changers and way too many holes in the lineup, thanks in large part to a string of bad decisions in free agency and the draft.

Firing Grigson and keeping Pagano could make for an awkward situation, since the new G.M. may want to hire his own head coach. But things can’t get more awkward in Indy, where the boss expects the team to perform like it did a decade ago and the team simply isn’t close to that degree of dominance.