Doyel: BooOOOoooOOO! Fan base losing patience with Frank Reich, Colts after loss to Titans
INDIANAPOLIS – They were booing the Colts on Sunday, booing the hell out of them, the Lucas Oil Stadium crowd of 65,781 growing angry in the first half and staying that way for most of this 24-17 loss to Tennessee. By the final whistle most of the crowd was gone, so the ugliness wasn’t nearly as loud as it could have been. This is me, Mr. Bright Side.
Maybe 10,000 Colts fans stayed to the bitter end of another mostly abominable performance, stayed just to tell the franchise what they think. Here’s what they think:
BooooOOOOooooOOOOO!
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The ugly noise rose and fell before finally petering out after maybe 15 seconds, because even the angry can care only so much. Apathy comes next, and while we’re not there yet with this 2022 Indianapolis Colts season, you can see the apathy from here. Maybe a loss Thursday at Denver does it. Maybe a loss Thursday, then another Oct. 16 when Jacksonville comes to town.
That series of unfortunate events would leave the Colts 1-4-1, and while that speculation might seem a tad negative, I’ll remind you of two things: One, we’ve already established my credentials as Mr. Bright Side. And, two, these Colts don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.
This town, this fan base, is getting the message, and relaying it angrily to Colts owner Jim Irsay, who has stressed since March his weariness of losing games and AFC South titles to the Titans. The Colts have now lost four in a row to Tennessee, and five of six, and after one loss last season Irsay invited himself to a coaches meeting to chew them the (expletive) out.
“It was about Tennessee kicking our (expletive) because all they do is kick our (expletive),” Irsay said in March. “You have to know where your nemesis lies, and it’s just completely unacceptable the way they’ve dominated the division over us.”
Irsay drove home the message this week to his team, and to this city – this fan base – by reminding everyone who was coming to town Sunday, and demanding everyone’s best effort.
“Pissed off, intense, primal,” Irsay tweeted on Thursday, a list of emotions he wanted to see Sunday from Colts fans.
It’s what they gave him.
Matt Ryan, Quenton Nelson, Jonathan Taylor: What happened to you?
Colts quarterback Matt Ryan isn’t good. His numbers, up to a point, suggest he’s good. But he’s not.
Ryan is a fumble machine, dropping the ball in the pocket and bobbling a snap and not seeing the pressure, not feeling it, until it’s too late and someone’s hitting him and knocking the ball loose. He had three more fumbles on Sunday, or he did until the official scorer reconsidered his bobbled snap from the second quarter and changed that ruling.
Either way, Ryan has nine fumbles in four games. He also has thrown five interceptions. Look, not even Carson Wentz was this bad. Can you imagine how angry this makes me, to have to write that sentence?
BooooOOOOooooOOOOO!
Ryan’s numbers Sunday will suggest he was good – 27-for-37, 356 yards, two TD’s and a 109.7 passer rating – but those numbers are pathological liars. Ryan was throwing behind receivers and 10 yards short of receivers and getting circus catches from Alec Pierce and Ashton Dulin. He was getting huge chunks of yards after the catch from rumbling tight ends Mo Alie-Cox (two TD’s) and Jelani Woods, who terrified one Titans defender into a business decision late in Woods’ 33-yard rampage, that decision being: “No. 80 is someone else’s problem.”
Ryan’s not good, but I’m not sure the crowd was booing him. He’s a nice guy, tries hard, and anyway, the crowd has bigger targets, like the five people charged with providing him protection. An “offensive line,” you call that, though it’s not what I'd call those five players for the Colts. “Leaky faucet” works. “Overpaid” is another word that comes to mind. So does this:
BooooOOOOooooOOOOO!
Then again, maybe the crowd was booing only Frank Reich. He’s the head coach and offensive play caller, the guy charged with having his team ready to play for four quarters, not 1½ quarters, and the guy charged with calling plays that create open space for receivers and running lanes for Jonathan Taylor (20 carries, 42 yards).
Taylor had little room, though something seems to be wrong with him, and I don’t mean the undetermined ankle injury he suffered on his final play, a fumble in the fourth quarter that all but cemented this loss.
Back in the first quarter, second-and-8 from midfield, Taylor got a handoff behind left guard Quenton Nelson. There was no hole there, because boooo, but there was gobs of open space to the left. The old Taylor – last season’s Taylor – bounces it outside and goes 50 yards for a touchdown.
This Taylor? He went down at midfield, behind Quenton Nelson, who was decimated all day by former Colts defensive tackle Denico Autry (2½ sacks, three QB hits, one forced fumble). Quenton, good ol’ Big Q, makes a lot of money and growls a lot and does all sorts of fan-favorite things to be kind of average these days.
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My guess is the crowd isn’t booing Quenton Nelson. Half of them are wearing his No. 56 jersey. Most of the rest are wearing Taylor’s No. 28, or Shaquille Leonard’s No. 53.
Shaq was back on Sunday after missing the first three games of the season. That was good news. He played most of the first half, recording two tackles, before being injured on the Titans’ third touchdown. Leonard was defending Titans tight end Chig Okonkwo as Okonkwo was heading into the end zone for an 8-yard TD catch. Leonard was hitting from behind, too late to prevent the score, when Colts linebacker Zaire Franklin – his best friend on the team – crashed into him from the front.
Tennessee scored on the play, but the crowd wasn’t booing this one. They were stunned silent, watching Leonard, motionless and crouched face down in a position of prayer, in the throes of a concussion, with blood pouring from his nose. Leonard was helped to the locker room, a trainer covering his face with a towel, and didn’t return.
That’s what it took, to make this crowd stop booing these Colts. A head injury suffered by Shaquille Leonard.
Jim Irsay needs to visit Frank Reich
It’s too early to bail on the season, it really is. These Colts are infuriating, with decent talent but no motivation, no urgency, no ability to play well from the start. They trailed Houston 20-3, trailed Jacksonville 24-0, and trailed Tennessee 24-3. That’s three of their four games this season.
But the season isn’t over. The AFC South is a lot like the Colts – utterly disappointing – which means anything can happen. Tennessee and Jacksonville are tied for first at 2-2. The Colts, at 1-2-1, are a half-game back. How do you bail on the season now?
That said …
Reich might want to get these awful starts figured out, and fast. Jim Irsay is a proud man, a football man, and he went out onto his Twitter limb this week and demanded his fan base show up. The fan base did.
The Colts did not. Again.
Afterward, I was asking Reich about another no-show by his team. Don’t remember how I worded it, but it was blunt, and when I was finished he was just staring at me. Then Reich said:
“I don’t even know how to respond to that.”
Then he decided how to respond to that.
“It’s a fair question,” he said. “The results are what they are. I’d say (four games) is a small sample size, but … point taken.”
Point for me? I’m basically outscoring the Colts in the first half of three of their four games! The season is not over, the AFC South will be won by a lousy team – “All of our goals are in front of us,” Reich said – and the Colts have that credential working for them: They’re lousy.
But the pressure is on. It was applied in March by Jim Irsay, who said “all they do is kick our (expletive)” and called the Titans’ division domination “completely unacceptable.”
Then Irsay is asking the fanbase this week to show up in force Sunday, and to be pissed off, primal, intense.
Then the Colts are trailing 24-3.
Along the way Matt Ryan is fumbling again and Leonard is getting hurt again and the offensive line is lousy again. The crowd is pissed off, primal, intense.
You can imagine Jim Irsay inviting himself to another coaches meeting this week, chewing them out some more, words we’ll never hear but words we can imagine sound a lot like this:
BooooOOOOooooOOOOO!
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.