Opinion: Indianapolis Colts' season ended Sunday; biggest culprits were Frank Reich, Carson Wentz

INDIANAPOLIS – Frank Reich is trudging up three steps to the podium, moving slowly after what happened over the past 3½ hours and because of what he’ll say over the next three minutes. He’s feeling the weight of this 34-31 Indianapolis Colts overtime loss to the Tennessee Titans, as the head coach and the guy who calls plays on offense, knowing what unfolded Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium does not reflect well on him in either role.

Reich reaches the top of the podium and sighs.

“That’s 100% my fault,” Reich is saying, and he’s talking about a specific play, that freak show of an interception thrown late in regulation by Carson Wentz, but Reich might as well be talking about the loss being 100% his fault. That’s how it sounds as he goes on and on about his mistake on that Wentz interception, and on another interception as well, until finally a reporter is telling him:

Sounds like you’re saying this loss is your fault.

“That’s how I feel,” Reich says.

He’s right, of course. This loss is on him. It’s also on Wentz, his buddy from the good old days in Philadelphia, back when they were competing for a Super Bowl as opposed to what they’re competing for here in Indianapolis, which is … nothing. This loss to the Titans effectively ended the Colts’ season before the halfway point.

The Colts are 3-5 with nine games left, three games behind the 6-2 Titans in the AFC South. With the Titans having already swept the season series to claim the tiebreaker should these teams finish with the same record – as if – the Colts have to make up four games to reach the 2021 NFL playoffs.

The rest of the Colts’ season is a long, flat line to nowhere. The complaints about Frank Reich and Carson Wentz? They’re about to spike here in a minute. Might as well get started.

Um, Frank Reich? Give it to Jonathan Taylor

Reich is feeling stupid. You can hear it in his voice and see it in his slump.

Thing is, he’s feeling stupid over something that hasn’t occurred to most of us. Yeah, I’m talking about you and me here. We saw that game unfold, the way Reich called 51 passes for Wentz and just 16 carries for the NFL's No. 2 rusher, Jonathan Taylor, despite playing most of the game with a lead. Wentz wasn’t terribly accurate, and his receiving corps isn’t terribly good, and still Reich called for three times as many passes as runs.

That’s the forest, and it’s not pretty, but Reich is remembering a single tree. You remember:

Late in regulation, tied at 24, Colts with the ball at their 8 with 1:33 left. They need a field goal to win, and on the first play Reich has Wentz throw a screen to tight end Mo Alie-Cox. This was not a call made in haste. No, Reich was on the headset even before the Titans had punted from the Colts’ 45, telling his offensive staff he wanted to call the screen. Everyone loved it.

The punt is down at the 8, and Reich is on the headset, saying again what he wants to call. Again, the staff loves it. Maybe they love a freak show. After all, the calendar says what it says. This is a day to dress weird and eat candy and call for a tight-end screen.

Carson Wentz chooses this moment to completely lose his mind.

Wentz is backpedaling into the end zone, under duress, looking for his tight end. Problem is, 6-5, 267-pound tight end Alie-Cox has blocked Titans pass rusher Harold Landry III a little too well. Landry still hasn’t gotten around Alie-Cox when he sees Wentz looking that way, so he decides to stay close to the tight end. Now Wentz sees Landry covering Alie-Cox, and he sees the Titans’ other edge rusher, Bud Dupree, rising from the turf and coming his way.

Wentz is about to throw the ball at Alie-Cox’s feet – “dirt it,” as he was saying afterward – before realizing he’s in the end zone and cannot under any circumstance intentionally throw the ball away. That would be a safety, and a 26-24 lead for the Titans. That would be dumb.

So Wentz does something dumber.

So he backpedals deeper into the end zone, where Dupree grabs him, and now Wentz is shuffling the ball to his left hand and pushing it away, like a bar of soap he’s trying to throw out of the shower. The ball squirts from his hand toward the goal line, where Titans cornerback Elijah Molden makes a leaping interception, coming down in the end zone for a touchdown.

“Bad call,” Reich says, and once he explains why, it’ll make you wonder why nobody on his staff had the guts to tell him he was wrong.

“I’ve been around too long to know: You don’t call a screen backed up (to the goal line),” he says. “It’s too risky. Anything can happen. It’s a bad call.”

Wentz took that bad call and made it worse. But then he redeemed himself.

And then he made another mistake, one beyond redemption.

Carson Wentz blew this game, too

The Colts did so many good things on Sunday. None of that matters, not today, but over time we’ll appreciate just how dominant Michael Pittman: 10 catches for 86 yards and two touchdowns on Sunday, with a 38-yard grab among five Titans late in regulation to lead to an overtime-forcing touchdown run by Taylor.

We’ll appreciate how the Colts defense shut down NFL rushing leader Derrick Henry (68 yards on 28 carries, a 2.4-yard average), and how linebacker Bobby Okereke continued to blossom into a star (12 tackles, including several solo hits on the 6-3, 247-pound Henry), and how Kenny Moore (interception) and DeForest Buckner (sack) keep making plays.

Wentz had his moments, too, threading the needle on his second TD pass to Pittman and then, on that 38-yard Pittman reception in traffic, keeping the play alive by avoiding a sack in the pocket, pressing the ball against the turf to maintain his balance before rising and running and rifling that zinger to Pittman.

The game had other emotions we need to honor, too. Talking about defensive end Tyquan Lewis’ interception in the second quarter, when he dropped into coverage and picked off Ryan Tannehill and started running the other way before his right knee exploded. Lewis fumbled as he went down, untouched, grabbing his knee as the ball bounced away and the Titans recovered.

Lewis was taken into the tunnel on a cart, and if that’s the last time we see him in a Colts uniform, how awful. This is the final year of his rookie contract, and Lewis was going to make a lot of money in the offseason. Now, who knows? Defensive tackle Taylor Stallworth walked with the cart as long as he could, and Lewis patted his own heart in appreciation.  

Taking advantage of the devastating turn of events, the Titans scored on the next play, a 57-yard TD pass from Tannehill to A.J. Brown, a play where Colts cornerback Xavier Rhodes blew the tackle at the 40. That tied the game at 14 after the Colts had scored twice in 57 seconds – two Wentz-to-Pittman touchdowns – for a 14-0 lead.

But the game unraveled from there. Reich was going for it one too many times on fourth down, and he was calling for just 16 carries for Taylor, who gained 70 yards and had two other carries for about 60 yards, total, nullified by penalty.

Wentz, meanwhile, was throwing too many interceptions. You remember the freak show in the end zone, but in overtime Wentz launched a poorly conceived throw into double coverage for Pittman that Tennessee intercepted in Colts territory, leading to Randy Bullock’s game-winning field goal of 46 yards.

Reich and Wentz have made pretty music this year, but on Sunday they combined to belch up a game the Colts should have won. The rest of the 2021 season will unfold slowly, giving us plenty of time to debate how much Wentz should play the rest of the way, and whether we’ll see him – or Reich – with the Colts in 2022.

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