The Indianapolis Colts went from a feel-good story at the beginning of the 2025 season to a historic mess by the end. Injuries took a toll, of course, but it is important to remember that Indy was sitting outside the playoffs even before quarterback Daniel Jones tore his Achilles tendon in Week 14.
After Week 16's defensive meltdown against the San Francisco 49ers, the team is now 8-7, and steaming toward an 8-9 finish. Mediocrity would hold sway once again in Indiana, as the team would have been 9-8 or 8-9 in four of the last five seasons. That is unacceptable.
Continued mediocrity risks the Colts to some worse than angry fans. Instead, fans might simply become apathetic. The opposite of love isn't hate, or hate love, but indifference is the opposite of both. A fan base that expects nothing will care less, and that is bad for the team.
Shane Steichen's meaningless words are not likely to make Indianapolis Colts fans happy
To make matters worse, Indianapolis fans have gotten used to hearing the same old meaningless lines from coaching and management after the ever-growing list of losses. What fans want is depth of feeling, not worn-out sentiments that imply that coaches and management don't actually care.
Take head coach Shane Steichen's words while speaking to the media after Indy's Week 16 loss: "We've got to be better. That starts with me."
Well, yes. That much is obvious. The team has to play better overall to win games. In Week 15's loss to the Seattle Seahawks, the defense played perhaps its best game of the season, but Indy lost on a last-minute field goal. In Week 16, the defense was atrocious, and the 49ers blew out the Colts.
When a team loses five straight games, clearly something has gone wrong in each of those games. Maybe the offense was off, or the defense was, but one (or both) of those units let the organization down. What fans don't need to be told is that the team "has to play better." Everyone knows that.
It also didn't help that Steichen also said, "(The 49ers) scored a lot of points, went up and down the field. We've got to get that cleaned up in a hurry." Yep. Everyone could see that.
The truth is that it is likely too late to get any of the messes "cleaned up." The team is probably going to finish 8-9. Again, injuries have played a part, but the Indianapolis Colts were already beginning to dip before Daniel Jones' injury. The team had lost the first two of their current five-game losing streak with Jones playing.
As all Colts fans know, Shane Steichen is not one to scream and shout while speaking to the media. He might want to do that once, at some point, the rest of the season. Fans would at least be able to sympathize with his anger. It is the mundane, meaningless words that don't matter.