I Am Convinced That The Colts Are Cursed

Unreal. Unbelievable. All the adjectives you can find to describe an utterly brutal start to another season for the Indianapolis Colts before a game has even been played. 

What's gone from some really unfortunate Luck (pun intended DOH GOD) is now definitely teetering on something more at play in Indianapolis. Curses have been around in sports for a long while. Curse of the Bambino. Curse of the Billy Goat. Steve Bartman. The Andretti curse at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Now it seems like the fine folks of my hometown need to brace for another vex of bad voodoo thrust upon them a few miles southeast of IMS - The Manning Curse. 

Let's go through the timeline since 2012 when the Colts released Manning:

• 2012 - Jim Irsay makes the decision to release Peyton Manning setting up for the Colts to take Andrew Luck with the No. 1 pick. 
• 2014 Deflategate
• 2015 - Peyton Manning wins Super Bowl 50 with the Broncos after the Colts go 8-8 and miss the playoffs.
• 2016 - Colts disappoint again, Luck battles injury, they finish 8-8 and miss the playoffs. 
• 2017 - Andrew Luck has offseason surgery on his shoulder and starts the season on IR.
• 2017 (continued) - Andrew Luck announces he'll miss the entire 2017 season. 
• 2018 - Josh McDaniels leaves Colts at the altar, scrambles to hire Frank Reich. 
• 2019 - Andrew Luck battles mysterious ankle / leg injury, stops practicing, then retires out of no where two weeks before the season begins
• 2021 - Colts trade for Carson Wentz, he injures foot, has surgery will miss 5-12 weeks then Quenton Nelson follows with the SAME injury.

Colts GM Chris Ballard was hired in January of 2017. He has started every training camp, and is starting to look like season, with a different quarterback since he's taken over. That is an absolute laundry list of shitty circumstances. Call it what you want, but nobody can deny that things have just been...off since Manning was cut in March of 2012. 

I know a lot of folks will say it all started when Andrew Luck retired, and that certainly didn't help, but look at the list above. The retirement was such a drastic shot into the Colts future that you kind of forget all the other Luck injury drama that plagued the franchise the two years prior to the retirement itself. The Manning's are the mob of the NFL. They, especially Peyton, wield such power and control over the league and their fans that I definitely wouldn't be surprised if that big ol' red forehead was able to cast an OMAHA spell of his own on his way out the door - even if it wasn't intended. 

The Luck situation was some unfortunate breaks for a longtime historically successful franchise. Then the mini quarterback carousel of Brissett to Rivers probably felt warranted from a lot of other NFL fanbases after the run of Manning-Luck for 20 years. But now...the Wentz foot injury out of no where...followed by Big Q's just days after...is starting to feel like that bad luck has turned into something more.