Jim Irsay's Colts Complete Marvelous Second Half Tank With A Loss To Davis Mills and The Texans
I don't really have anything else to say that I haven't said already about the Colts preposterous season, so I'm just going to hit the main talking points one more time for good measure.
- The Colts started out the season 3-2-1
- They lost the next 3 games in embarrassing fashion, and Jim Irsay fired Frank Reich
- Jim Irsay pretends to be losing his mind and hire Jeff Saturday straight off the set of NFL Live
- Every analyst on ESPN pooped their pants and cried live on air because Jim Irsay was disrespecting the NFL
- Jeff Saturday wins one game against the Raiders, and the Colts once again are dark horse Super Bowl contenders
- Colts lose their next 6 games, featuring the largest blown lead in NFL history against the Minnesota Vikings in Week 15
- Today, in the final week of the season, the Colts completed their award-winning tank against Lovie Smith and the Houston Texans, preventing the Texans from getting the #1 pick in the NFL draft
Tanking is not an easy thing to do. It should be the easiest thing in the world, but it's nearly impossible as an owner or a GM to get a coach + his team on board with intentionally losing. I'm not sure if it's ever truly been done in that fashion. The way you tank is by putting underqualified coaches and players in positions of power, and telling them, "I don't care if you have zero experience, and don't deserve this opportunity whatsoever. I believe in you!". Then you just sit back and hope that they truly are incompetent enough to get the job done. It takes a special type of owner to pull that off. That strategy has never been executed more perfectly than it was by Jim Irsay and the Colts in the last 8 weeks of this season.
At least I keep telling myself that. That's most certainly giving Jim Irsay far too much credit. I think best case scenario is that Irsay thought, "I'm going to hire Jeff Saturday, against the advice of literally everyone, and if he turns out to be great then I'm going to look like the smartest owner in the NFL. But if it doesn't work out, at least we'll get a good draft pick out of it." I bet that scenario went through his mind at least. That's kind of genius really. It's a win-win situation for Irsay, as long as he doesn't mind eating shit from ESPN analysts, and writers at The Athletic for the entire second half of the season. As a Colts fan I'm not mad about it. It looks like we're going to get a draft pick somewhere between 3-5, depending on how the Broncos and Cardinals fair in their games this afternoon. We're probably going to get a whole new coaching staff, a whole new quarterback, and probably a new GM. It's been a long time since the Colts have had a true rebuild. Maybe it'll be fun.
In all honestly, tanking shouldn't even be a thing in the NFL. To put franchises in a position were it benefits them to lose is sort of fucked up. Is there a good reason the NFL doesn't do a lottery like the NBA? I can't think of one, other than then we wouldn't get hilarious endings to the season like we did today.