Four or five years might as well be a lifetime in the NFL, and in the four-plus years since the birth of the saga known as “Deflategate,” the New England Patriots have done some things.
Since that unseasonably warm, wet night in Foxboro, the Patriots have won two Super Bowl championships and came within one drive of winning a third. They are 50-14 in regular-season games, winning in every conceivable fashion, more often than not spearheaded by the seemingly ageless Tom Brady, who’s still going pretty damn strong at age 42.
It’s been a slightly different story for the Indianapolis Colts, who started perhaps the most ridiculous dog-and-pony show the NFL has ever seen, which is saying something. It was the Colts who tattled on the Patriots, a move that ultimately ended up costing Brady four games and New England a first-round draft pick despite much in the way of evidence that Brady and the Patriots knowingly tampered with football.
The last few years have been a relative nightmare for Indy, and even the staunchest skeptics might start believing in karma after what we’ve seen happen to the Colts since telling on the Patriots, and things might have finally reached their lowest point Saturday night when Andrew Luck shocked the sports world by announcing his retirement.
The Luck story obviously is a sad one, and even the biggest Patriots fans — the ones who seem to revel in rivals’ misfortunes as much as the Patriots’ unending successes — should feel remorse for Luck. His career should have been much more, and in a football utopia, he would have grabbed the torch from Peyton Manning and been Brady’s new AFC rival until the New England QB rode off into the sunset.
In a weird way, though, we probably should have seen this coming, given how the Colts have fared since Deflategate started. The Patriots steamrolled the Colts in that game en route to a Super Bowl win, while Indy was left to lick its wounds — after raising an AFC finalists banner, the hilarity of which was matched only by its patheticness.
In hindsight, that 2014-15 AFC Championship Game, that 38-point bludgeoning at the hands of the Patriots, was the Colts’ best chance at a Super Bowl run. They went 8-8 the following season. In their first chance to exact revenge on the Patriots, the Colts did this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i7VKQwDS2s
Another .500 campaign followed in 2016. That mediocrity looked good by comparison when in 2017 — with Luck missing the entire season — they went 4-12.
In telling that story, you have to mention Ryan Grigson, the overmatched former general manager, who was blessed to inherit a franchise quarterback in Luck and immediately did all he could to ruin the QB’s career. Grigson, the whistle-blower himself, infamously failed to build any sort of offensive line to protect Luck, a fact that overshadowed another shortage of game-changing skill players for Luck to target.
The Colts eventually fired Grigson, probably a year or two too late. They replaced him with Chris Ballard, which appears so far to be a shrewd move and a giant upgrade. But the misfortune continued when Ballard was tasked with replacing the hapless Chuck Pagano, a move that was overdue.
Ballard and Indy zeroed in on Pagano’s replacement, and seemingly found the man who would revitalize Luck’s career and take the Colts to the promised land: Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels. Of course, we all know how that ended, as McDaniels changed his mind, returned to New England and continues to oversee the Patriots’ offense amid its dynastic run, presumably waiting to assume the throne from Bill Belichick when the legendary head coach calls it a career.
Despite all that, Ballard’s second choice, Frank Reich, looks like a home run. With a relatively healthy Luck under center, Reich led the Colts to a 10-6 record. Luck was the Comeback Player of the Year, a couple of strong drafts from Ballard breathed optimism into the franchise and Indy was tabbed as a darkhorse Super Bowl contender for 2019 — and then Luck retired.
The Colts’ Super Bowl odds literally dipped overnight, going from 12-to-1 to as low as 50-to-1 in some places. There undoubtedly is plenty of young talent left in Indianapolis, and if Ballard can work some magic, the Colts could contend again sooner than later. Who knows, maybe former Patriots understudy Jacoby Brissett is the future at QB for the Colts, which would mark a full-circle end to this whole thing.
But if that doesn’t happen, it will be more of the same for the Colts, who will continue to be confined in the shadows as the Patriots’ dynasty rolls on with no real end in sight.
You know what they say about karma, after all.
